Motion on stills

What it does

Four movements — zoom in, zoom out, pan left, pan right — applied to a still cut into the programme.

The control is disabled on real footage rather than offered and ignored.

The standard behind it

• Movement is only meaningful on a still. A clip already moves, and adding a push to it fights the picture, so the render plane drops it there — and the editor refuses to offer a control that would do nothing.
• The amount is bounded. Past a certain push the image is being cropped rather than moved, and what the creator approved is not what plays.

When to use it

Use it when a scene cuts to a photograph — a listing’s kitchen, a product shot, an archive picture — and a frozen frame under the whole line would read as the video stopping. A push in draws the eye toward the subject, a pull out reveals the setting around it, and a pan carries a wide picture across the frame.

Each still gets one of the four movements, and the amount is capped, so what plays is the picture you approved rather than a crop of it. The still has to be in your library first: upload one, or describe it and let generated pictures make it.

It is for pictures cut into the programme. An image behind the whole programme is a backdrop, and a backdrop does not move. To show only part of a source, use crop and speed instead. Footage never needs this control, which is why the editor does not offer it there.