Using the Pan & Zoom in KDEnlive | |  |
KDEnlive allows you to resize and position your clips, so they appear at any point of the screen - and at any size. This can be used to create picture-in-picture effects, to shrink a clip down, enlarge it from a thumbnail to a full screen or even to bounce a window around the screen!
The mechanism that KDEnlive uses to do this is called Keyframes. These are just points in the clip timeline where you can define certain properties of the clip - such as it's size, position, transparency, etc. Many of KDEnlive's effects (-including Transitions) are keyframeable.
Each Keyframe is associated with a point in your clip's Timeline and work on a principle similar to tweening in animation. If you define two Keyframes - one at the start (-with the clip sized really small) and one at the end (-with the clip size to the full screen), then KDEnlive will generate all the frames inbetween the two sizes - and the picture will appear to smoothly enlarge over that time period. The time between the Keyframes will define the actual speed of the zoom.
Note: you can define as many (-or as few) Keyframes as you need to get the effect you require
In the following section we will demonstrate how to use Keyframes to implement a Pan and Zoom effect.
The Pan and Zoom effect can be found in the "Effects List" under the "Crop & Scale" category:
Drag and drop the Pan and Zoom from the "Effects List" onto the desired clip:
Move to the start point for the zoom (-here, we will use the start of the clip). Next, double-click on the image in the Project Monitor -a yellow box should appear around the current image area:
Click on a corner handle of the yellow box and drag it to the required starting size:
Now, click on the point in the Timeline where you want the clip to be full-sized:
Click on the "Add Keyframe" icon:
A Keyframe will be added (-a diamond icon is shown above the timeline at that point) - and the "Add keyframe" icon will change to a "Delete keyframe" one:
Again, double-click on the image in the Project Monitor: a yellow box will appear around the current image area again - click on a corner and drag it out to the full size of the monitor window:
This will define a starting and ending keyframe (-and size) for the zoom. If you now play the clip, you will see the image zoom from small to full screen in the Project Monitor:
You can also view our video section for a video tutorial on using the Pan & Zoom effect.