Preliminary
First you have to copy "ExoticPan.vdf" file to the plugins directory under the VirtualDub main directory. That would be a drectory named 'Plugins', 'Plugins32' or 'plugins64'.
VirtualDub has to be restarted before filter is available to use.
On the VirtualDub mainscreen you can press '[control]+F' and then press the 'Add' button, whereby you should see a picture like the one to the left.
Usage
Why this filter?
You can use this filter to rearrange a short presentation or to perform a pan&scan conversion (16:9 -> 4:3) taking care of some sequence where the focus
of the action is gone because in the standard conversion the 4:3 area is fixed in the center.
In this document, the x and y offset for a specified frame is called point.
At least one point is mandatory, which the filter vill create for you at start with poits set to center
Start by defining the new video size in the output w & h size fields, or press one of the 720p/576p/480p/360p buttons in the lover part.
If you activate the Debug checkbox feature, you will be able to see the output frame boxed in the original frame.
With this option you will be able to easly "cut" the image where you want
Offset and frame fields. Each cutpoint is represented with how much the output rectangle center is offset from left and top. You can either give input diretly to the fields or use the w a s d move buttons.
Initially one point is defined, but New and Del buttons can affect this. On the picture the New button is disabled, as current frame already have a point attached. So advance the current frame by the preview pane.
The w a s d buttons moves the point 15 pixels, control decreases this to 5, and shift increases to 45
The w a s d are in a normal gamer layout, unfortunately I have not gotten keyboard interface working yet, but mouse press on w moves pixels up, a moves left, etc
+Jump will add two points, one at this frame, and one at the previous frame. It's intended to use when there is an abrupt change in focus between two frames
+N-1 Copies the one before the most resent (playing forward). It can be used when returning to a central viewport after focus had been diverted to one of the extremes
Inside will make sure the focused frame is kept widthin the input frame. If a frame is outside the input frame, pixels are copied from the neares valid point in the output frame to fill the void
The scrollbar is currently only for display of which point is selected. Intention is to be able step through the point definitions and have the preview follow. Unsure if this is possible with the current plugin API
Tip Some of these output resolution buttons toggle to 4/3 aspect ratio on 2nd press.
Tip The points are treated as the centre of the output, so it's possible to sswitch output resolution with useable results. Another option is to add a resize filter after ExoticPan and set it to zoom out.
Backgroun information
If you use more then one point (which is the whole point of using this filter) the filter work as:1) Before the frame of the first active point the image is cropped using the x,y offset of the first point
2) After the frame of the last active point each image is cropped using the x,y offset by inerpolating the offsets from the two nearest points
3) In the frames beetween first and last active point the x and y offset are setted performing a linear interpolation throught all active points.
You can define up to 100 points, and there is no need for the points to be defined in sequence. The filter will sort the points based on the frame number before use.