… for Visual Effects

Tip #592: Make Zooms More Interesting

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

The Anchor Point affects both scale and rotation effects.

All of us a familiar with how scaling works: as you scale an image it gets larger or smaller. But, there’s a little known setting you can tweak that will make your zooms or rotations much more interesting.

The Anchor Point, which exists in both Premiere and Final Cut, is the point in an image which determines the center of rotation and/or scaling.

By default, both programs put the Anchor Point in the center of the frame. But, you can modify the point, which changes how an image rotates and/or scales.

• To adjust this in Premiere (screen shot) select a clip, in Effects Control click the word “Motion” to enable on-screen controls, then slide the circle. (See screen shot.)
• To adjust the anchor point in Final Cut, select a clip and go to Transform in the Video Inspector.