A few visuals to supplement Peter's excellent instructions. For my benefit as well as anyone who ends up in this thread seeking an introduction to the Curve Editor's user interface.

Thanks for your appreciation guys. There had to be some way.

I do not know this quote - where is it from?

Cleese, Jones, Palin, et al. It was a sketch about a quiz show with, I think a little old lady or maybe a foreigner, where every crucial question was about some historic English Football Cup game that they were very unlikely to be familiar with. One of the prizes was a lounge suite and Cleese was the Compare.

Peter

Hmm - I wasn't that close then!

Well done gentlemen,

A few observations on Size/Position Effects Curve using the Move Position buttons:

1. Zoom > 0 (sometimes I can get it to 0, but normally no)
2. Width and Height cannot be less than 0 (again, difficult to get to 0 and size should stay proportional 16:9)
3. X and Y have no limit
4. X and Y default is 0,0 to start
5. Trying to reduce zoom to less than 0 when Image Size/Position (top line in kf window) will not work, but X and Y will keep going
6. Reducing zoom, but not less than 1, the bottom of the image stays fixed, the top left coordinates change to keep the bottom of the image at the bottom of starting image. Trying to reduce zoom to less than 1 changes this.
7. Per 6 above, increasing zoom moves image to the right, but the bottom of the image is fixed. Width - Left = 1920, so an increase of 50% moves the image half way across the screen to: Left=960, Width=2880. 2880-960=1920.
8. Decreasing zoom moves image to the left, so a decrease from 100 to 50 gives: Left -960, Width 960. 960-(-960)=1920.
9. Height is additive: increasing zoom to 150  gives Height=1620, Top=-540, 1620+(-540)=1080
10. Decreasing zoom to 50 gives Height=540, Top=540, 540+540=1080
11. Using values instead of % can cause the image to go out of proportion.

The above is different from the normal zoom which is about the centre of the image. So you have to keep this in mind.

Time - Move Position vs Stretch/Compress

Here is a quick video on the subject.

Stretch/Compress - Effect

To understand this, it is easier to look at something simpler than Size/Position, so I took Brightness.

Here is another quick video. I did up text and annotated images, but the video may be better. I'll keep the text just in case.

Part 2 - video to come - Using Stretch/Compress Effect on Size/Position

Before I do this one, there are a couple of points further to my observations at the beginning of this post.

Similar to the brightness curve, compressing a zoom curve causes any zooms that are less than 100 to move towards 100, and any above 100 to move down towards 100. All nodes move every time the button is pressed, so a zoom a 100 will move up or down the first time, move back the second time, move up or down the third time, etc. Thus a zoom of 50 will move to 70 when the % is 10 (why it moves 20 I don't know), then 90, then 110, then 90, 110, 90 etc. At the same time, clicking on the - button to compress moves a zoom of say, 150, to 130, 110, 90, 110, 90 etc.

If you stretch, a starting zoom of 50 will go to 30, 20 and stay there because it can't go to 0. At the other end, 150 will go to 17, 190, 210, and keep on going.

EDIT: Please let me know if I got any of it wrong.

Thanks,

Hi

@ peter

. . . . Cleese, Jones, Palin, et al. It was a sketch about a quiz show . . . .

Dooooh - I should have remembered that - being a big fan of Monty Python and having all the series and films on DVD.

It was the Monty Python Communist Quiz sketch ( 2 mins in) - I think what threw me was 'Michael'.

Probably tie to look for Prickly Norman again !

Thanks

John EB

Dooooh - I should have remembered that

So should I have! I got 2 sketches mixed up. The Michael bit was with a little old lady in a quiz called "Spot the brain cell" but it's been a while and I think I only have an LP of Python's.

Looking at the clip John has embedded - your lounge suite sounds much nicer Terry, and thanks for your wonderful screenshots of our "Method". You guys do that so well.

John CB thanks for the extra detailed observations.

In your first video with the disappearing KF's I presume you realise that in the Rt click dropdown of the effect if you tick "Combine effects curve with object length it will automatically time compress the effect to fit the shortened clip?

In the Compress effect in the second clip it is a bit confusing that something that is reducing suddenly starts increasing when it hits the middle or null effect point in fact it makes you wonder why compressing the effect is moving the KFs at the No Effect setting at all, as the object of Compress effect should be to make the curve flatter, not move everything, which should be achieved with the Move Effect box. I suppose it shows that the editor is not custom tailored to every type of effect.

Peter 

@Scenestealer

I read about the Combine.... option while reading up on how the curve effects worked, fully intended to try it, then forgot and did the video. What I think that I remembered was that saving the effect or the effects curve (still wondering about those) would do this when loaded on an object of a different duration.

I will revamp the tutorial to cover this. In my testing of the Combine..., sometimes I still lose a kf. Anyway, I will note this option and that if one wants to change the duration of the curve, it can be done without changing the duration of the clip by using the Effects curve method. And if one wants to move the curve along the timeline of a clip, it can also be done by the Effects curve method.

Thanks for pointing that out.

As for the nodes moving up and down, I agree. The program knows where the default is and pressing in the - button should not pass over the neutral axis and, ideally, should stop there despite the value. The same should apply when a limit is reached, but it is probably too difficult to program.

I'm temporarily suffering from OCED (Obsessive Curve Editing Disorder). But I'll just summarise the practical applications that prompted me to start this thread. There are actually very few, because they're all concerned with my narrow focus on maps and tracks. So they don't begin to exploit the full potential of this flexible (but non-intuitive and quirky) tool. I'm looking forward to hearing of more practical applications.

1. With an animated symbol moving from start to end of a twisty track (using maybe 20 to 100 KFs), change the size of the symbol. (Current best solution for me, my macro.)

2. Spread the same set of KFs throughout a longer or shorter duration, speeding or slowing the animation. Believe I can now do that but have yet to do so post-OCED.

3. As #2 but distributing the KFs evenly instead of preserving their relative positions. This would be useful to improve the smoothness of the animation, removing the inconsistent speeds due to my placement errors. I tried writing a macro for this a year or two ago but it proved unreliable and I gave up. Post-OCED I'll look at it in the Curve editor, but not optimistic.

4. With an animated non-symmetrical symbol moving from start to end of a linear track, at the end point rotate the symbol about its Y axis in about 0.5 sec and then automatically insert KFs representing the return track. Here's an example:

I did that manually but now confident I can do this in future with the curve editor, copy/pasting the outward set after the rotation and then using Invert.

Hi Terry,

That is too ambitious for me, so I use Vasco da Gama and let it figure out the keyframes. I did learn some new things that will come in useful, and I have to keep at it until I am comfortable. I'll file this in active memory with the other new tools that I have learned recently.

I had a lot of trouble at first understanding the Object Editor, and now that I understand it, I am using it more and more. It was quite simple, it just looked daunting. I can now visualize it in my head - Fade-in/-out, Slide video within the window duration, Move the clip left and right, Move clip ends. I have almost finished the tutorial. Next is a full understanding or the Edit Trimmer (transitions). These tools are great to have available, but they first have to be learned thoroughly, I believe, in order to be useful.

I often have to move sets of key frames along the timeline. The curve editor makes this simple; wish I had known about it long ago.

This exercise also prompted me to save effects more. I would always do one and then copy it, do it again in the next project, etc., always having Save in the back of my head but rarely doing it. Because I was going over and over the Curve editor in several sessions with the same effects, it was easy to just load the effect with the key frames each time, copy it to memory and paste or reload every time that I had to reset the effect. Now I have to come up with a documentation system to remember what those cryptically-named saved effects do and when and how to use them.

Looking at your video, I see that the noclaF letoH is in a lovely setting.