I'm struggling to find the right Frei0r plugin / approach to be able to do a keyframed animated crop and pan across a 1080P frame using a 720P zone for rendering out at 720P. Is this possible?

**EDIT**

Seem to have one approach working instead of using a 720P project and trying to find a plugin that lets me place a 720P wireframe over a 1080P video by using the mouse to position it and keyframe that, by using a 1080P and then creating a 720P mask with transparency in Gimp as a guide, composite it over the video strip and use the Pan and Zoom effect to move the video strip up/down/left/right and keyframe that. Then crop at fixed position over the whole video timeline after?

A keyframeable crop would be a lot simpler. :-)

I just did it using Pan and Zoom effect with a 720p project setting. On the first keyframe in Pan and Zoom, set the width and height to 1920x1080. (That width and height is not the output size.) Position it where you want. Add more keyframes and change position as needed by dragging. That is simple.

Sorry must be missing something I can't get it to work like that.

I've followed your instructions, using a 720P project, import my 1920x1080 shots, drop one on the timeline, apply Pan & Zoom and I get a 1280x720 frame of the source video in top left corner a dotted red box of 1920x1080 size and a 1920x1080 yellow box. Moving the yellow box just chops off some of the 1280x720 frame. It gives the opposite of what I'm after. Bug?

Using latest svn from Sunabs PPA.

I made a screencast showing what i think you are asking for:
http://blip.tv/file/get/Dandennedy-keyframedCropAndPanWithin1080Frame220.mp4

Thanks for the screencast, it really helps show what should happen but that's not what I see, I get a 1920x1080 yellow frame and 1280x720 image and a 1920x1080 red box, no image resizing on changes. That was using sunabs svn build about a week old, i know jbm has made changes to the code in the last day or two. Is your screencast from latest svn.

I'll try again this evening, hopefully sunabs PPA has updated recently too.

Nope, somethings obviously wrong with either the build I have or my setup. When I create a 720P project, add 1920x1080 source and add a Pan & Zoom, the effect stack box shows frame size 1920x1080 not 1280x720, the yellow & red boxes are 1920x1080 so if I do a resize to 1280x720 it's a 67%.

**EDIT**

Just tried it with a different 720P project profile and that works as per your screencast.

So what's up with the 25fps 720P profile I wonder? :-)

Thanks, I'll clear out all the old profiles and start fresh.

Ok, it's a bug I think, my 720P 25fps profile is fine.

What happens is that my default project is a 1080P. So starting kdenlive gives a 1080P project, immediately doing New Project and choosing 720P, adding my 1920x1080 source, then Pan & Zoom Effect, the P&Z effect uses the previous project settings ie 1920x1080 as it's 100% frame size rather than 1280x720.

However if I set my default project as a 720P, then do the process above, I get what is in the screencast.

So it's a bug i think, heading for the bug tracker. Dan do you see the same starting with a 1920x1080 project, but immediately closing it and starting with a 720P in the same kdenlive session? Same issue with extract frame option, that also uses wrong resolution in this scenario.

Also if I extract my 720P 'crop' from a 1080 frame and then overlay it in Gimp over the same frame but from a 1080P project, ie the non 'cropped' frame and zoom 400% the quality of the 720P frame is terrible alongside the full 1080P frame. If it was a simple crop the quality would be the same.

So the Pan & Zoom appears not to be doing what I asked in the intial post, which was to do a keyframed 720P crop from a 1080P frame. I'm using the extract frame option to get the images btw.

It doesn't appear that it's actually cropping, its scaling down the 1080 frame automatically on import to fit a 720P project, then I'm having to resize the scaled down source by 150% to get back to where I started at, 1080P, in order to get the framing I'm after at 720P, so scaling a second time, rather than actually cropping.

So it doesn't appear 'that simple'. Going back to original comment, a keyframable crop effect would be good. :-) Might be a good place for me to start coding a plugin. :-)

I think automatic scaling by default is really unhelpful and has the potential to degrade quality without realising, it's also common to use different interpolation methods for downsizing and upscaling, it would be so much simpler to be able to import any mixture of resolution sources into a project where the chosen project resolution just provides a frame in which to position the source media to suit and then previews and renders what is seen in the frame not outside of it, then apply whatever transforms in x & y, cropping, panning, scaling etc as required to the individual sources, they could pass across and outside the project frame rather than been scaled to fit it all the time. Is the term, 'resolution independent'?

> So starting kdenlive gives a 1080P project, immediately doing New Project
> and choosing 720P...

I have seen bugs like this, and I fixed a related bug that affected framerate. I will try to fix this. I found it very annoying.

> zoom 400% the quality of the 720P frame is terrible

The monitors use nearest neighbor scaling for performance. Rendering by default uses bilinear. Bicubic is available at the MLT level, not exposed directly through Kdenlive, but you can add it to a custom render profile with "rescale=bicubic". Please do not try to explain additional, better interpolation options that could be made available. We already know.

> So the Pan & Zoom appears not to be doing what I asked in the intial post,
> which was to do a keyframed 720P crop from a 1080P frame.

Yes, it effectively is.

> It doesn't appear that it's actually cropping, its scaling down the 1080 frame
> automatically on import to fit a 720P project,

That is incorrect. This filter invokes a bypass through that normal path to get the frame at its original resolution.

> a keyframable crop effect would be good

The motion is going to look rough without interpolation, and with interpolation it will be effectively the same as what is available today with Pan and Zoom. You are gravely misunderstanding or somehow misled. I showed you my evidence.

Thanks for the custom render profile hint.

So 'Extract Image' function doesn't bypass the monitors quality then, and process the frame and effects on it at full quality? that's good to know :-). I was using Proxies too at quarter resolution so that might explain things as bit. :-)