There are potentially great benefits to developing materials processes that deliberately vary process conditions such as temperature, or flow rates, during the course of the process. Transient processing holds the promise of reducing manufacturing cost and the possibility of producing material systems that would be infeasible to manufacture with steady processes. Once the notion of transient processing is embraced, there is a need and opportunity to develop optimal trajectories through which the process will proceed. In this paper, a stagnation flow dynamic optimization algorithm for two chemical vapor deposition processes is demonstrated. The first example seeks to control film composition during the deposition of yttrium-barium-copper oxide films, in which a wafer temperature transient is imposed. Transient trajectories of precursor flow rates are determined by optimization, so that the correct flux ratios of yttrium, barium, and copper atoms to the surface are maintained. The second example determines trajectories that minimize the cost associated with multiple competing objectives during the deposition of a copper film. Time varying trajectories of copper precursor concentration and the inlet flow velocity are computed so as to minimize a composite cost function that considers precursor utilization and process throughput.