Does anyone know of a detailed video for Studio 24 (or 22) that will detail how to zoom and track a video clip?  I have a 15 second clip from a soccer game of 2 players running down the field, away from the camera, and getting smaller by the second.  I was hoping to find some detailed instructions about how I could track the players and zoom in as they were running.  Seems like the ability is in the software, but I have yet to find something to give specifics on how to do it.  I have seen some sale advertising articles that imply it can be done, but so far, the only tutorials I have seen only seem to zoom in on a pretty inactive scene and don't really track anything.

There's no "tracking" feature in a pan & zoom; you'll have to do that manually. But it's easy to do it by eye using the preview windows displ;ayed by the pan & zoom tool.

Suggestion (based on operation of PS24/25):

• Select the timeline clip you're going to apply the pan & zoom to and place the timeline playhead on its first frame
• Open the pan & zoom tool, choose to make an Animated pan & zoom
  
• Resize and/or drag the green frame in the Pan & Zoom Source to set the view you want to see at the beginning of the players' run (whether zoomed-in slightly or showing the whole frame. You will see the result immediately in the Pan & Zoom View window.
• Drag the scrubber under the Pan & Zoom Source window to move to the last frame of the clip
• Resize and/or drag the red frame in the Pan & Zoom Source to set the view you want to see at the end of the players' run. Again, you will see the result immediately in the Pan & Zoom View window. Note that zooming-in to a video clip will quickly degrade the quality; you might want to limit the amount of zooming-in to just give the impression that the camera is following them, but not attempt to keep them the same size in the frame.
• If you find that you need to make a "mid course correction" to the amount of pan & zoom, drag the scrubber under the Pan & Zoom Source window to the point in the clip where you want to make the correction, then resize/drag the white frame to make the correction. You'll get a keyframe added at that point. You might also need to change the motion to Smooth to rediuce jerkiness in the pan & zoom as it passes keyframes where there is a change of speed of the panning or zooming.

HTH
Richard

Thanks.  Will give it a try tomorrow and let you know how it works out.

So I gave it a try and have a few questions/observations. 

If I right click on the clip and choose Pan and Zoom I get a different window than if I go into Editor and select Pan and Zoom.  What's the difference?  I chose to do the Editor version because it seemed to match your instructions better. 

I got it to work "sort of".  Doesn't quite work the way I wanted because I really need to track the two boys running down the field.  The Pan and Zoom wound up losing the boys in the frame altogether at one point.  That's probably where your "course correction" comments comes into play.

However, when I right click on the clip, in addition to the "Pan and Zoom" there is a "Motion Tracking" option.  Have you ever used that?  I'd like to do some research on that and see if that would do more of what I'm looking for.  Perhaps I need to combine the two?  Guess I need to do some more research.  

 

The floating-window interface you get from the right-click menu is the one used by older Studio versions (before they started being "rounded up" under the "Editor" tab in the main Studio UI).

Yes, it does sound like you need to apply that "course correction":

• Move the scrubber under Pan & Zoom Source to where the players have gone out-of-shot
• Drag the white frame to bring them back into shot (or as far as you can without it going over the edge of the video and causing a black bar to appear) - you'll see the outcome in Pan & Zoom View

Motion tracking won't do what you are trying to do with the pan & zoom; it it is used for tasks such as:

• Allowing you to mark an area (mask) that follows some subject in the video - so you can apply some kind of effect to just that subject, leaving other parts of the frame unaltered. For example draw a mask around a person in a crowd and apply an effect to highlight them and have that highlight stay with them as they move around
  
• Allowing a graphic object or title overlay to be "anchored" to some subject in the video and follow it as it moves - for example add an arrow graphic or a piece of caption text to point out the subject and stay with it as it moves

HTH
Richard