Moving the Anchor Point

I have effects for that... I'll bundle them with other effects that can make use of them. This particular Effect has Position, Rotation, Scale, and Anchor Position. The Anchor position is only relevant to Scale and Rotation. This is a great little effect for doing screen callouts when used with an Effects Mask > Shape Mask, especially along the edge of the screen.

Download the AR Transforms Effect here. (It's a free download).

(I borrowed it from another product - the AR stands for Always Reflective. It's also available with a few other products — I believe breaking down effects into smaller pieces so you only use what you need — plus — you can use these on **anything** else [except transitions].)

The Anchor Position has an OSC that defaults to center screen. Just move it where you need. For this example, I'll "callout" the parameter inspector shown in this screen recording so I set the OSC at the top right corner of the area I want to scale:

Add a Shape Mask (available from the top bar of the effect - the rectangle with the circle inside):

Place the shape mask to set the bounds of the fill region:

Scale the section for the callout - the region outside the mask will not change.

Now what's really cool about this is: if you have 2 or more different areas of screen you need to zoom into, you can add that many AR Transforms effects, set up each with their own mask region and control them separately without interfering with the others. No need for a lot of extra blading through or stacking clips and such. And if you need the same setup for multiple cuts, you can copy/paste the multiple setup from one clip to the others, or save the setup as an Effects Preset if you tend to use the same "layout" over and over in different projects.

One thing you **cannot** do with effects like this: move the video offscreen with one effect, then use another effect to try and move it back on. Whatever is offscreen after the execution of one effect is erased and gone forever. What you move "back on" the screen is what is left over.

To make matters a little worse: if the video is not the same aspect as your project, for example, and SD clip in an HD project, moving the clip will cut off where the bounds of the media exists, so, sliding an SD clip any amount from center makes it look like it's disappearing into the edge of the image. To get around this limiitation: create a compound clip and add AR Transforms to the compound. A compound clip will not solve the problem in the previous paragraph. A compound will "conform" an SD clip to your project size, but you cannot "go out of bounds" and expect to recover what left the screen with subsequent "layers" of effects. As long as you move things offscreen then back on within the same effect, you'll be okay.

It's a handy little tool.

Alas, no.

You can use feedback to make a feature request:

Fina Cut Pro->Provide Final Cut Pro Feedback...

What Luis said. Also you can double click in the X, Y boxes and use the scroll on the mouse to realign the anchor point.