What's the best way to animate a photo on top of a clip?

Question

If any Shake users consistently and easily keyframe-animate either the Move2D node or the Pan node, I would be most grateful to hear how you do it.
I am trying to get a small photograph to move in various places on top of a video clip playing in the background. My simple script is Foreground Photo into a Move2D node (or on another attempt, a Pan node) into an Over node, and the Background clip into the right input of the Over node to create the composite.
Jon Chappell, in answering a previous post, said: "The Move2D node is somewhat buggy when it comes to keyframing. When I can't get keyframes, I do one of two things - click the "key" button next to the parameter I am trying to change (or if it is on, switch it off then on again) or I copy the number in the box, enter a different number into the box, press Enter and then copy the old value back and press Enter. Putting values in the box seems to be more reliable than dragging the on-screen controls. I find that generally it works fine but sometimes issues like this crop up."
A little background: When I worked through the tutorial on Page 113 of the Marco Paolini book (the woman walking in front of the laser beams around the car) the rotoshapes would key-frame animate easily. With the main keyframe button turned on under the viewer, I could move the playhead to a new frame, move the rotoshapes, and a new keyframe would automatically be created at the playhead. It works fine.
With Move2D or Pan, doing the same thing as with rotoshapes, no way. It does not work for me. Sometimes I will get a keyframe and sometimes not. Sometimes the keyframe might provide some movement, or it might be ignored. I've tried clicking the parameter keyframe buttons on and off, but that hasn't worked. A keyframe will show up in the time bar, but it provides no movement.
Jon's suggestion of typing in an X position and a Y position manually DOES seem to work, however. I guess that is the workaround, but it is not workable for my project. I need to move my photograph visually in relation to the clip underneath to get accurate placement. Typing in X and Y coordinates is not intuitive or accurate or fast to place the image.
I'm a new Shake user, so it could easily be operator error. But I've been working on this for a week now and am wondering if there is another way to animate a photo in X and Y coordinates (and also rotation) on top of a background clip. Are there other nodes I am overlooking that might provide keyframe-animation movement? Other methods?
Any advice greatly appreciated,
Devan

Answer 1

I can give you all kinds of workarounds but I think Captain Mench's suggestion is better. That's the kind of thing Motion is much better for. Shake isn't really an animation program.