Infinite Zoom

[Lin Evans]

O.K., this is a first attempt at an "infinite zoom" sort of after the effect of Zoomify. Several issues became aparent.

First, we definitely need a precision grid to do this type thing well. It's necessary to match image positions and sizes nearly perfectly from end of slide one to beginning of slide two, etc. Second, we need nearly perfect photography so this first attempt is not "perfect" because I had to quickly take an number of frames to attempt to match a macro I did several months ago. It was not entirely successful, but not bad considering. Third, we need to use consistent zoom proportions from slide to slide. For example, if you allot 30 seconds to each slide, then the percentage of zoom per slide must remain very consistent or there will be issues.

In this sample there are seven slides. It's not feasible to reduce a huge high resolution slide to a small size then zoom in to 100% to achieve this effect because of the too large RAM loading on the video card. In Zoomify, and the new Microsoft HD zoom software, a huge image is broken down into manageable segments which are then switched in and out as the zoom progresses. I attempted to somewhat simulate this by matching 100% end size to reduced start size per slide.

The subject was a tiny wooden carved Kachina doll made by a Native American Artist. The height of the carved portion not counting the tiny wooden base is about one centimeter, so very, very tiny.

The final macro was done by combining nine images each taken with a slightly different focus point for infinite depth of field. Helicon Focus was used to achieve the image used in the last couple frames.

The rest of the photos were taken hand held tonight with three different lenses. 15-30mm, 70-300mm and 80-400mm.

Anyway, here's the first attempt. About 22 meg zipped executable and a bit over 5 minutes of zoom....

6/10/07 - I've modified the program slightly for better registration between transitions and made it visually a little more appealing I think...

Lin

My link to Kachina Zoom

[Ken Cox]

smooth

great detail - thread on right eye - scratch on wifes table

colours dead on

another masterpiece

sure glad you dont have a full time job so that you can show and tell all day:)))))

ken

[Guest Techman1]

Lin,

That was great detail. I counted 16 plys in that Mounty Paper Towel!

The detail in the Kachina doll is amazing considering it is only 1cm tall. Those little feathers on the head too, that must have been a "very small" bird.

Fun to watch and I understand about the precision grid needed, but it works very well the way you put it together.

Nice job and it brings up some other ideas of things to do with PTE.

Take care,

Fred

[Lin Evans]

LOL - one of the benefits of being "seim-retired"... Of course being broke most of the time is the downside - HA!

I'll have to fix those scratches on her table - hope I didn't put them there...

The infinite zoom idea will definitely work. I had to use some fade transitions in the earlier frames because I didn't have any grid precise enough to do perfect matching, but with a perfect match on the end-slide, begin-slide sequence a "quick, no transition" is virtually undetectable as it was in several of the later images where they were large enough that I could more closely (on in some cases perfectly) align slide content position.

I'm satisfied that this is indeed possible and would work to good advantage for things like panoramas where one might want to zoom in very tightly on particular areas. The key is in segmenting the huge files into "byte" sized pieces which can be seamlessly integrated with PTE both on zoom in and zoom out. Perhaps Igor will be able to give us a precise grid with reference numbers for the next release (5.1, etc.) and this will make it much easier to match things up. Of course the photography must be amenable, but that's another issue.

Best regards,

Lin

smooth

great detail - thread on right eye - scratch on wifes table

colours dead on

another masterpiece

sure glad you dont have a full time job so that you can show and tell all day:)))))

ken

[Lin Evans]

Hi Fred,

Thanks! Actually, I would have loved to not have to use some fade transitions in the earlier slide transitions, but I just didn't have anything with sufficient precision to match up the tiny subjects from slide end to next slide beginning. But as I told Ken, I'm satisfied after the test that it's indeed 'possible" to do this type thing. There were a few completely undetectable transitions on some of the later slides which were large enough for me to "fudge" the subject into proper alignment.

Al Robbins earlier produced a very nice grid, but for doing this correctly we need something resident in the program so we don't have to load and unload a PNG grid. I made one earlier as well, but it doesn't have nearly the precision needed.

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

That was great detail. I counted 16 plys in that Mounty Paper Towel!

The detail in the Kachina doll is amazing considering it is only 1cm tall. Those little feathers on the head too, that must have been a "very small" bird.

Fun to watch and I understand about the precision grid needed, but it works very well the way you put it together.

Nice job and it brings up some other ideas of things to do with PTE.

Take care,

Fred

[ADB]

Hi Lin

Why do you need a grid? Can you just not temporarily change the opacity of the first and second images to say 50% and line them up visually then correct them to their correct opacity to achieve the conitinual zoom affect? If I get time I might have a go at a sequence.

Cheers

Andrew

[Lin Evans]

Hi Andrew,

Because they are on different slides and there is no way to display them simultaneously. The ending size for the object on slide one must precisely match the beginning size of the object on slide two. It can't be close but must be absolutely identical or there will be a percepitble "jerk" when the zoom begins on the second slide.

A precision grid is absolutely essential to do this. If one were using the identical image on two slides then it would be easy to match the zoom and pan numbers, or if there were a way to visually do it as you suggest, but having both objects on the same slide defeats the purpose of conservation of video RAM and would be, for all practical purposes the same as just having one huge file.

It's possible to copy slide two as an object on slide one, line them up visually with each set to limited opacity, write down the numbers from the objects and animations blocks for object two, delete object two and copy the numbers from the match into slide two but tha'ts a lot of extra steps and it would be much quicker to have a pop-up grid with very fine lines and reference numbers.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin

Why do you need a grid? Can you just not temporarily change the opacity of the first and second images to say 50% and line them up visually then correct them to their correct opacity to achieve the conitinual zoom affect? If I get time I might have a go at a sequence.

Cheers

Andrew

[alrobin]

Because they are on different slides and there is no way to display them simultaneously. The ending size for the object on slide one must precisely match the beginning size of the object on slide two. It can't be close but must be absolutely identical or there will be a percepitble "jerk" when the zoom begins on the second slide.

Lin,

Another way to accomplish an exact placement might be to set up the two slides and copy the object(s) in question from one slide to the next - that way it(they) will start out in precisely the same position as on the original slide.

[ADB]

I have been experimenting with the endless zoom concept and something that is becoming apparant is that its probably not the lining up of the images that is the biggest problem as I can seem to do this quite easily in O&A but more the lining up of the zoom perspectives that is going to be difficult. With the custom zoom options that are available there doesn't seem to be any way to have an end zoom speed that's anything other than FULL SPEED or TOTAL STOP and this is shown clearly in the graphs of the various zooming options.

It's easiest to explain using those graphs, I think to be able to line up percieved zoom speed from slide to slide or object to object those graphs would need to allow you to start or end at a point other than STOP or FULL SPEED - Maybe if this is possible we should have a new topic in the "improvements" section?

A work around is to play around and switch to the next object/image well before you have gotten to the end of your zoom (or well after the start of the zoom) but this of course means you will have to take more photos to make up your total infinite zoom affect.

Does anyone have any other way of achieving a smooth zoom transition?

[Lin Evans]

Hi Al,

Except there are no "objects" other than the slide itself. The thing I'm trying to line up are better described as a "subject" in photo 2 which is the same subject as in photo 1 but taken from either a different focal length or a different position and reduced in size at the start of the second photo by zooming out. This allows a greater zoom level on photo 2 than on photo 1. This progression then continues until the final slide.

It's easy enough to copy slide two to slide one, set the opacities in such a way as to line them up then write down the pan and zoom numbers for the temporary "object" (slide two) then exit PTE without saving, open the PTE file back up, go to slide two, click on the first keypoint and insert the numbers from the ending keypoint of the temporary slide two which matches the perfect fit from slide one. It's easy, but very time consuming. Having a very precise, thin line grid with numeric references could greatly speed up the process.

The reason for not using the subject matter as a PNG object is that where I'm going with this is for zooming in on panoramas such as the Cliff Palace example posted earlier. This means to perform a really tight zoom, I would create multiple photos of areas of interest using long focal lengths then seamlessly "patch" them in for tight zooms to see ultimate detail, then switch back seamlessly to the panorama when the zoom out reaches the point where the black monitor borders would appear should the zoom out go further.

If you look into Zoomify, you see that what it does is take a giant file and break it down into file segments. This could be 20 or so for a rather small panorama or as many as 5,000 or more for something like the 13 gigapixel pano of Harlem. Then as the viewer zooms in or out, these smaller files are switched in and out to allow an infinite zoom (to the limits of the focal length of the original frames). With Zoomify there is an "out-of-focus" period (very short) where they hide the switch process.

Microsoft has a beta version of a very similar process except it's very smooth without the obvious out-of-focus period. I'm not certain how they do this. Microsoft uses some 1.4 gigabyte examples, but have nothing nearly as impressive in terms of file size as the Harlem example done with Zoomify.

I don't think this would be too difficult to do with PTE. It would take some time to do a really impressive example because of the necessity to match the zoom very carefully. But the nice thing about it is that for the panorama examples there wouldn't be the obvious changes as in my Kachina example because the number of frames used for the panorama would be masking the changes. That is one would already be zoomed in to the 100% point for the original before dropping in a "patch" frame for the increased detail capabilities.

I wasn't able to do an example outside because we have had 100+ mph winds and I couldn't keep the tripod locked down - LOL. Perhaps next week I can get some real samples to work with. It's necessary to very carefully match photos for this so that the perspective doesn't shift which would make it difficult to do. With my kachina samples I had already done a detailed macro several months ago and just did some quick handheld tabletop photos of the same subject from "approximately" the same position to play with. Ultimately its not nearly as accurate as I would like.

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

Another way to accomplish an exact placement might be to set up the two slides and copy the object(s) in question from one slide to the next - that way it(they) will start out in precisely the same position as on the original slide.

[Lin Evans]

At the transition points, the way to avoid this is to use linear zoom and pull the slide two Pull the start point for slide two into the ending point for slide one and with linear the continuation is smooth but you have to also adjust the size for slide two to compensate for the shift point. This leaves only the starting and final slides where you need or might want to use smooth and you get around this issue by duplicating the starting and ending slide. Put duplicate slides for number one and set the smooth on the first and linear on the second so you are continuing your initial zoom into slide two.

I won't be able to post a sample of this tonight but tomorrow I should have, hopefully, a working example. I have to test this with PTE but I've been doing this with PSG for years so I "think" it should be possible with P2E. Of course there is a slight differene in that PSG has transitions which allow this smooth continuation. That is they have a Fade in and a Fade out as separate transitions where PTE has a "Fade-in/Fade out. This "may" present a problem unless the manual adjustment of the smoothing line and timing can compensate. The issue is that we need a continuation in the zoom during the brief transition time between end of zoom and start of zoom for the respective slides. The only way I know to avoid this apparent "jerk" is to begin slide two while slide one is still zooming but to diminish slide one with possibly an opacity shift at the end of its zoom. More testing will be necessary.

Best regards,

Lin

I have been experimenting with the endless zoom concept and something that is becoming apparant is that its probably not the lining up of the images that is the biggest problem as I can seem to do this quite easily in O&A but more the lining up of the zoom perspectives that is going to be difficult. With the custom zoom options that are available there doesn't seem to be any way to have an end zoom speed that's anything other than FULL SPEED or TOTAL STOP and this is shown clearly in the graphs of the various zooming options.

It's easiest to explain using those graphs, I think to be able to line up percieved zoom speed from slide to slide or object to object those graphs would need to allow you to start or end at a point other than STOP or FULL SPEED - Maybe if this is possible we should have a new topic in the "improvements" section?

A work around is to play around and switch to the next object/image well before you have gotten to the end of your zoom (or well after the start of the zoom) but this of course means you will have to take more photos to make up your total infinite zoom affect.

Does anyone have any other way of achieving a smooth zoom transition?

[alrobin]

Except there are no "objects" other than the slide itself. The thing I'm trying to line up are better described as a "subject" in photo 2 which is the same subject as in photo 1 but taken from either a different focal length or a different position and reduced in size at the start of the second photo by zooming out. This allows a greater zoom level on photo 2 than on photo 1. This progression then continues until the final slide.

I understand the problem, but each main image is in fact an object in O&A - I wonder if rearranging each main image in question so that each was an object of an empty frame would make a difference, and make positioning the next one any easier. You could maybe position it on the image before it as an object on that image, and then copy it onto the next image and make it the main image there.

I haven't played around with this, so don't know if this would be of any help in lining up or not. An interesting challenge!

[Lin Evans]

Hi Al,

Indeed - an interesting one! The transition and timings seem to be key, but even with precise settings the effect is only "near" perfect. Something seems to be missing.

Here is the best I could come up with. I used the same image here three times. The smoothness as in a continuous motion was best obtained by using a 1000 (1 second) transition but pulling the ending keypoint on the first slide back to the start of the transition. The second slide starting point was pushed into and slightly past the keypoint end on the timeline for slide one. The "curve" was altered on the non-linear transition smooth to give a six percent rise rather than the twenty percent default and "perspective correction" was set on.

One way of achieving the imperceptible transition from slide to slide is to stop the zoom as with the transition between slides two and three. This is about as good as I've been able to achieve.

One thing which will make doing this on a panorama quite different and "better" I think is that all areas of the pano will be in full depth of field focus. In my Kachina sample, the limited DOF on extreme macros makes the transitions from slide to slide much more obvious as the slides differ greatly depending on whether I was using a wide angle (great DOF) or macro lens. In fact to get "sufficient" DOF on the final slides I had to combine nine different photos into one with each photo having a different area of the Kachina in focus via Helicon Focus.

So, the bottom line is that this technique, in so far as imperceptible changes from slide to slide, is better accomplished where there is infinite DOF. Of course for panoramas which were taken primarily at infinity focus this will present less of a problem.

http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/infinite.zip

Best regards,

Lin

I understand the problem, but each main image is in fact an object in O&A - I wonder if rearranging each main image in question so that each was an object of an empty frame would make a difference, and make positioning the next one any easier. You could maybe position it on the image before it as an object on that image, and then copy it onto the next image and make it the main image there.

I haven't played around with this, so don't know if this would be of any help in lining up or not. An interesting challenge!

[Lin Evans]

Hi Andrew,

Here is the PTE for the best I've been able to achieve using the aforementioned techniques. See my answer to Al for details.

My new link

Best regards.

Lin

I have been experimenting with the endless zoom concept and something that is becoming apparant is that its probably not the lining up of the images that is the biggest problem as I can seem to do this quite easily in O&A but more the lining up of the zoom perspectives that is going to be difficult. With the custom zoom options that are available there doesn't seem to be any way to have an end zoom speed that's anything other than FULL SPEED or TOTAL STOP and this is shown clearly in the graphs of the various zooming options.

It's easiest to explain using those graphs, I think to be able to line up percieved zoom speed from slide to slide or object to object those graphs would need to allow you to start or end at a point other than STOP or FULL SPEED - Maybe if this is possible we should have a new topic in the "improvements" section?

A work around is to play around and switch to the next object/image well before you have gotten to the end of your zoom (or well after the start of the zoom) but this of course means you will have to take more photos to make up your total infinite zoom affect.

Does anyone have any other way of achieving a smooth zoom transition?

[ADB]

Hi Lin

Thanks for posting your latest effort, was quite impressed but agree still not 100% perfect. As you say with unlimited DOF should be closer to perfect. I have been trying to make a similar affect but all on the one slide but to be honest if you have 5 or 6 images it starts to do your head in :-) Separate slides does seem the way to go.

Also completely forgot about playing with Perspective Option.

Cheers

Andrew

[dpearcePNG]

My little attempt at a "super-zoom" effect: this little flower is about 1/4" in diameter. To put it another way, if the first frame is 100%, the final frame is 2200%.

Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?7g1hcsdeclp

I did this very quickly so the transitions may not be perfect.

Basically I set up my camera on a tripod and set it up for fixed aperture (F8) , fixed exposure times (1/13 sec), manual focus and a delayed shutter trip. I then took four shots, two at the extreme of my camera's zoom plus two at arbitrary zoom settings. I then added the four shots to Pictures2EXE from farthest out to closest in (shot1, shot2, shot3 and shot4) and set the "center" for all four shots to the middle of the flower I was to zoom in on.

I then copied shot2 to shot1's frame and set shot2's opacity to 50%. I then added a keypoint for shot1 at the extreme end of it's timeline and zoomed shot1 until it matched shot2 (at 100%). You may have to nudge shot1 side-to-side or top-to-bottom to get shot1 to line up with shot2. Once you are happy that you have matched the shots, delete shot2 from shot1's frame.

Repeat for the remaining three shots.

If you can set your camera for full manual and if your lens is accurate enough, this method will work.

BTW: The camera is a 3.2 megapixel Canon S1 IS which has a 10x optical zoom. The end zooms on each Pictures2EXE frame are 184%, 218%, 209% and 250%.

[ADB]

If someone has space, I could upload it.

Hi Dave

Why don't you try uploading to mediafire?

Cheers

Andrew

[Ken Cox]

MEDIAFIRE

http://www.mediafire.com/

KEN

[dpearcePNG]

Duh! I forgot about Mediafire. Here is the link: http://www.mediafire.com/?7g1hcsdeclp

Enjoy

[ADB]

I think I have cracked this infinite zoom thing. Have a look at the following file on media fire:-

http://www.mediafire.com/?b1i0j1g4wvz

Method:

1. 6 images taken with range of zooms from 400mm down to to about 28mm

2. Each image on separate slide. 20 secs display time and 2 second fade transition set for each.

3. On slide 1 go into O&E

4. Add a key point at very start and select perspective correction and zoom in as far you want to

5. Add a key point at very end and zoom out to full slide

6. Temporarily add image 2 to the O&E window as an independant object.

7. Towards the end of the slide where the 2 sec fade transition starts add a keypoint for image 2, set to perspective correction and opacity to 50%. This will now allow you to line up image 2 to image 1 using pan & zoom

8. On image 2 (still on slide 1) add a keypoint at the end of the slide set to perspective correction and opacity to 50% and align to image 1.

9. Right click image 2 in the O&A and copy then delete the image 2 object.

10. Move to slide 2

11. Delete image 2

12. Right click and paste image 2 you previously copied from slide 1

13. Delete the very first keypoint

14. Slide the second to last keypoint to the start of the slide and change opacity to 100%

15. Slide the last keypoint to the end of the opening transition and set opacity to 100%

16. Now go back to item 5 on this list and do it all over again for subsequent slides.

Looks a lot but pretty quick to do.

Cheers

Andrew

[alrobin]

Andrew,

That's amazing - very smooth, and focussed, too.

[Ken Cox]

SLICK

ken

[Lin Evans]

Hi Andrew,

Looks great! I think that having essentially infinity focus (or at least identical DOF) is definitely key to getting this to work smoothly. That's why on my Kachina example the last three transitions were not detectable while the first five were obvious. By using Helicon Focus to create the large DOF macro and having no distracting visible DOF changes between the last three slides things work much better.

That's a great example. Now if you could get a chance to use a Sigma 300-800m with a 2X teleconverter to go with that 400mm starter imagine how the additional focal length would add to the dynamics - LOL.

Best regards,

Lin

I think I have cracked this infinite zoom thing. Have a look at the following file on media fire:-

http://www.mediafire.com/?b1i0j1g4wvz

Method:

1. 6 images taken with range of zooms from 400mm down to to about 28mm

2. Each image on separate slide. 20 secs display time and 2 second fade transition set for each.

3. On slide 1 go into O&E

4. Add a key point at very start and select perspective correction and zoom in as far you want to

5. Add a key point at very end and zoom out to full slide

6. Temporarily add image 2 to the O&E window as an independant object.

7. Towards the end of the slide where the 2 sec fade transition starts add a keypoint for image 2, set to perspective correction and opacity to 50%. This will now allow you to line up image 2 to image 1 using pan & zoom

8. On image 2 (still on slide 1) add a keypoint at the end of the slide set to perspective correction and opacity to 50% and align to image 1.

9. Right click image 2 in the O&A and copy then delete the image 2 object.

10. Move to slide 2

11. Delete image 2

12. Right click and paste image 2 you previously copied from slide 1

13. Delete the very first keypoint

14. Slide the second to last keypoint to the start of the slide and change opacity to 100%

15. Slide the last keypoint to the end of the opening transition and set opacity to 100%

16. Now go back to item 5 on this list and do it all over again for subsequent slides.

Looks a lot but pretty quick to do.

Cheers

Andrew

[JPD]

I made a lot of time ago a tutorial in french about this subject, even it's in french, maybe you could understand, because there are some screencopy, it's here.

I made also several exemples of the same zoom, but the number of slides (and pictures) are different for the same result, but the total size change. It's here.

To do that, I only use PTE and Paintshop Pro, nothing else. It's a 20:1 ratio zoom.

At this moment there wasn't coorection of perspective, but it's very easy to change them to use this option.

May be that can help you.

Note : A french/english tutorial about the method I use to have 2 differents pictures of the same subjet exactly at the same position. it's here. You just have to add the utilisation of the zoom.

[ADB]

I think that having essentially infinity focus (or at least identical DOF) is definitely key to getting this to work smoothly... By using Helicon Focus to create the large DOF macro and having no distracting visible DOF changes between the last three slides things work much better.

Now if you could get a chance to use a Sigma 300-800m with a 2X teleconverter to go with that 400mm starter imagine how the additional focal length would add to the dynamics - LOL.

Lin

Yes the DOF certain makes this task harder for closer quarters but your Helicon Focus is a brilliant solution, great technique to keep in the back of my find for those future "impossible" shots.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to lug around 300-800mm, I was thinking of going the other way with the infinity zoom sequence and use my 17-35mm but I'm pretty sure the distortion at the lower end might make it tricky to match up smoothly. I wonder how long before someone uses this technique to have a Flawless Google Earth zoom in at the start of their show? I guess though lenses will have nothing to do with it and it will just be about screen dumps.

Cheers

Andrew