I’m a Shotcut nubie so likely am not doing something correctly, much less the optimal way. I often need to shoot subjects like RC Planes flying far away, or Soccer Kids running way down the field, and I can’t always adjust the optical zoom in the camera at the source beforehand… So I want to zoom-in at times while editing in Post… But here’s what I’ve noticed a every time I have tried to zoom in on clips with Shotcut:
As I start off in full frame and with a White Square icon set instead of the Toggle Zoom Magnifier … I believe the zoom level is 100%, and when I magnify to say 200% it really helps and looks great and all is well…
But then when I try to return back to a normal full frame 100%? zoom level, and set it again back to 100%… or I try to set the White Block icon ON again, the zoom level of displayed project content is no where near where I started…it’s shrunk and there’s often a set of gray bars all around the image… fortunately I don’t see these bars in the exported /rendered video but do want to know how while I’m editing, how to manage zooming in and back out to a 100% zoom image size correctly… is there a simple tip or tutorial; on this zooming topic?
I presume you’re talking about the zoom button underneath the source player. When you open a video clip in the source player the zoom is set to “Fit” (not 100%), which means it will either fill the whole width of the player (grey above and below), or the whole height (Grey on both sides), or in the rare case that your player window is the same aspect ratio as your video it will fill the whole player window (no grey at all).
When you choose anything other than “Fit” it will use the number of pixels calculated by the width and or height multiplied by the percentage , so 10% of a 1280pixel width will be 128 pixels and you’ll get grey all around your video in the player; 200% will use 2560 pixels and hence you will get it zoomed and use the whole player window (no grey at all). If you then go to 100% you will get 1280 pixels, which is almost certainly not the size of your source player window. To fill the source window a much as possible you have to use the option “Fit”, which is what it was when you opened the video.
Zooming in the player has no effect on your exported video. It is a tool to help you when editing. If you really want to zoom in and have it show on the exported video you have to keyframe the Size-Position-Rotate filter.
Gosh, this is great insight… I’ve been working under the impression that the Zoom FIT and its Magnifier settings would directly impact the exported video as well as the Player’s display of it … But this reply ( which sadly I only understand a subset of…) tells me two key things… 1.) Zoom is for the Player display and 2.) I actually need to use the " keyframe the Size-Position-Rotate filter."
