Motion unresponsive with many still photos

I've read many posts dealing with Motion 3's slow performance - especially in projects with a lot of elements... but none of them have provided a solution that has worked for me.
I have a project that is made of many still photos in jpeg format. In one scene I've built a 13 x 13 matrix of many still photos (169 total photos). It looks fantastic - too bad I can't manipulate the photos for editing since Motion just chokes on it.
Is there any way I can do something to that scene so I don't have to wait 30 mins for it to load and another 30 mins after a single edit?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Using a replicator was a thought I had initially - but the matrix of photos will be animated in such a way where I would want more control of every single photo going forward in the project. It's sorta like that old iPod/iTunes commercial they released a while back where a tower of album art gets sucked into an iPod (remember that one?).
For this same reason I didn't want to shrink the photos before importing them into Motion - since I would be zooming in and out of certain photos of the matrix and I didn't want to lose image quality.
but perhaps I could shrink them a bit more before importing - I just don't know how much that would help it.
Message was edited by: yeequon

Similar Messages

FCP 7 slow with many stills. rMBP with 16 GB RAM?

I'm editing documentaries that are heavy heavy with stills, and they must be high res. I'm frustrated with my 3 year oldl MBP's sluggishness and looking at getting something new. I am considering the 16 GB rMBP in order to have the high RAM, but will this solve the problem I'm having? I also need to have other things open when I work -- i.e. to search Google for info, to read MAIL, to work on paper cut on WORD. My MBP just can't seem to handle it all. PLUS i am storing everything on hard external drives, so they are also churning (most are firewire 800).
I've read lots of debates about the new MBP and the only real reason I'm considering the retina is the option to get 16 GB RAM, but is there an alternative option to have fast/more capable of handling it all?
I'm not a professional editor/ I'm a producer of oral history based documentaries and it's just simpler to do the edit myself usually, so I'm not very sophisticated about some of the technical aspects of things.
I do very simple things in FCP 7 -- cuts, fades, cross fades. combining interviews with film clips with photos and music. nothing else flashy. Maybe I don't even need to be using FCP???
thanks for the time to listen to my challenges!

More RAM is not going to help you with FCP 7. (FCP X, however, would gladly use as much RAM as you can stuff into the beefiest of workstations.)
I don't own the new MBP, but the people who do (including family members) tell me it is crazy fast. TB is obviously going to be a huge step up in speeds – although selection of drives is limited.
I suspect your current speed issues are related to your stills. Final Cut will gag on a lot of high res images – and those > 4K will sometimes crash it. So if you want a more pleasant editing experience, resize your images to something approximating your sequence size. I routinely size mine in PS to a 1920 preset…except those that I'm going to put pans and zooms on. In the latter case, I might bump it by a factor of 1.5 or 2.0, depending on the move. What I don't do (anymore) is lay a bunch of 18 mpx images on a TL, when I know FCP is just going to discard most of those pixels anyway.
Good luck.
Russ

IMovie with only still photos - huge projection

I am creating an iMovie with nothing but still photographs which will be projected with good equipment for a full school gathering, meaning a pretty large to very large screen - my only experience has been DVD's for regular TV's.
My question is to get the best quality, what is the best format for photos - I did see someone said to take them into iPhoto(?) covert them to TIFF then save them to JPEG/RGB, I retouch all of these in Photoshop and will likely do my resizing and formats there...
So any thoughts on resolution and size? Should it fit a tv ratio? I foget what that is, but it would be nice to see explained by pixel dimensions!
I am a bit confused about the iPhoto or iDVD difference? My other problem is burning the dvd's now - my 17" took a dive and this iBook does not have a superdrive - do the older Lacie's work with DVD's... I am doubting so.
This will be a sorry excuse to break down and buy an intel, I am going through PowerBooks like candy
Thanks tons!

overall pixel size: 740x480 at 72dpi is the smallest size I would personally ever go with. The internal mike in a quiet room (like late at night with the refrigerator and the phone unplugged) is something that I have done under emergency conditions. If you are experimenting you have:
iMovie ... which I have difficulties recording with ... for me it quits too soon...maybe I'm not being loud enough..maybe my movies are too long and I'm running out of ram. I don't know.
QuickTime Pro works pretty good to record sound using your computer's internal mike
Garageband does a pretty good job of processing the voice by way of recording through the internal mike. That's what I've been using nowadays because it sounds so much better than iMovie or QTPro. Then you export it to iTunes then import it into iMovie. Real easy. It's a snap to do. Since you are wanting to record a cassette tape, I'd try all three ways to see if they do the job. If so, good. If not there are other kinds of ways to capture the sound. But then you go to the Garageband threads and see what's what there. One way or another, you'll get it. Maybe not instantly, but you will get it.
Again it's all experimental and how professional you want to be. Recording from you computer is not at all going to give a professional result. Especially of a cassette tape, because it can pick up the sound of the machine playing the tape. But, if you want to make a memory movie, it barely makes do. Making do isn't always the best way to go. But might be the only way you can go because of other limitations...of which I have plenty.
You really, really need to experiment to see how it looks...how it sounds. What works. What does not work. Especially with sound can be a stickler. A plague of a problem even. Even so, I made something not too long ago that I recorded via the computer's internal mike and tried it first in the bathroom...WAY too much sound bouncing off the walls there. The living room was picking up who knows what. But I went into the bedroom and it worked kind of okay in there. But it still didn't sound at all in the least bit professional. Even so, it did work for that particular project. In a quirky weird kind of way that I MADE it work.
Message was edited by: Suz.

How to merge LR catalog 4.4 (empty) with v3 catalog with many 1000 photos

I had to reinstall an OS in my computer due to a virus. As a result LR 3 in no longer installed. I still have the catalog on a backup disk and have just installed and updated to LR 4.4. What is the best way to merge the V3 catalog with V4 and are there any things I should expect or look out for?

If the LR4 catalog is really empty, then you don't need to do a merge. In LR4, select File->Open Catalog and point to the old LR3 catalog, it will be converted to a LR4 catalog.

Acceptable File Size and Resolution for Still Photos in Keyframe Motion

Hello Hello
I know that FCE HD (as other Video Editors), will automatically fit a still photo's size to it's default capability of 720 x 480 Correct?
Well, in regard to making the best possible ZOOMS, and Pans from Still Photos, is it neccessary to re-size all your photos (from an external editor like photoshop), to a specfic size?
According to an older book for FCE, it sez that actually photos re-sized to 720x534 with a resolution of 72 are best. *The proper proportion for NTSC.
And I noticed that when I inserted larger JPG still sizes (like about a meg), on the FCE timline, and when applying Panning, or Zooms, some of the rendered images with motion didn't pan or zoom smoothly.
Is that because those file sizes were TOO large?
Well I have soooo many stills that need to be imported into this particular project that it would be a lot easier for me to just generally reduce these stills (by percentage).
And is the magic resolution amount supposed to be 72?
Because if that's the case I can re-size all my photos to 72, and try to keep the file sizes down to say 300 KB's or so.
Sound like a plan?

Thank you guys
"basically, you should try to make your images large enough so they never have to be scaled beyond 100% in the motion tab in fcp."
Actually as I mentioned some of these file sizes are very large. About 800-900 KB's - and what as a result, what I've noticed is that I actually had to DECREASE the viewing area in both the Browser Window, and the Canvas Winbow just to be able to see the whole image.
Ok - so the 72 DPI is not as important as the dimensions of the photo. But as I said I have soooooo many of these that it would take me forever to manually re-size them all not to mention the fact that re-sizing some of them (odd shapes),would throw the images out of balance.
So again I ask - if there is NO motion applied to the photo, file sizes of about 200 to 350 KB's appear just beautifully ....
BUT
If I need to PAN or ZOOM, is it ok to laod a 1 MEG sized JPG onto the timeline and start working with Keyframe?????
In fact in some cases I'm actually using these larger file JPS's (1 meg or more), so that they TOTALLLY fit the canvas window (cropping them by enlargment)
*With some clipping of the original image of course ...
Why do I do this?
So that you don't see the usual border with horizontal images, or vertical images - know what I mean?
Thanx

Still photo "zoom" through motion

Hi,
I'm trying to create a "memories slideshow" consisting of still photos that zoom in slowly. I'm encountering a couple problems that I'm hoping to get help with:
1) When zooming in by setting keyframes in each clip's motion tab, I find that it's difficult to get each photo to zoom in at the same speed and direction. Is there a shortcut to doing this easily? I guess the effect I'm aiming for is similar to what iPhoto does automatically with an album slideshow, just more controlled. (Is there any way to just do this from iPhoto and adjust the settings for each clip's duration and zoom?)
2) When I zoom in I find that the images become very blurry, although they are less so when viewed in the program I used to scan them (Lexmark Imaging Studio on a PC). I scanned the images at 300 DPI and saved them to JPEG. I realize these settings may not be optimal - what DPI and file format are recommended if I want to zoom in to, say, 5x?
Thanks.

1) When zooming in by setting keyframes in each
clip's motion tab, I find that it's difficult to get
each photo to zoom in at the same speed and
direction. Is there a shortcut to doing this easily?
I guess the effect I'm aiming for is similar to what
iPhoto does automatically with an album slideshow,
just more controlled. (Is there any way to just do
this from iPhoto and adjust the settings for each
clip's duration and zoom?)
Speed of a move is dependent upon the length of of the move. A move set up to do the "same" thing will be faster if there is a shorter duration between the keyframes. if all of you photos are the same size and aspect ratio, set one up to your liking then save that as a Motion Favorite, then you can apply that to them all. And there is no way to take info from iPhoto and adjust in FCP.
2) When I zoom in I find that the images become very
blurry, although they are less so when viewed in the
program I used to scan them (Lexmark Imaging Studio
on a PC). I scanned the images at 300 DPI and saved
them to JPEG. I realize these settings may not be
optimal - what DPI and file format are recommended if
I want to zoom in to, say, 5x?
300dpi is high for video. Video is 72dpi. But a higher dpi scan means you can zoom further in without the image breaking up. If they are blurry... have you rendered the move? They should look better when rendered.
Doing still moves is a difficult task. If you search the forum you will find many topics on the issue that will provide valuable tips.

Making a stop motion movie with stills. Please help!

I have a question for someone really smart:)... I am making a stop motion movie on imac with still photos. when i select a photo from iPhoto, and add it to the imovie project, it is adding multiples of each picture and i have NO idea why. I dont know if i changed a setting somewhere or what. This simple project went from fun to frustrating pretty quick. Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Hi
I would - to test and get project going
• Start a New User account (Apple Menu - down to System preferences / Accounts)
• Log out and into this
• Now test iMovie and see if all is OK
If not - the problem might lay in iPhoto photo-library - To try to mend this - YOU NEED TIMES - lot's of times - did it Yesterday > 8 hours !
When nothing but Mac OS is up and running
• Keep alt+cmd-keys down - During Full Up-Start of iPhoto
• Now You get a Menu
• Select all options
• KEEP Mac connected to Power-Mains as if lap-top battery might not last the full process
• Have a nice day / book or whatever - as this will take long long time !
Yours Bengt W

Can you make still photos have a 3D "look" in Motion 5?

Hello All,
I don't mean 3D like the kind you need to see with blue and red glasses, I mean that technique where you can make different objects in the still photo appear as if the camera is moving passed them.
If this can be done in Motion 5 does anyone here know of a good tutorial?
Thanks for your help.
Mike

Michael Ryan. wrote:
… Can this be used on video? (I have some old film I would like to touch up).…
no, sorry, me lost in translation:
I meant, if you have to do some graphics FOR, not with video (arrows, titles, UFOs, masks), Pixelmator is an excellent tool.
spicing up old film ...
a) it IS old … so, why not keeping it looking 'old'?
b) I was lately allowed to use NEAT Video .... I had to use some badly worse compressed arial TV recordings.avi in a HDef project (LOL!) - and that Neat filter did marvel! it didn't only reduced 'noise', it made it vanish. ok, if you exaggerate, the picture gets a 'flat', posterized look. Neat is actually offering a Home edition for 49$ - that's a snap.
c) usually, if you use M5, you're using FCPX too - its filters and the Color-'board', wisely used, allow to push faded colors and contrasts very easy = I'm no professional color-grader, but the Color Correction tools are dead easy (deeper shadows? 'deepen'/lower low tones. less orange? drag 'pointer' to orange, low that … etc really 'real life logic', not some weird tech-lingo .... )
for beginners like me, this is my source
http://www.colorgradingcentral.com/final-cut-pro-x-color-grading-table-of-conten ts

Still photo scaling and motion

I'm editing a series of still photos and can't figure out how to properly scale the photos and add zooms and other motions. Any advice??

To do this in FCP, place the images in the order you want on the Timeline. Double-click one to load it into the Viewer window. Click on the Motion tab, then use the SCALE and CENTER controls to set the animation you want.
Once you set the initial keyframe for an image, FCP will automatically add new keyframes for each change over the duration of the image. Setting the Canvas window to Image+Wireframe mode will allow you to scale and drag the image with the mouse.
This book may help: http://tinyurl.com/5csyaw
-DH

Applying widescreen matte to still photos in motion

I shot some footage for a documentary using my Canon XL2, 16:9 format. I'm adding some still photos using motion. Is it possible to apply the Widescreen matte effect so the photos match the widescreen look of my footage? I can't figure out how.

Use the Photoshop preset for DV/D1 widescreen as a template and paste your photos into that.
You will need to use Photoshop's Transform controls to frame your photos and have to decide what part of the top and/or bottom gets cropped off.
If you want to zoom or pan, use the original photos in Motion and make sure the photo fills the screen at its smallest size. Again, you will have to sacrifice the top or bottom of the photo to some extent.
If you absolutely must see all of the photo's content, consider using a complimentary background fill, perhaps with some blurring. Place your photo on top and shrink it down to within the safe area.

Can't get still photos that have motion key frames to stop "shaking."

Hi folks,
I am currently trying to make a video comprised soley of still photos for a friend that has recently lost his 16 year old daughter to a tragic accident. I'm trying to get this done by Saturday June 13th. I'm setting motion keyframes throught the viewers "motion" tab and when I play the final result I see in almost every picture popping and shaking while in motion. Am I doing something wrong? Is there a specific way to upload the pics or format them so this doesn't happen? I'm using FCE 4 with an iMac G5 (pre-INTEL). If someone could help me with this I would really be grateful. Thanks again.
Message was edited by: BudweiserDave
Message was edited by: BudweiserDave

Most of these errors are related to trying to view the results on a progressive computer monitor instead of an interlaced tv set.
You could export the whole movie and reimport it as a single item. apply a 2 pixel vertical blur to the whole thing, render, print.
bogiesan

I'm trying to make "Stop motion videos" in Final Cut EXPRESS by using 100's of still photos and setting them to music. They are coming out blurry if viewed larger than 4x6 in size

I'm trying to make "Stop motion videos" in Final Cut EXPRESS by using 100's of still photos and setting them to music. They are coming out blurry if viewed larger than 4x6 in size.
I don't understand why this is happening.

Quick follow up, since I was on my phone earlier and am back to a real keyboard.
To access Easy Setup, hit Control Q.
If you click on the blue discosure triangles, a dropdown menu with about a dozen different presets will be displayed. Select the one you want, (Here, I've selected 720P.)
Whatever you select for a preset will not be applied until you make a new sequence. (I don't like to have sequences with different properties in the same project so I prefer to make a new project if I change the Easy Setup.)
Because photo aspect ratios are different than video, I typically put a solid generator of some compatible color on the first track (v1) and put my photos on the track above (v2). Looks better, IMO, than black bars. There are other creative ways to display them. And of course, you could scale them up to fill the frame…but then you probably would have to re-position them.
Good luck.
Russ

Firefox becomes really slow then eventually unresponsive when loading a page with many hires images. Unsual high memory usage up to 2gigs just for firefox. Was never a problem with v3.6.

When loading a page with many hires images, Firefox becomes really slow and scrolling becomes jumpy then eventually becomes completely unresponsive. Unusual high memory usage of up to 2gigs just for firefox when loading these pages. This was never a problem with v3.6.

I encountered the same type of problem. Firefox running terribly slowly and slowing down my entire machine (Core i5 with 256GB SSD). Searching the forums, I found a couple of things about troubleshooting performance issues, one of which was to use '''hardware acceleration''', that is on by default. It was turned on on my PC, '''so I tried deactivating it, and it worked!'''
So doing the exact opposite as Mozilla support said solved the problem. It is really a pain now to work with Firefox. I'm using it because I have no choice, but I'd recommend IE and Chrome over Firefox... Whatever, the market will decide once Firefox has become to crappy...

Problem exporting Premiere Pro CS5.5 projects with still photos and h264 video

I'm a longtime Final Cut Pro user and evaluating Premiere Pro for my workplace before making the switch. I have been running into several problems when I try to export raw h264 video from a Canon 5D combined with still images on a Macbook Pro. Either I receive an error in Premiere Pro saying, "Error compiling movie. Unknown error." or Adobe Media Encoder appears to continue exporting (the time elapsed bar continues to move) even though the time remaining stays frozen once it hits a photo it doesn't like. It's not always the same photo.
I've spent several days trying to troubleshoot the issue, including batch resizing all photos to 1920 wide (to match the video settings), and it hasn't work. The sequence is currently set to render in ProRes 422. I've also tried HDV 1080p30 and MPEG-4. I cannot find any consistency with the errors. Occasionally an export will work, but every couple still photos will look like green static. I've also tried batch converting the photos in Photoshop to PNG and GIF without any luck. I'd include my default export settings but I've pretty much tried it all. I'm just trying to figure out what's causing the error since the message is very vague.
Couple other notes:
There's plenty hard drive space available for export
I can export the DSLR video (h264, 1080p30) without still photos no problem
I can edit the same still photos and video in Final Cut with no problem
I have the same problem with auto-save on and off
I tried re-installing production premium, deleting the preference files and cleaning the media cache - no luck. I also tried exporting under a different user account and it wouldn't work.
This is driving absolutely crazy. I'm affraid to use PP on deadline because I don't see any issues until it's time to export. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
- McKenna

Thanks Todd. Your questions were actually very helpful. I'm using a Macbook Pro with an Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics card. I'm running OS 10.6.8 and have the latest updates installed.
When I disabled the GPU acceleration, I was able to render and export without a problem. The problem only occured when using the GPU acceleration and mixing h264 with still photos. It also affected both rendered previews and the final export. I'm assuming its a support issue with the graphics cards, but it would be great if you had any other ideas. I appreciate your help.

I still don't totally understand the difference on my iPhone between PhotoStream (with iCloud icon), Photos (the icon) and Albums and Camera Roll (under Photos icon) and and Camera Roll (under Camera icon). I want to delete photos from my iPhone 4.

I don’t understand the difference on my iPhone between PhotoStream (with iCloud icon), Photos (the icon) and Albums and Camera Roll (under Photos icon) and and Camera Roll (under Camera icon). They seem to be more or less the same thing, but deleting photos in one place does not delete them elsewhere.
When I tried to import from my camera to my iMac computer the computer would not recognized 900 of the 920 photos on the camera so I had to (successfully) use the Image Capture application to import them.
I want to delete photos from my iPhone 4 in order to free up storage (I only have 8GB.) But in synching I do not want to delete any images from my iPhoto on my computer.
Is there a way that I can Delete All under Edit in either Photos or Camera on my iPhone and check about 20 ijmages to remain on the iPhone? I could find no command to Select All and then uncheck the 20 photos I want to keep.
I have the 8GB iPhone and the iMac with OS 10.9.2 and iPhoto '09 Version 8.1.2.
Help!

I have Version 6.1.3 because the clogged storage will not allow me to upload Version 7.1. Catch 22. This is basically a storage issue, I believe. I cannot delete enough stuff on my iPhone to allow me to either back up or upload the new OS 7. I am unwilling to pay for more storage in iCloud, so I want to delete stuff I don't need. But I haven't yet figured out how to successfully do that. I synch my phone and computer. I want to delete mail on the Mail app and photos and still keep my photos on my computer on iPhoto, but not on my phone. I seem unable to do that. Any advice?

Motion unresponsive with many still photos

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for