Pan and Zoom, a.k.a the "Ken Burns" effect, is an animated style where slideshow content slowly moves and upscales/downscales. SlideShowPro's pan and zoom implementation comes with a number of customizable parameters, plus a few usability limitations. We'll discuss them all here.
In the PAN ZOOM section of the Component Inspector panel are four parameters.
Pan Zoom turns the effect on and off for all albums in your slideshow.
Direction controls whether content is upscaled, downscaled, or both when animating. Options include "In" (to scale up), "Out" (to scale down), "In and Out", and "Random" (the default) which picks either "In" or "Out".
Finish controls whether the pan zoom effect completes before the next piece of slideshow content is requested. Keeping this in the default "Off" setting will allow content to animate in a more continual motion.
Scale controls the minimum and maximum scale that is allowed when upscaling and/or downscaling content. By default, it is set to 100 / 120 (AS2) and 1 / 1.2 (AS3). When the degree of scale is calculated by SlideShowPro, it picks two random values between the minimum and maximum Scale value. This allows each pan and zoom effect to appear slightly different (some with pronounced zoom, others barely noticeable) for visual variety.
If you are using SlideShowPro Director 1.3.6 or higher to publish slideshow content, you have the added benefit of focal points. When assigned, SlideShowPro will maintain that area as part of the pan zoom effect. This way the subject doesn't move out of the frame (and an empty area is zoomed in, for example). SlideShowPro Director will also publish images that factor in the maximum Scale parameter value described above (for optimum image quality).
While pan and zoom will work with any CONTENT/Scale setting, it is recommended that you use either "Crop to Fit" or "Crop to Fit All." This way your slideshow content fills the Content Area frame for a more natural appearance.
Pan and zoom also works with any TRANSITIONS/Appearance setting, except for "Push". The "Push" transition completely conflicts with pan and zoom and should not be used.
Another setting that may cause issues is the OPTIONS/Smoothing parameter. This parameter is set to "On" by default, and should always be used with pan and zoom so your images look better when scaled. This setting can however cause a security sandbox problem if you are loading slideshow content from a domain that is different than the one where your SWF is embedded. You can avoid this security issue by creating a cross domain policy file at the site where content is being requested. See the Can't load XML data from a different domain help document for more information.
