Ease In or Smooth

Kind of a rudimentary question here so thanks for the patients on this topic-

Why is it that when I am moving a still image (scale and center) and add Ease In/out in the canvas or Smooth in the motion tab that sometimes it slows so nicely to a stop while other times it does a little curve at the end? And sometimes it still kinda "bangs" to a stop?? And no matter how much I zoom in and try to straighten that dang bezier curve by hand and eye it just doesn't play nicely?

Always wondered about this ....

Thanks!

Troy

FCP 7
OSX 10.6.8

It does the wacky curving trick when you are altering the end position of the center of the frame. If you do a simple zoom in or out, it does not curve.

I know what you mean about the ungraceful stop and start. Clunk. And you've discovered the smoothing thing. That's it. FCP has many fine features, but that is not one of them.

If you have the strength to crack open MOTION (the program) you will find that it's surprisingly easy to do beautiful rostrum camera moves - and you can use the "roundtripping" thing which helps.

But I agree. It's a pain. There's no cure.

There is a nice little plug in which is free from FX Factory. It's called "PAN AND ZOOM". You can use it within FCP, avoiding the trip to MOTION.

Best,

Harry.

Thanks Harry- a million.
I do use Motion and round trip it ... but the multiple layers of keyframes sometimes get me whereby in FCP I have a full understanding ...
Funnily enough I was messing around with Pan and Zoom today. Normally I can figure a filter out without going to the "help" or instructions on it but that one, after a first attempt, has a little different flavor to the controls for me. Which do you find better - Motion or Pan and Zoom in your experience? Clearly there is more ultimate control in Motion (I would guess) but it would save the round trip and I am simply trying to pan and zoom and come to a nice smooth (and straight) stop.

Thanks again

I have now started to use MOTION, after owning it for years I finally was forced to learn it for a job a couple of months ago. It wasn't too bad to get the basics down and it was fun learning how to give people two noses and so on.

So, if you can be bothered, I would vote for MOTION, simply because it may lead you to other cool stuff that can't be done in FCP.

Best

Harry.

I use Motion for all of my text, lower thirds, titles and motion graphics. It is also great to take the templates and start messing with them. You can really make them unique with a little futzing. Not an expert at it but have been using it a lot for the last couple years. But when I get into the keyframe layers my eyes start to roll back in my head haha

Graeme Nattress calls that phenomenon "the evil snake of doom." It's an apt description, and Harry's story about how it comes about is right on. Every now and then, I find that the effect adds some unexpected interest to the shot, but usually it's just a pain in the neck. And I've found that painstaking work with the handles to try to fix it is merely pain, no joy. It's off to Motion for me as well.