Thank you @john_solo for pointing this out. I was using the handles at first, then I tried typing in values and I got nowhere. Was having a brain fade. Completely overlooked the “distort” setting. Tried it a few minutes ago and it worked great. Added a size and position filter to the clip, set it to distort, typed in 1280 and 720 and it worked perfectly.
Glad to see you are still pursuing this Pull Focus thing. I just tried using Kdenlive and the dual track trick doesn’t seem possible there since Kdenlive only dissolves between tracks. I have always liked the cross-dissolve in Shotcut being on the same track, just like Vegas and Movie Edit Pro does it. Only thing about those programs is - if you change your mind about the cross-dissolve you can simply move the clip back where it was, whereas Shotcut’s only recourse is Ctrl+Z.
As a related note I find it strange that several of us have posted problems with the Video Fade In/Out not always working right and nary a comment from the Devs. And - keyframes were promised by the end of 2017…
I am not a “code head” or developer… There are obvious advantages to having transitions on the same track… Is it possible some of these anomalies we are seeing are due to tinkering with the keyframing, layering, compositing code? Probably just a wild guess on my part. 
-=Ken=-
But you can delete the cross-fade then drag the edge of each clip to reclaim the removed portion.
I would call that the work-around Steve. A good one. But Shotcut ought not have a destructive cross-dissolve.
-=Ken=-
Well I suppose to play the devil’s advocate, creating a cross-fade means Shotcut is in fact creating a separate clip for the duration of the effect.
The is one other way to make a non-destructive gross-fade which is use two tracks and the fade-out on one and fade-in on the other making sure both are set to opacity rather than black… Something I do routinely when I change camera angles.
This is not a work-around, this is standard practice. Same method used in DaVinci Resolve.
Yes, very good. But, now can you do the same technique providing Pull Focus? And would it require four tracks? How about three?
-=Ken=-
I don’t see why not, except preview will turn into a glacier using Shotcut for distorted and blurred background layers. (It shouldn’t, I have 6 cores and 16Gb RAM which runs DaVinci Resolve, so I don’t know what’s happened to Shotcut in recent releases)
Can I use this on Android?