Animating a still photo

i am having trouble figuring how to go about animating a still photo. for example.....
how they did it:
http://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2010/05/animating-a-still/
what they did:
http://www.videocopilotstore.net/blogstuff/chopper_w.mov
is there a way to go about achieving this effect in motion? any tips/ideas would be greatly appreciated

There is not a liquify filter in Motion, but there are a variety of ways to animate textures in stills. In the first spot on this reel:
Cause Advertising
the polar bear images were all stills, but I animated the water etc with a number of techniques. You can drive a displace filter with a cloud generator, animate parameters in the indent filter, etc. Even the ocean in the final CG SOS shot (I did not do the CG) was from a still...
Understanding animation techniques and the tools you have to work with is always useful, even if you have a liquify filter...
Patrick

Similar Messages

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

Claymation with still photos

I am looking for help in importing digital still photos from iphoto to imovieHD 6.0.3. I am trying to set a very short play time so that when viewed as a whole the photos become an animation of three clay figures. I've seen it done w/ older versions of imovie. I've selected all of the photos in the clip viewer and shortened the duration via the photo properties panel and this didn't shorten the play time. I've been able to individually click on clips and set the play time to a shorter length for each individual clip but haven't been able to do this for all of the clips at once, and there are hundreds of them at this point. If anybody has any ideas on how to process all of the clips at once I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

Thank you for the advice. I am not sure if I am clearly understanding your directions. I have clicked the media tab and opened the iphoto library that I want to import. I can see all of the thumbnails. I have selected all of the photos and opened the photo settings box. I've unchecked the KB effect and entered the 00:00:00:01 in the duration box. When I click apply my still photos are imported into the timeline with a duration of 0:09:29. When I select all of the photos in the timeline and click <show photo settings> and then set the duration using the slider to 0:03 (which is the shortest amount of time that it is allowing) it imports the photos with a duration of 0:09:29. It looks like I'll have to hand enther the duration into every "clip" in the timeline.

Still photos go bad for no reason

I am working in FCP 6.0.5 on a MacPro computer. I imported five photos into a new project for a 30 sec. commercial. The size of the photos prior to importing are: 88 kb; 196 kb, 2.6 mb , 3.2 mb and 5.1 mg
In my project, I placed one photo (2.6 mb) and dragged it out to 13 seconds duration or so. It starts out beautiful: crisp and clear. Then, after scrubbing through it, seems to become out of focus! It has now happened with each of the photos.
I tried the de-interlace photo (both upper and even) and it only made it worse. In fact, the more I try to fix this issue, the worse the photos seem to get. They seem to degrade more and more (it seems).
Also, I exported via QTime and the resulting file plays poorly. The QT file is as follows:
109 mg
720 x 480
integer: Little Endian
channel count:2
bit rate: 30,311
Thanks for any advice.

I can certainly go into Photoshop and resize the photos,and then re-import, some are vertical and it will be difficult to crop. (Client supplied photos.)
Nevertheless, as I mentioned, I outputted the original file using QT and then played the :30 mov on a TV monitor and the result was equally unclear and out of focus -- same as in the Timeline. Note that in the BROWZER, the STILL pictures are crisp while the STILL pictures in the canvas become unclear.
Also, I did animate the photos (vertical from top to bottom) alternating in the opposite direction for the next photo. However, as I mentioned, the still photos in the canvas appear unclear prior to animating them. When I play the dvd, the straight lines on all the objects that I have animated, look like ants crawling.
~Thanks,
Jeryl

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

Still photo pan

I am trying to create an effect that a still photo is being panned or zoomed any suggestions?
thanks

I do a lot of this and I really prefer to just turn on record animation and change the position and scale at the beginning and end points. If you want the photo to start/stop moving, you should also change the keyframe interpolation for the scale parameter from linear to bezier to match the position parameter, which keyframes as bezier by default. It's quick and easy.
Mark

Time-lapse still photos to IMovie???

Greetings.
I have a Nikon D2x that will shoot time lapse photography. I tried a test of 30 images (one second of video). So I have a folder of JPG images which I then resized to 640x480 at 72dpi.
At first I tried to import these stills into IM just by dragging and dropping my pictures into the clips window to the right of the viewer. It took a while for these to "render" but when they finished, I placed a few of the images in the time line.
I pressed play, thinking that each photo would show for 1/30th of a second, but what happened instead, stayed on the first photo, did a pan out, and then went to the next photo.
My question, (and maybe IMovie is the wrong app for this) is how do you take a sequence of still photos and have them play each for 1/30 or 1/24 of a second so that I can see the out come of my time lapse photography?
Thank you for your help.
Jonathan

how do you take a sequence of still photos and have them play each for 1/30 or 1/24 of a second so that I can see the out come of my time lapse photography?
The easiest is to use QuickTime Pro ($30, from Apple). It lets you import a series of images to a movie, creating just what you want. You can tell it to import the images at 30 frames per second or any duration you want.
It can be done in iMovie too, but there are some hurdles. One is that iMovie lets us import a photo with a duration no shorter than 3 frames per second (shown as 0:00:03).
But there is a back door. See this topic:
http://discussions.apple.com/click.jspa?searchID=-1&messageID=3210397
I pressed play, thinking that each photo would show for 1/30th of a second, but what happened instead, stayed on the first photo, did a pan out, and then went to the next photo.
That happened because the Ken Burns settings in the Photo Settings window were set to zoom in. Turn off the Ken Burns checkbox and import the image as a still instead of an animated video clip.
Karl

I need to add text over a still photo in iMovie. Following directions that always worked before but not this time.

I am running OS 10.6.8, an upgrade that I did after Christmas. A couple of times a year, I need to make a video of my students' performances, and have always been able to add text over the still photos before, using the directions in iMovie "help." However, this time, I am not able to choose a title style; no amount of clicking makes anything show up on the selected still photo. And no amount of trying to choose the font style makes anything show up either.
This is iMovie 09; is it possible that it is not compatible with my OS upgrade?
I've been able to insert still photos into the video footage, but can't add any titles or acknowledgements. Thank you so much for your help! Since I only do this a couple of times a year, it always takes me forever to accomplish, which is why I printed off the Help directions to follow.

just to make thing clear (sorry for sounding impudent!)
you do .... :
create a New Project
make a selection of an Event and add it to the Project
select a title and drag it onto the clip?
iM does work with your OS ...

How can I make a still photo from imovie

How can I make a still photo from imovie?

Let's assume you have iMovie 11 (Version 9). (If you have a different version, let me know. The instructions will be different.)
First, get an app called MPEG Streamclip, which is free. (google MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5)
Open MPEG Streamclip.
In iMovie, select the clip you need. Then, right-click/Reveal in Finder.
Drag this clip into MPEG Streamclip
In MPEG Streamclip, move the playhead to the frame you want.
In MPEG Streamclip, click FILE/EXPORT FRAME.
Choose JPEG, TIFF, or PNG and give it a name.
You can then drag this photo into iPhoto.
I have created a short video Tutorial on how to do this. There is one error in the Tutorial, where it says that Command-click is the same as right-click. I should have said Control-click instead.

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.

Still photos in PRE 12 and output to HD DVD for TV

Hi,
I was using Final Cut Express 4 HD on my old iMac but bought a new late 2013 iMac and learned that FCE will not run on Mavericks (and if you install it you will destroy your OS X plugin manager without any chance to repair it)!
Ok FC Pro X is far way to expensive for me right now, as I just use the app to build nicer photo slide shows. iMove has just a single track and therefore I'm already on the limits. Ok this is where PRE 12 comes into the game and so far I love what I see in the editor. But when it comes to exporting and sharing my work for Full HD TV I'm more than disappointed.
Here is what I use. I exported all my images with 1920x1080 pixels as JPG, max quality with 72dpi and they are looking great on my iMac.
When I import the stills into PRE they are OK when I see them in the editor. I switched off the still optimization feature and set the highest quality to render the preview.
When looking at the clip on my iMac in the editor is ok so far, but at full screen the images are unsharp, blurry and have ghosting and artefacts. Well I could live with that when it would only be the preview but exporting the video a DVD with Full HD the result is as the preview, images are unsharp, blurry showing artefacts and ghosting. And I can't make it better by manipulating the settiings in the DVD dialog. Maybe I'm doing it wrong!?
The only way to make my photos in the video looking tack sharp and brilliant as they are is when I use MPEG format with Full HD settings and look at the video with quick time.
Why don't I get the same result when burning the video on DVD? Any hints?
In regards to the DVD quality I had no problems with FCE 4 HD! And the images (still photos) are the same footage I used to compare the output!
Secondly I just use the PRE 12 trial version, hope that this is not the reason? The annoying "always on" banner saying that it is a trial version is already something I dislike, but what I experience and makes it even worse is that PRE 12 is crashing again and again on different steps I take, sometimes when I change a setting, sometimes when I scrub, sometimes when selecting a fade, sometimes when importing footage and other step....
With all this the disappointing quality on DVD's and the many crashes I can't find a lot of arguments right now to make the trial a full version?!
Cheers and many thanks for help!
Happy New Year!
Yogie

Yogi
First, I want you to assure that you are not bothered by pile ups of preview files, conformed audio, and conformed video files. If these files are in the default location, please check wherever they may be in Premiere Elements 12 Mac (I am strictly an Elements Windows user)....
Adobe Premiere Elements Preview Files Folder....preview files
Media Cache Folder (cfa and pek files)....conformed audio
Media Cache (.mcdb files)....conformed video
Check Edit Menu/Preferences/Scratch Disks to assure that all the scratch disk categories are directed to a hard drive save location with adequate free space to accept them.
Now for the project itself...set the Premiere Elements 12 project preset manually, using
File Menu/New/Project
PAL
DSLR
1080p
DSLR 1080p25
Before you close out of there, make sure that you have a check mark next to "Force Selected Project Setting on This Project". Then, when you enter the Premiere Elements workspace, import your source media into the project with Add Media/Files and Folders/Project Assets.
Render the Timeline and then decide if the image quality is impoved. You might explore applying a very small Sharpen effect to the images. Have the others taken you through the drill of evaluating your computer video card and its driver version?
ATR
Let us determine what we have at this stage and then we can decide if any improvement on the path to PAL DVD-VIDEO Widescreen on DVD disc.
Thank you.
ATR

How can i change an ipad2 video to a still photo?

Hos can I change a ipad video to a still photo?

If they are videos that you've taken with the iPad then there are some apps that claim to be able to do it e.g Video 2 Photo appear to have decent reviews/ratings.

Why can't I split a still photo clip?

Hello...
I am working on a photo montage using imovie. There are also video clips added into the project as well.
I can split a video clip. No problem.
But when I go to split a still photo in the project that is from iphoto, instead of splitting the clip, it DUPLICATES the entire clip and adds it after the clip that I was trying to split.
It is necessary that I be able to split clips to the beat of the music. And for some reason I can't split still photos.
What am I doing wrong?

Have you considered using the Beat Marker feature? It is much faster.
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/imovie_09_stone.html#markers
Here is a good example.

The editable rectangles of my still photos in the composition panel suddenly stopped showing up.

Hi There, Adobe Community!
I am relatively new to After Effects CC and am using it to create a stop motion film with a large amount of photos.
Usually, when importing the individual images into my composition panel, a sequence of editable rectangles appears in the compostition panel allowing me to edit the frame length of the still photos.
After around 950 imported images, the little rectangles suddenly stopped showing up. But when looking at a preview of the project, it's as if the photos are in there, in the sequence they should be. I'm just unable to edit them like the previous ones with recangles showing.
I probably am not describing this too well, so here is a screen shot which hopefully makes my problem somewhat more clear. The area of issue is where you see the descending sequence of boxes in the comp panel. The red tracking bar is there to show that there are still photos continuing the sequence, I just can't see the boxes for em..
thank you so much for any help in the matter!

So I guess you are talking about the layers in the timeline go missing, not the handles in the Comp Window.
I think you have run into a display bug. Try selecting the top hundred or so layers and pre-compose them. If the missing layers appear then that's the problem. I have had it happen a couple of times before in previous versions of AE..
Here's a workflow hint for you, break your comps up into short sequences instead of trying to do a 4 or 5 minute piece with 900 layers in a single comp. You'll find editing and changing a lot easier.
I would also pre-mix your music. AE is a really terrible music mixer....

Still Photo Aspect Ratio Confusion

Apologize for asking a question on this topic as I have been through the forum and realize the topic of aspect ratio comes up often. I have not however seen this question answered. Quick background:
-Working with HD Video footage imported as SD as I am burning non-HD dvd's and I have heard the conversion in IDVD and Toast from HD is not great;
-Using photos imported from Aperture in FCE;
-Sequence is NTSC anamorphic as I want 16:9 but without HD;
My question is about the aspect ratio of still photos when I bring them into the timeline. I have experimented with saving photos in different aspect ratios: 853x480 and 720x480. When I import into FCE the 853 shows a square pixel and the 720 shows a NTSC pixel. From what I have read this is due to the way FCE interprets the aspect ratio and assigns an pixel aspect. When I view each in the viewer they both look correct when I click the corresponding pixel aspect from the top of the viewer. It is when I move these to the timeline that I get confused. The 853 gets an adjustment of 18.52 and the 720 gets an adjustment of 33.33. What do these adjustments actually represent? Is it a percentage, a number of pixels, something else? When I read about it in the Manual it seems to state that FCE adjusts for the difference between the still and sequence, but then why does it adjust the 720 since it has the same pixel aspect as the sequence? I then tried changing the Pixel aspect of the 853 in the browser to NTSC and moving it to the timeline. I get the same 33.33 adjustment. The 33.33 does not look correct in either of them, but when I change it to 18.52 it looks correct (with the pixel aspect at square, with it not checked it looks "skinny" or squished).
Only thing I can think is that it has something to do with the anamorphic adjustment and the squeezing that goes on with it as 18.52 as 853 (widescreen) is 18.47 percent wider the 720.
At this point I am really not sure how these will display when I make a dvd and display on a widescreen tv. I would prefer not to do this by guessing or looking at the picture, but instead by understanding what FCE is doing and making sure I have the settings and adjustments correct.
Sorry for the long message, but would really appreciate any advice

Michael,
sorry to disagree, but for sure I was not clear, and the topic is quite complex. So I decided to provide an overview (as much as I can...) of the various combinations of clips inserted into various sequences with all settings - possibly on my web site (I'm afraid other posters are getting bored about all this math).
But since this is taking quite a bit of time, let me just tell you now where I disagree about your findings. When I'll have my overview completed I hope that will better explain what I mean.
_Your point 1_.
I'm pretty sure you (unwillingly) are importing your 16:9 square pixel NTSC clip into a +4:3 CCIR pixel NTSC sequence+ (not your original 16:9 anamorphic NTSC sequence). Please check your sequence settings by selecting the sequence in the browser in list view and reading the Frame Size, Pixel Aspect, and Anamorphic fields.
a. If your sequence is in fact +4:3 CCIR pixel NTSC sequence+, by applying the formulas you get:
- PARclip for +16:9 square pixel NTSC+ clip = 853/853 = 1 (as for any square pixel clip)
- but PARseq is not 1 (as you write) but 640/720 (square/actual pixels) = 0,8888
- Adjust = PARseq/PARclip = 0,8888/1 = 0,8888.
- Since Adjust is <1 Motion Aspect Ratio = - 100* (1/0,8888 -1) = -12,5 as you experienced on FCE. BTW this means that the imported clip has to be squeezed vertically by 12,5% (as opposite of horizontally).
b. If your sequence instead really is +16:9 anamorphic NTSC+ as you seem to imply, then 18,52 is correct as you confirm yourself with "Agree that in the four cases you list it agrees...": it is in fact the 2nd case in my 4 cases list.
_Your point 2_.
Here I suppose the sequence is +16:9 CCIR pixel NTSC+ which has PARseq = 853/720 = 1,1852.
But I'm not clear what you mean by "720/640 NTSC clip". My guess is that you mean a +4:3 CCIR pixel NTSC+ clip,
then PARclip = 640/720 (square/actual pixels) = 0,8888
then Adjust = PARseq/PARclip = 1,1852/0,8888 = 1,3333 and Motion Aspect Ratio = 100*(1,3333 - 1) = 33,33 as you experienced
_Adjust formula_.
I think this formula in your earlier message is incorrect: Aspect Ratio (in Motion/Distort) = - 100 * (1/Adjust-1) if Adjust ≤ 1; seems like the formula: Aspect Ratio (in Motion/Distort) = 100 * (Adjust-1) if Adjust ≥ 1 works at all times including <1 as follows 100*(.875-1)=-12.5.</div>
This not true (well it is true only for Adjust = 1...). As an example if Adjust = 0,8888 then 100*(0,5-1) = -11,12 (wrong value for this pixel adjustment), while -100*(1/0,8888-1) = -12,51 which is the correct vertical squeeze !!
Why 2 different formulas are needed ? because when Adjust is >1 a +horizontal squeeze+ by Adjust is necessary to fix the pixel aspect ratio misalignement, when Adjust is <1 a +vertical squeeze+ is necessary by 1/Adjust... (figures will help as soon as they are ready for... publishing).
I'm sorry these posts are so long, I try to make them as clear as possible, but the topic is a bit messy and, even if only fractions are involved in this math, their actual meaning is not always intuitive...I'd really appreciate any comment also by more experienced users of FCE/FCP...
Thanks
Piero

Animating a still photo

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