I have made a plain black png file at the exact dimension of my project file. The idea is to have something that can provide a drop shadow for images and/or videos. So, I blur the box and place it behind the image. (Which by the way, a drop shadow effect would be a great addition to kdenlive). When I go to resize the black png, and place it where I need it, it is always larger than the size I make it. It exceeds the yellow bounding box, which is supposed to be the dimensions of the resized image. See what I mean in my image here:

http://i1017.photobucket.com/albums/af300/preahkumpii/kdenlive_problem.png

Notice the black of the png is outside of the yellow bounding box. This problem affects the pan and zoom effect in more than this way...it makes it nearly unusable. You ask what the funny white line in the black png is? I have no idea...it is one of the odd behavioral things I keep seeing. Any ideas how to fix this?

Adam

This is a bump. I still cannot get Pan and Zoom to work correctly. Any help?

I have noticed that the "on-monitor effects" (where you can adjust the rectangle in the video monitor panel) does not work quite correct with non-square pixels such as 720x480 DV. I think this might have been fixed recently. Also, the program expects still images to have square pixels, so if you create a 720x480 graphic, then it will do some auto-resizing to normalize the 720:480 display aspect ratio of the graphic against the 4:3 display aspect ratio of the project.

Also, there were fixes in MLT's implementation of Pan and Zoom since the last release. What is your version?

I just tested it successfully here with the latest versions in development using a 640x480 black PNG in a DV/DVD NTSC project and with a NTSC DV clip on the lower track.

Also, I do make drop shadows for text in the titler - separate copy of the same text set behind on the z-axis and with blur applied.

No, wait, I do have some funkyness too. When I said the on-monitor effects was working fine, I was in the Composite transition instead of Pan and Zoom. I think part of the problem here is that you are combining Pan and Zoom on top of Composite, which also has a rectangle control. They are not really designed to be used together; you should just use the Composite controls.

Thank you for your help. First, I am using 0.7.9. Here is what I have found: first, I think you are right about using composite transition and pan and zoom together. So, I used just composite transition, but when I resized it to 50% the resizing was based upon the 720x480 DVD dimension, which meant there were small blank spaces since my image was not that dimension. In other words, composite resizes the *video project* dimension, i.e. the screen. On the other hand, pan and zoom works only with the image to which it is applied. So, if I used pan and zoom and resized to 50% *without* a composite transition, the image was resized correctly, without blank spaces because the image is what is being resized and not the screen size for the project. The problem with the latter method is that there seems to then be no way to overlay one image upon another when using pan and zoom effect, at least not without using multiply or some transition like that. I did find a work around though, which was to apply the crop effect to the top image and check "automatic center crop" which makes the image fit the dimensions of the project. Then, apply the composite transition and resize it that way. It works correctly then. Is this problem a genuine bug that needs to be reported?

Adam

I tried your Drop Shadow Workaround, but I can only see the Effect in the Title Editor - not in the Timeline - there it is still the text without the Dropshadow.

Any Ideas? - I'm using Kdenlive 0.9.2 in ubuntu 12.04 64bit here (which is the most unstable environment I ever saw for Kdenlive)

I too experience the bug in kdenlive 0.92 version (with mlt 0.80). As soon as I "switch on" the blur on the second text (to be used as drop down shadow text), you see the blurred drop-down text in the clip gallery, but it is not rendered in the clip or project monitor. Upon rendering to file the blurred drop down text is rendered correctly and the title shows "shadow".
So I can confirm this clip/project monitor behavior

I created a bug ticket for this: http://www.kdenlive.org/mantis/view.php?id=2684