Avid Pan Zoom problem

[Matthew]

We have an Avid DVPro system with a Mojo attached.

Using Avidpanzoom for stills manipulation, all goes fine until the editor hits the reverse play button, then the whole system crashes.

Anyone come across this before? Any workaround?

Matthew

[Matthew]

OK, seems that if you import images as JPEGs, the system has to use much more memory than if you import TIFFS or PICTS. This slows the system down seriously. Rendering the effect can also eliminate the bad behaviour.

[Daz]

The answer is...forget the dodgy Avid Pan/Zoom rubbish. I've tried it. It sucks. Go no further than:

http://www.stagetools.com/

You will be amazed!

I recently cut a show with over 150 stills and I couldn't have done it without the digital rostrum.

daz

[JWRL]

I second that Matt. I used Stagetools recently on someone else's machine having used Avid's offering frequently on my own. Chalk and cheese. And you can rotate as well, and it's interpolation is better, and it's CHEAP!

[Matthew]

But the nice thing about avidPanzoom is that it's configured within the timeline, whereas Stagetools is - if I'm not mistaken - operated as a seperate application where you render the move and then insert back into timeline - no?

[JWRL]

No, the plug-in version handles in a similar way to plug-ins such as Boris Fx. You access Stagetools from within the Fx tool.

As with Avid P&Z you directly reference your hi-res source without first importing it as media. The only way that it may differ is keyframes may not track if you trim the length of the effect, but don't quote me on that, because I HAVEN'T tried to do that.

[Daz]

The keyframes don't track. If the clip is lengthened, for example, the Stagetools timeline gets longer at the end. But Stagetools still beats Avid pan/zoom for dead. It's stable, the moves are lovely and you can use very high resolution images - they do need to be uncompressed.

I believe you can also do a sort of z - axis rotate, e.g. for that 'Star Wars' look.