Free Final Cut Pro plugin: Alex 4D Grow-Shrink effect

This Final Cut Pro X effect animates a change in scale for a clip. It defaults to increasing the size of a clip by 5% over the lifetime of the clip. This kind of ‘creep in’ is useful for adding a little subliminal interest to stills and titles.

You can also choose a centre point for the scaling to happen around. This helps to zoom in on an interviewee, or zoom out from a specific part of the frame.

Here are the controls:

Start Scale and End Scale: The effect defaults to starting at 100% (Start Scale: 0%) and scaling up to 105% (End Scale: 5%). To scale from 110% to 75%, use Start Scale: 10% and End Scale: -25%.

Curvature: the shape of the animation curve. 0% will use the same speed to change scale throughout the clip. 100% will start to scale gradually, then scale at full speed and slow down towards the end of the clip. This simulates the way a camera operator would zoom in or zoom out of a clip.

Start Scaling Late and Start Scaling Early control for how much of the lifespan of the clip the scaling happens.

Centre Point: You can set this using an on-screen control

Using these controls:

The clip will scale from 150% of its normal size down to 50% of its normal size, the 100% curvature means it will start scaling slowly scale quickly and finish scaling slowly. The scaling will start after 10% of the duration of the clip on the timeline and finish at half the duration of the clip. The clip will scale around a point to the left and above the centre point of the clip: