Making Ken Burns Slideshows that fit screen

I like the Ken Burns effect, and I've used it on my first three Slideshows; however, I need some tips on making the images fit the screen. Most of the time, there is no problem, but with too many images, the person's face is scanted, and that's the most important part. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against knees, hips and laps, it's just that I want the viewer to see the FACE. Also, sometimes the image has writing that is important--to me but not to the Ken Burns effect. How can I limit or focus the effect so that things I consider to be important are not negected. I might add that I now remember that I didn't use the effect on my third Slideshow because of the problems I've outlined.

In the  Settings for the Ken Burns slideshow you can choose a start and end point for the effect - in other words decide where is pans from and to.
But that said, it's pretty basic. Other apps have more fine control and might be worth checking out.
Alternatives to iPhoto's slideshow include:
iMovie, on every Mac sold.
Others, in order of price: PhotoPresenter  $29
PhotoToMovie  $49.95
PulpMotion  $129
FotoMagico $29 (Home version) ($149 Pro version, which includes PhotoPresenter)
Final Cut Pro X $299
It's difficult to compare these apps. They have differences in capability - some are driven off templates. some aren't. Some have a wider variety of transitions. Others will have excellent audio controls. It's worth checking them out to see what meets your needs. However, there is no doubt that Final Cut Pro X is the most capable app of them all. You get what you pay for. 

Similar Messages

  • Ken Burns Slideshow missplaces support files

    Any ideas why the Ken Burns Slideshow extension is placing the framework, images and slideshow folders under C|/Users/Robert/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Dreamweaver CS4/en_US/Configuration/Temp/Assets/eam76D9.tmp/
    And even once I move the support files into my site root and correct the links in the doc's head it still doesn't show in the page.
    First, I would like to know what can be done to fix it and second I would like to know if anyone else experiences this same glitch.  I was thinking of teaching this as an extension to DW  in my classes, but not if it is buggy.
    Thanks

    Alright, I was a bit too eager to test the Ken Burns Slideshow so I had created a new page and hadn't saved it yet when I inserted the slideshow.  That is why the files were misplaced.  Interestingly, even after I saved the file, the support files remained in the wrong place so wouldn't work.  All I had to do was create a new page, save it and THEN insert the slideshow and voila, it worked just fine, inserting the propper support files in the propper place.

  • "Ken Burns" and other photo screen savers scramble my display

    I have a three-display Mac Pro which I have just upgraded to Mavericks.   My rightmost display is a Dell P2012H rotated 90º, and every time a photo-based screen saver activates, that display gets scrambled.  While the screen saver is running it looks like one of those tile-shifting puzzles being randomized, except instead of a single image it's a combination of the desktop and whatever screensaver image was being displayed.  When the screensaver deactivates, the display stays in whatever state it was last in while the screen saver was running, making that display completely useless.  In order to reset it I have to switch resolutions and then switch back.
    If I un-rotate the display, or use a non-photo screen saver (such as Flurry) then everything's fine. 
    It looks like the problem may be display-driver specific, as I've tried rotating one of my other displays (A Samsung SyncMaster) and that does not experience the same problem.
    This looks like a bug in the screen savers or in the display rotation code.  Anyone else see this?  I can probably live without the photo screen savers, but I'm wondering if I'm going to run into any other screen rotation bugs in Mavericks.

    “...not use Ken Burns with vertically oriented photos...” -- WHAT!?!?!?!?!?! You’re kidding, right?
    ...I’m sorry, but personally, after Apple made the Ken Burn Effect completely USELESS for “portrait” oriented photos, I was both astonished and outraged, and have been hoping for a TRUE fix ever since. Sure, for video, later versions of iMovie do some nice things, but why on earth would Apple all of a sudden have made the Ken Burn Effect viable for only half of my photographs?!? I’ve created several DVD slideshows, most of them containing 80-90% still photos, and I am insulted by the suggestion that “padding” photographs (adding black to the sides of every “portrait” photo), via Automator or not, is the answer -- that is utter ridiculousness -- that feature should never have been removed in the first place!!! (ADD features Apple, don’t REMOVE them!!!) The only thing that would entice me to upgrade to iLife 11 would be having this simple, but to me, absolutely necessary functionality back.
    ...So, can you tell me if the Ken Burns Effect has been fixed in the latest iLife 11 version of iMovie to treat ALL photos equally?

  • Bad quality with ken burns slideshows on DVD

    I've created several movies from still images using iMovie 08 (7.1.2) and its Ken Burns effect. The preview in iMovie looks really great and plays fluid.
    Then I've exported the movie using the checkmark to produce a "large" video file. The result was then selectable in iDVD 08 (7.0.2).
    Now I've made some nice looking menus and linked my movies to the project. The built in project preview of iDVD still showed me good looking results (the resolution was slightly decreased in order to meet DVD specs but that is acceptable).
    But after burning the project to a DVD (or exporting it to an image file or VIDEO_TS folder) the quality went absolutely terrible! There are huge compression artifacts on some regions and all imported iMovie clips are studdering very heavily. Especially fast Ken Burns pannings suffer from a bad encoding quality.
    It's driving me mad because those problems only appear on that part of the DVD I've created using iMovie. The (animated) menus and imported camcorder clips are playing fine in a good quality.
    I've double checked the export results from iMovie (playing the produced m4v file using Quicktime and VLC) and they are absolutely fine...
    Is there anything I'm missing?
    The iDVD project settings are PAL, 4:3 aspect ratio and professional quality (even tried high quality and best performance at no luck). The entire project length is only ~20min...
    Any help would be greatly appreciated

    Okay, you are absolutely right. But it's a pity that Apple restricted the encoding engine in such a way. Users might think that a setting which is called "professioal quality" just does it job and encodes the material at this level.
    I understand that a professional application like DVD SP offers a lot more settings for advanced users (without the ease of use when compared to the simple iDVD workflow) but I'm quite sure that it does this job better even with "default" settings.
    For me I'm now doing those things with a 50$ version of TMPGEnc
    Anyway, thanks for your help!

  • Ken Burns slideshow not working in IE6

    Works fine in other browsers tested. Error says "expected
    identifier, string or number" line 39.
    The page I am working on is at
    <www.thishope.org/contactold2.htm>
    Any ideas why it would not work in IE6? It says that it
    should on the extension page.
    For Reference:
    I am working on a mac using OSX 5 and DW cs4. I am testing on
    an old PC with IE6.
    Thanks in advance!

    Hi,
    Here is the fix..
    First change .
    replace first lines upto head tag with the following code
    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <HEAD>
    second change
    <div style="display: block; position: relative; z-index: 0;" id="show1" class="slideshow"><script type="text/javascript">
    // BeginWebWidget Ken_Burns_Slideshow: show1
          window.addEvent('domready', function(){
            var data = {
              'header-photo1.jpg': { caption: 'Volcano Asención in Ometepe, Nicaragua.' },
              'header-photo3.jpg': { caption: 'A Ceibu tree.' },
              'header-photo2.jpg': { caption: 'A Ceibu tree.' } - removed comma here
            var myShow = new Slideshow.KenBurns('show1', data, { controller: true, delay: 5000, duration: 3000, height: 216, hu: 'images/', thumbnails: false, width: 508 });
    Rest of the code on the page remains same

  • Ken Burns incongruity..making it stop.

    I've loaded a few hundred jpegs into an album of iphoto to give a presentation. It isn't slideshow formatted; I want to manually advance the pegs using my Mac remote that came with my computer.
    But when I do that, it appears to be applying a Ken Burnsesque effect to my photos. Not that the individual jpeg is actually moving or zooming. Rather, that some of the static pictures show that effect. One will be closeuped, one will be offcenter cutting off the left side of the picture, etc.
    This is only happening when I use the remote and advance pictures with it. When I view the same pictures directly form the album and use my mouse to advance, they work fine. (And I am viewing with full screen in both cases.).
    Any suggestions as to how I can stop this effect and simply see my pictures in the same size and static format would be much appreciated.

    In the  Settings for the Ken Burns slideshow you can choose a start and end point for the effect - in other words decide where is pans from and to.
    But that said, it's pretty basic. Other apps have more fine control and might be worth checking out.
    Alternatives to iPhoto's slideshow include:
    iMovie, on every Mac sold.
    Others, in order of price: PhotoPresenter  $29
    PhotoToMovie  $49.95
    PulpMotion  $129
    FotoMagico $29 (Home version) ($149 Pro version, which includes PhotoPresenter)
    Final Cut Pro X $299
    It's difficult to compare these apps. They have differences in capability - some are driven off templates. some aren't. Some have a wider variety of transitions. Others will have excellent audio controls. It's worth checking them out to see what meets your needs. However, there is no doubt that Final Cut Pro X is the most capable app of them all. You get what you pay for. 

  • Changing ken burns on only one photo

    Hi all,
    I have a slideshow which I autogenerated the ken burns effect.
    I have one photo that constantly gets clipped and you can't see it.
    How can I turn off the ken burns for that ONE photo....?
    I have searched the forum...I tried the auto kb's in settings then turning on the kb on the bottom of the slideshow then turning off the auto ken burns...but then there is NO ken burns for the whole thing....
    thanks for any leads I thought I was almost done!!!

    I too am having problems. I'm new to Macs - other than a stint with them when I worked for NASA over 20 years ago. I'm trying to do a DVD slide show for some friends. There are about 320 pictures in the show. I have the (default) auto KB effect on and in most cases I can make it work satisfactorily by cropping. I also have the whole show set up so that slides are expanded to fill the screen. But there's one case where there's a tall tower (portrait format for the original photo) and I'd like it to pan from the bottom to the top. According to the help, I should be able to set up the KB effect to pan in this manner by pulling the slide to the bottom and selecting "Start" and then moving to the top and selecting "End."
    When I try to do this, it does some odd things. For example, I set up the Start as I said above and then I move the picture so I'm seeing the top of the tower. But when I click Start, the picture pops back down to the bottom.
    And when I preview the slide, I get varying results, even without changing any of the parameters. In other words, I hit Preview it will scroll from the top down (opposite of what I want) and then after the preview is finished I hit preview again and it starts panning from the middle of the tower upward - without my having changed anything.
    One thing occurred to me - and I haven't tried it, is that perhaps the overall auto KB effect is somehow confusing what I'm trying to do on this particular slide. If that's the case then I guess I'd have to set up individual KB effects for all 320+ slides. That seems a bit of a pain although I guess I could do a select all and then apply it to everything and then go back and "fix" ones individually that don't work as desired.
    Does anyone have any experience with this?
    Thanks,
    Rick

  • Ken Burns and viewing full image

    I am a very new Mac users as well as a new imovie user. I put all of my images on imovie to make a slideshow. I added music to the slideshow from itunes as well. I thought I was doing pretty good When I played the slideshow using the Ken Burns slideshow feature, the whole image was not visible. The image slowly moved on the screen but the whole image was never visible. It generally cut off the image before it was finished showing all of it. I hope this makes sense. How do I get the whole image to appear?
    I did find the crop feature, and the boxes that say Start and End. When I tried this, it just made the image bigger and scanned the photo, never really showing the whole image all at once. I am quite confused.
    Also, when I am finished with this slideshow, what is the easiest way to put it on a DVD as well as on Facebook.
    I would appreciate any help that you can offer me! Thank you!

    “...not use Ken Burns with vertically oriented photos...” -- WHAT!?!?!?!?!?! You’re kidding, right?
    ...I’m sorry, but personally, after Apple made the Ken Burn Effect completely USELESS for “portrait” oriented photos, I was both astonished and outraged, and have been hoping for a TRUE fix ever since. Sure, for video, later versions of iMovie do some nice things, but why on earth would Apple all of a sudden have made the Ken Burn Effect viable for only half of my photographs?!? I’ve created several DVD slideshows, most of them containing 80-90% still photos, and I am insulted by the suggestion that “padding” photographs (adding black to the sides of every “portrait” photo), via Automator or not, is the answer -- that is utter ridiculousness -- that feature should never have been removed in the first place!!! (ADD features Apple, don’t REMOVE them!!!) The only thing that would entice me to upgrade to iLife 11 would be having this simple, but to me, absolutely necessary functionality back.
    ...So, can you tell me if the Ken Burns Effect has been fixed in the latest iLife 11 version of iMovie to treat ALL photos equally?

  • Ken Burns effect

    Under Snow Leopard 10.6.8 I am using iMovie '11 version 9.0.4 (1634).
    Making for the first time a movie out of iPhoto pictures, with lots of effects (transitions, titles, etc.), I experience in the use of the Ken Burns effect that any zooming ('in' as well as 'out'), or panning, constantly generates a kind of 'moiré' artifact: stones, leaves, steps, rooftiles and in general anything that is rather detailed, start to twinkle and flicker. The duration of those scenes varies between 1.14 and 4.00. On extreme shortcuts, this effect is - as seems obvious - rather not seen.
    As the use of the Ken Burns effect in my iMovie project is essential, I love to know how to avoid that detoriation. In iMovie itself it is not too ennoying on my 27" iMac monitor. But on TV, with the DVD burned (iDVD version 7.1.2 - 1158), it is really desastrous to watch... 
    Is upgrading from iMovie to Final Cut a solution?
    Thanks for any help.

    The only other thing you can try is to look at your workflow from iMovie to iDVD. There are two possible paths:
    1. Share > Share to iDVD
    2. Share > Share to Media Browser
    For highest quality the second option is the best. It uses a completely different mechanism than option 1. Believe it or not Option 1 actually transcodes to MPEG 2 directly into the iDVD project. Whereas option 2 converts to H.264 then gets transcoded within iDVD itself.
    Which way did you get your video into iDVD originally? I don't know if changing the path into iDVD will have any effect on your moiré artifacts.

  • Using iMovie 9.0.4 cannot zoom in or out on ken burns effect? Only pan

    When I am in iMovie I am trying to apply a Ken Burns effect to a portrait style photo, I understand the ratio is different so It will not position the entire photo in the screen unless you choose fit. But when I choos fit I cannot apply a ken burns effect. Is there any way to apply the Ken Burns effect to a fit portrait photo?

    You can apply the Ken Burns effect by clicking on "Ken Burns" rather than Fit.
    If you would like the Ken Burns to be able to go beyond the boundaries of the photo so you can zoom more, choose "Allow Black".

  • Always same ken burns effect in imovie HD 6?

    Hi,
    When creating a slideshow in iPhoto, the app appropriately randomizes the speed and direction of the Ken Burns Effect that it applies to the various pics. When adding photos to iMovie '08, it does the same (as far as I can tell).
    But when adding a bunch of photos in iMovie HD 6, it seems to just apply the same exact effect to every photo. Boring. Am I missing something, or is there some clever way to tell it to mix it up a bit? Or am I left to manually go into each photo to adjust the Ken Burns magic? Not something I'd want to do to a couple hundred pictures. Thanks.

    .. ehm? iM is an editor.. any video imported can be edited.. so, if you create your 1.5h slideshow in iPhoto, for sure, you can split that beast into as many parts as you need.. clips are not 'solid'.
    set playhead at wanted position, press simultanously the keys Apple-T.. as spliT ... presto! two clips, allowing inserting a video, another still, whatever..
    Of course, I hadn't thought that far ahead but that should work just fine. Thanks!
    Sort of limits my creativity and options ...
    .. hm.. a machine generated, 'randomly' done KB is no 'creativity', imho; doing it manually is my understanding of 'options' ..
    I've got to disagree on this one. IMHO, applying Ken Burns to a couple hundred photos is exactly what the Mac should be doing for me. Of course, I will need to go and tweak some here and there, but if I was forced to do every one manually, then I think that would be a weakness in the app. Having it take care of lighter fare like that frees time to make more important creative decisions around duration, color, audio, video, etc. Your tips should have me on the way to doing that, so thanks again.

  • Photos get auto-cropped and ken burns. stop it.

    Trying to do a stop motion. don't need the photos to movie. Cant get imovie to stop auto cropping and ken burns-ing the photos on import from iphoto. Would be fine, but i can't bulk adjust them either, tired of going through frame by frame and putting it back to fit. help.

    When you start a new project, or to change a project you are currently working on, go to FILE/PROJECT PROPERTIES, and you can change the default behaviour for initial photo placement from Ken Burns to either FIT or CROP. Crop will make the photo fit the frame exactly by cropping off the top abd bottom. FIT will make the entire photo fit by letterboxing.
    If you make your photos have the same aspect ratio as your project (either 16:9 or 4:3), then FIT and CROP produce the same result, and nothing is lost from the photo.
    The FILE/PROJECT PROPERTIES will only change photos that you add going forward.
    To change a bunch of photos that are already there, change one photo using the Rotate, Crop, Ken Burns Tool. Then, with the photo still selected, EDIT/COPY.
    Now, select all the photos you want to change by holding down the Command Key as you click, so you can select multiple photos.
    Now, click EDIT/PASTE ADJUSTMENTS.../CROP ADJUSTMENTS.

  • Exporting still photos with Ken Burns from iMovie to Keynote

    I am new to the Mac and have no experience of iMovie. I am putting together a slide lecture that uses photos and graphics to promote a coffee-table book on conservation issues. The presentation will use manual advance and will be shown to public audiences on large screens. The quality of the projected image is very important so I will be using a high quality Canon projector with a resolution of 1400x1050.
    Some images are of landscapes and I want to use the Ken Burns effect that is available in iPhoto and iMovie but, for some unknown reason, not in Keynote. I posted this first with the Keynote Discussion Forum and was advised to move the photos from iPhoto to iMovie, apply the Ken Burns effect in iMovie, and then export to Keynote via Quicktime. My question is, if I do this, will my Ken Burns landscapes retain the same size and quality of projected image as the rest of my Keynote presentation? My impression is that using this process I may lose quality, but I hope I'm wrong. Please advise.

    Some background: Importing photos with the Ken Burns checkbox ON causes iMovie to render a video clip from the photo. That's an entirely different process than importing the photo as a "still" image. Unfortunately, Ken Burns and several other rendering routines are vulnerable to factors that sometimes cause them to fail. The disk format can cause failure, third-party software, inadequate video cards and the like. The factors often have nothing to do with iMovie itself.
    The same problems can occur when rendering other kinds of clips too, such as themes and special effects. (Ken Burn gets the bad rep because it's where the problems usually occur for users.)
    Some of the items you listed in your Library/QuickTime folder are third-party products. There may be others too in the other folders mentioned in the link I posted earlier, so be sure to look in those too. And in iMovie plug-in folders.
    Sometimes necessary items are missing that should exist. One I've seen mentioned here occasionally is the QuartzComposer.component, which should reside in your System/Library/QuickTime folder. If it's not there that might cause the problems you see.
    Installing/reinstalling the QuickTime 7.1.6 might help. I've seen reports of problems going away after that update. Repeating the update won't hurt.
    Have you tried creating a new user account and running iMovie as that user? If iMovie runs okay as that user that suggests a software conflict when you are the user. Unfortunately, if the software is installed in places where it applies to all users it will cause problems for the new user too.
    I'd keep trying to find some software component causing trouble for QuickTime/iMovie. It's clear some third-party components have been installed; there might be others. Perhaps stuff related to AVI?
    Karl

  • Ken Burns and rendering

    I've been searching the postings but haven't found anything that quite fits.
    I was having problem with the Ken Burns effect. I updated iMovie hoping that would solve the rendering trouble. Solved that one. Now I have a different one.
    When I imput a photo using Ken Burns effect, the photo renders and immediately after the photo disappears from the line. So I tried imputting without Ken Burns. THat worked OK. Tried then to update it using the Kenburns. That seemed to work. It did the red line thing and the picture stayed there. But when played, the photo was still. Any suggestions?
    Seems like I keep running into trouble, So I have been looking at alternatives. Does anyone have a suggestion on that. I have downloaded the free trial of Photo to Movie and Fotomagico. They don't seem to offer many transitions.
    Thanks to all.

    I have made photo dvd's and have never had a problem with the Ken Burns effect.
    Here is the way I work it:
    I connect my camera via USB to the Mac; a icon appears on the desk top; i drag the photos from the camera to a folder on my computer then drag the icon to the trash to disconnect the camera.
    I open iMovie and drag all the photos into one of the frames. When iMovie has all my photos I save.
    I then drag each photo into the time line as I want them to be viewed.
    I then highlight all the photos and apply the ken burns effect.
    A red line begins to run through all my photos at once. It takes some time for the computer to do the work. (More time for more photos).
    After the effect has been rendered. I save and close iMovie.
    I open iDVD choose a theme then drag my iMovie project into iDVD. (Optional: I add some photos to the theme as I wish and drag an audio file appropriate to the photos to be viewed.)
    I play a small part of the movie to make sure the menues work and all is well.
    I save my iDVD project and push burn DVD.
    POOF done.

  • FCE4 and iDVD Anamorphic Ken Burns

    I created a 60min movie in iMovie8 using three media: 1) NTSC Anamorphic DV from a Panasonic PV-GS80, 2) JPEG 2816x2112 stills from a Panasonic DMC-FX3, and 3) 848x480 motion JPEG video from the DMC-FX3. An iMovie 8 project in 16:9 aspect was burned to DVD by iDVD and viewed on a 16:9 LCD TV with no problems encountered and pretty decent quality.
    However, frustrated by the lack of basic features in iMovie, I purchased FCE4 after speaking with an Apple rep at Best Buy who assured me that it could import iMovie8 projects. Although I was carrying a disc with my iMovie project, I wasn't allowed to verify this in the store. Unfortunately, Apple's claim that iMovie8 projects can be imported into FCE4 is grossly misleading at best. They say "With iMovie ’08, putting together a great movie is as quick as drag and drop. When you want to add professional polish to your project, simply export to Final Cut Express 4 and edit like a pro." In fact, contrary to the FCE4 manual, iMovie8 projects cannot simply be opened: Incompatible files. Apple tech support told me iMovie8 projects must first be exported as XML.
    The truth is that iMovie8 projects must be tediously recreated for FCE4 because it can't use MP3 audio files (must recapture from CD's), it doesn't recognize transitions (must recreate Ken Burns effects from scratch), and DV NTSC video clips are captured by iMovie8 at a mysteriously bloated 6.4 MBps rate rather than the 3.6MBps they should be (must recapture all DV). Apple must retract its claims or fix its products to enable upwards migration.
    Nevertheless, having recreated 10 minutes worth of movie in ten days of experimentation and reading most of FCE's 1152-page manual, I have yet to produce acceptable output from FCE. Besides the frustrating discrepancies between the manual and actual FCE4 operation, my biggest problems have been to maintain the 16:9 aspect in iDVD, and to render still images (with modest Ken Burns motion) with any semblance of quality in the final output.
    The FCE4 project settings are DV-NTSC Anamorphic 48KHz. Anamorphic video from the PV-GS80 is captured at 720x480pix, 29.97fps, DV/DVCPRO NTSC, 3.6MBps, 16-bit audio, NTSC pixels, Ana=Yes, Field=Lower (even). Stills are imported at 2816x2112pix, 29.97fps, Photo-JPEG, Square pix, Ana=No, Field=None. Motion JPEG is captured at 848x480pix, 30fps, Photo-JPEG, 1.6MBps, 8KHz x 8-bit audio, Square pix, Field=None.
    All these media appear correctly in 16:9 aspect within FCE4. However, unlike iMovie8, when FCE4 exports as QTMovie, the movie is not recognized as anamorphic by iDVD, so it is burned in a horizontally compressed 4:3 aspect. Why are there no options or controls when exporting as QTMovie, which seems to be the only way to avoid unnecessary processing and image degradation?
    Experimenting with FCE4's Export Using Quicktime Conversion, I was able to export the movie at 848x480, but at a huge cost in time for unnecessary transcoding and the resultant degradation in image quality.
    Experimenting with the Anamorphicizer third-party software that this BBS recommends to solve the incompatibility between FCE and iDVD, I found that the anamorphic aspect is recognized properly by iDVD, but still images are now unacceptably stretched horizontally. This seems like a poor solution to a simple problem of incompatibility within Apple's own products.
    Most recently I stumbled upon the observation that if a FCE4 sequence begins with a few frames of anamorphic DV from the Panasonic PV-GS80, this sequence can be exported as a QTMovie which iDVD will recognize as anamorphic, resulting in a DVD with the correct aspect. This doesn't always work, e.g. if the audio is removed from those few frames, or if their opacity is set to 0% to hide them. It reminds me of the Auto Conform feature in FCE4, but my Preference/Edit/AutoConform=Ask, and FCE4 has never asked. Furthermore, this works even if AutoConform=Never. Unfortunately, I don't want to start my movie with a DV clip but with a still, and this results in a 4:3 movie in iDVD. Furthermore, this "fix" doesn't seem to stick: after editing, the sequence can revert to 4:3 in iDVD for unknown reasons. I can find no mention of this behavior in the docs, and FCE4 shows no differences in properties between these sequences, so I don't know why it happens. Nevertheless, it seems preferable to Anamorphicizer, because still images are not stretched. Can anyone tell me why this happens so that I can control it predictably?
    My biggest remaining issue is that FCE4 renders still images with Ken Burns slow pans and zooms unacceptably poorly. First, some images but not others seem to have gross interlace distortion throughout the clip, as if the JPEG were interlaced. It seems like this problem develops after editing even for stills that once looked OK. Adding the Deinterlace filter merely softens the distorted images. Oddly enough, adding the Deinterlace filter or the Shift Fields filter and then deselecting it seems to fix the problem. I've tried changing the Field Dominance setting on stills from None, but no help. Since the original JPEG is progressive, this seems like an FCE bug. How can I avoid this distortion in the first place?
    Finally there is the issue that Ken Burns style pans and zooms create unacceptable aliasing and shimmering in the output, even if the motion is minimal. Easing zooms by changing Scale fast at first then slowing down doesn't help. Easing pans by changing in several steps (because the Center parameter can't have Bezier controls) makes the aliasing even more noticeable by changing the rate of shimmering in discrete steps. When still images contain significant detail and linear edges, there seems to be no level of Ken Burns motion that will result in a reasonable image on DVD. Why are these artifacts so much worse than with iMovie?
    As a newcomer to FCE4, I am very disappointed in Apple's failure to ensure a reasonable migration path from iMovie. Perhaps they have forgotten how the basic "bait and switch" strategy is supposed to work! I hope someone here can help more than two hours of hold time with Apple Tech Support helped me. I would be interested in any recommendations for other vendors' products that produce better results with less aggravation. If not, I am about ready to get my money back for FCE4!

    "This will explain what you can do about this..."
    I shouldn't be required to purchase QTPro just to fix the anamorphic bit in the movies exported by FCE, especially when iMovie8 sets the bit properly. Seems like an obvious FCE bug to me. Tom, any thoughts on why a segment with an anamorphic clip first is handled properly?
    "Where are you seeing the image degradation? Are you looking at the output on a video monitor?"
    I'm editing using a 21" ViewSonic LCD monitor, but then I burn DVD's to view on an LCD HDTV. The artifacts are apparent on both displays.
    " Changing anamorphic values after the material has been edited into the sequence will result in image stretching."
    I assume you mean setting the Anamorphic bit on my JPEG stills: I haven't done that. I'm saying that after using Anamorphicizer, some still images were definitely stretched horizontally. I created these by simply dragging a folder of JPEG images to the FCE browser. Other than setting the still duration default, I don't know what else I should do.
    "If you add motion to the images interlacing will be introduced. "
    I understand, but it is much worse on some images than others, so I'm trying to understand how I can minimize the ugliness of aliasing and shimmering. On some still images, FCE seems to me to have started with two mismatched frames, so that very exaggerated aliasing appears consistently throughout the clip, seemingly independent of the motion. I suspect data corruption in FCE, and I remember a warning in the manual about corruption being caused by copying sequences too many times, but can't find it now. Could this be my problem?
    I've also found that even though FCE claims to be a reference editor, not touching the original files, there is a problem with handling portrait versus landscape JPEGS. After importing JPEGs, sometimes the FCE image matches the file in the Finder, and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, I have found that if I rotate the Finder file, Save it, then Rotate it back and Save again, FCE will finally get its version rotated correctly. This never works by only changing the source file one time: I must do it twice.
    "If you're uncomfortable or unhappy with the application you might be better off using another one."
    I am mostly disappointed that FCE seems to be so out of sync with other Apple apps, and perhaps buggier than many. My guess is that iMovie and FCE are on a collision course instead of a rational product relationship. I would be happy for any recommendations, because I feel that the time I've invested in learning to use this seemingly overly embellished software may not have been well spent. On the other hand, if someone can correct my misunderstandings, I will be very grateful.

Maybe you are looking for