Creating an effects preset

Question

So, I saw in a thread somewhere recently (though I don't remember now where) that someone mentioned having created an effects preset with the motion effect to easily do the "Ken Burns" effect on a collection of still pictures to make a nice slideshow.
Though I far prefer working with video, I often have to work with collections of still images, and it's horribly time consuming to apply keyframes to each picture to create that effect on a slideshow, especially when I'm working with 50+ images. I've even cheated and gone the easy route by automating them in PPT and then converting that PPT to an AVI (though I hate doing that).
I'm sure I could figure it out, but wondered if someone could edumacate me on how to create that preset to automatically apply the "burns" effect to my timeline of stills?

Answer 1

Dave,
For me, that "magical plug-in" would need some pretty sophisticated AI (not Adobe Illustrator here), as it would have to be able to decide exactly what my intended subject was, and then create the Zoom/Pan to highlight/focus on that subject.
Let's just take a group graduation shot, as a for instance. How would the plug-in know that my subject was the third from the right in the second row? When doing similar, long, long before digital days, and actually before Ken Burns, we had to do this for about 100 historical still images, some from the US Civil War. In some, we would Zoom and Pan to maybe a nurse in a MASH tent, administering care. In another, it would be a Pan over the carnage on the battlefield, pausing on the faces. One image was of the old hospital/nursing school building, and we Zoomed and Panned to the Catholic cross over one of the doors.
If the subject is always shot, bullseye style, and is always in the very center of the image, things are much easier, but let us hope that they are NOT shot with that framing.
PrE has a Random Pan & Zoom Preset, and it also will throw in Random Transitions, IIRC. Trouble is still "what is the subject of that image?" The Random Pan & Zoom might end up going to the subject's little dog, rather than the subject. That might be OK, if Spot is being featured at that point. OTOH, it might end up on the subject's foot. Is that what we really want there.
Guess that it's because I come to Video, after many decades doing stills, but I want total, and unique control, based on MY idea of what the real subject is. Manual Keyframing gets me what I need. Now, if the Durations are the same, or close, I might well do the Copy and Paste Attributes to get the mechanics set up, but then will go, image by image, and adjust everything to suit.
Good luck. Maybe with better speech recognition in software, we can one day let our eyes direct the Pan & Zooms, just by focusing on the subject. Just don't look across the edit suite at the cat - no telling what the software would do...
Hunt