Zoom in on an image.

[RyanC]

Hi All,

A friend's birthday is coming up at the end of the month and instead of a card this year I was going to but together a DVD with various video clips and nonsense. What I would like to do, and I'm currently struggling with is this. I have a picture which I would like to start at full size and the zoom in on a section of it.

The only thoughts I've had so far is to print the photo as big as I can and use a camcorder to produce the effect I'm looking for .... but I'm sure there is a digital way to do this and the results would look a lot better. Ideally I would like the output to be an AVI which I can then splice in to the final production, convert the whole lot to MPEG2 ready for DVD.

Thanks for any help or pointers that anybody can give me.

Ryan

[IKnowNothing]

ProshowGold (www.photodex.com) can do what you want - except the output will be MPEG (I think).
There are lots of things you can do including pan and zoom on a still - even add a text overlay.

I have used it to great effect to create short clips I can then splice in between clips to create a transition

Even better is that there is a free trial version which I believe is fully functional :->

[redwudz]

What format is the video in presently? Best to use the native format when editing or enlarging and keep the re-encoding to a minimum.

What editing programs do you presently have? You can probably use a editor like VirtualDub if you have a AVI type format video and do several steps of enlargement, then add them all together. Or someone more familiar with AVISynth can probably point you to a script that could create the zoom automatically.

I suspect some of the payware editors can also do this. But others may have better ideas.

And welcome to our forums.

[IKnowNothing]

Redwudz - I think he's starting from a still image - hence I suggested ProShow Gold.

RyanC - If you are going to print the pic first be very careful to avoid glare and make sure the camera is rock solid otherwise it will look silly. You could also use VideoMach!

VideoMach is an animation tool which strings images together to create a movie file. So you jet create 25 or 30 pics for every second of zoom you want and let VideoMach do it's thing - total control but it takes ages using Photoshop.

[redwudz]

IKnowNothing, you are correct. I misread the post. I also didn't see your first post before I hit the 'Submit' button.

[RyanC]

Hi All,

Many thanks for the responses so far. I'll have a look at ProshowGold.

Some of the clips have come from a DVDs I own, video I have taken while we have been out and a few still pictures. I was aiming for a common format like AVI to make things simple when putting all the bits together, in the end it will end up as a DVD. The output of any program doesn't really matter as there are plenty of guides on here for converting x to y

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Ryan

[träskmannen]

DVD Slideshow GUI is a free alternative that can do this kind of effect as well. I haven't used it for a while now but I think you can output the result as an *.avs which you can open in for instance VirtualDub and save as an AVI if you want that.

[RyanC]

Hi träskmannen,

I had a look at this but apart from zooming as a transition effect I couldn't see how to zoom into a section of the photo. I'll have another look though.

Thanks for the reply.

Ryan

[hunter99]

RyanC: ProShow Producer will out put to a DVD. In fact will take most anything as input and output to most anything. Not sure about the Gold though.


BTW: Ryan is my latest grandsons name.

Good Luck

[träskmannen]

I had a look at this but apart from zooming as a transition effect I couldn't see how to zoom into a section of the photo.

You make an animation of a photo (read more here about how to do it.)