Non-linear Ken Burns effect?

I want to do more interesting Ken Burn effects than the overused linear panning and zooming. How do you animate graceful curves in your motion paths without having to painstakingly add a keyframe for every adjusted angle?

Two corrections to what I said earlier. The Fotomagico card doesn't work with an OLDER Radeon card, but does work with the current one. And, it is a very convenient program for a polished looking slideshow. However, if you'd like to put any custom transitions or time it accurately to the beat of the music, it's difficult to make changes once you've brought it into FCP.
That being said, I figured out how to get a decent Ken Burns effect. Make the photo the duration you'd like. Slice the photo at the desired duration for the pan, then keyframe that portion. Make the ending keyframe points from that section, the starting points for the next one and keyframe the zoom. Breaking it into two clips seems to come out much better.

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I need to do non-constrained crops for Ken Burns effect in photo slide show

I am making photo slide shows in imovie '09. I understand the Ken Burns effect and how to set a start and an end point. I want to use the effect on vertical or portrait mode photos. i would like to have the entire photo displayed in portrait mode and have it zoom in a bit. The problem is The start and end points seem to only be horizontal or landscape mode. I can't ever get the entire image selected. How can I do this?
Thanks,
Tim

You need to add the letterbox (black space) in another application. iMovie's Ken Burns effect will not do it for you. You can do it in Photoshop if you like.
However, there is a way to do it in Automator, and you can do hundreds of vertical photos very quickly. That is the way I do it.
Here is more detail:
There is also a quick way to pad your images without using Photoshop. This method will pad hundreds of images in just a few seconds.
You do it with a tool that comes with OS/X called Automator. It should be in your Applications/Utilities folder.
Automator is basically a workflow tool. It allows you to string together commands and actions into a workflow and then execute the entire sequence at once. If you have Snow Leopard, you can even add these workflows to your contextual menus that come up when you right-click.
There are many workflows that would work to pad your images. Here is an example:
In Automator, start a photo workflow and drag the following actions into the workflow from the Action palettes on the left.
You should have something like:
1)Ask for Photos (You must select one or more photos and hit Select - you can make this easier by putting them in an album beforehand)
2) Copy Finder Items (give it a folder to copy to- so you can find them easily)
3) Pad Images. (put a check mark in "scale image before padding" Pick the pixel dimensions of your project...like 640x480 or 960x540. or 1920x1080
Hit Run and a dialog box will come up asking you to select photos. When you are finished, press SELECT and the Automator script will keep running.
Then at the end you should have padded images in the folder you created in step 2.

I'm looking for a High Definition Ken Burns effect

I put together an hour-long DVD every year of the best photos of my daughter. Every year I've used a program called *Still Life* to add the ubiquitous Ken Burns effect to about 25% of the stills. I've been very happy with the results.
But, lo and behold, we've upgraded this year to an HD television, and suddenly everything changes.
Now it is painfully apparent that *Still Life* can no longer do the job, as its output is noticeably non-HD.
I see how I can do the same basic movement in FCE itself using keyframes, but this movement is static. The thing I liked about *Still Life* was that it started the movement slowly, built up speed, and then slowed the movement at the end. It was smooth. I can't make FCE perform as smoothly. I get visual whiplash when it starts and stops.
I've found some other similar programs-- Photo-to-Movie, MovingPicture, etc.--but none of them output in the same high quality HD that FCE express does. I even tried *iMovie HD*, but it isn't flexible enough (you can't change the start or stop movement times, so that when I transition the clips in FCE, I lose the second before the Ken Burns effect kicks in, and so the overall effect is herky-jerky).
Does anyone have any suggestions for a software solution that exports high quality HD Kens Burns movement for a still photo?
Thanks for any help you can give.

Hi(Bonjour)!
I see on photo to movie spec page that you can export in full 1920 X 1080 H.264 codec, a high quality format usable in FCE.
http://www.lqgraphics.com/software/phototomovieoverview.php
By the way, how do you deliver your HD sequence from your mac to your HD TV set ?
Michel Boissonneault

Mixing photos with Ken Burns effect with 'still' photos

I am just beginning to experiment with iMovie '09. My medium is still photographs and my goal was to create a movie with these photographs, and send them to iDVD to test the quality of the final images.
I have 3 questions.
1. I started by using about 10 photos from iPhoto, then adding music and transitions. I used the same 10 slides, same music and transitions to make a second movie, but this time I used the Ken Burns effect on two of the photos. When I moved the movies to iDVD, the first one was fine, but in the second one, the 'jaggies' appeared in the iDVD version. Is it an 'all or none' proposition regarding the Ken Burns effect if I want to avoid images with jagged edges or is there a way to combine moving and still images?
2. The first time I tried to send the movie to iDVD I chose Share>iDVD. A drop down window appeared and it looked as if a movie had been created but when I opened the media/movies pane in iDVD, a message appeared saying "the project can't be used because it has not been prepared for sharing yet." What was actually happening when I chose Share>iDVD?
3. I have been reading other posts about sharing from iMovie to iDVD. Am I understanding correctly that I the largest size I can go to is 'medium'? In my experiments, I have been choosing 'large' and they look OK. (I chose 'large' because that was what was modelled in the tutorial.) Would I have trouble when it comes to burning them?

Is it an 'all or none' proposition regarding the Ken Burns effect if I want to avoid images with jagged >edges or is there a way to combine moving and still images?
You should be able to combine.
Open iMovie Preferences and put a check mark next to "Display Time as HH:MM:SS:Frames". This lets you edit more accurately and if there is an extraneous Ken Burns Frame you can see it.
he first time I tried to send the movie to iDVD I chose Share>iDVD. A drop down window appeared >and it looked as if a movie had been created but when I opened the media/movies pane in iDVD, a >message appeared saying "the project can't be used because it has not been prepared for sharing >yet." What was actually happening when I chose Share>iDVD?
Try saving your movie to either iTunes or the Media Browser first. When you send straight to iDVD it is expected DV or AIC or h.264. With photos only, none of these exist.
After sharing to the media browser or iTunes, if Share to iDVD still isn't working, you can open iDVD, find your movie in the Media Browser, and bring it into iDVD from there.
I have been reading other posts about sharing from iMovie to iDVD. Am I understanding correctly >that I the largest size I can go to is 'medium'? In my experiments, I have been choosing 'large' and >they look OK. (I chose 'large' because that was what was modelled in the tutorial.) Would I have >trouble when it comes to burning them?
Both will work. DVDs are 480i, so if you send in large, iDVD has to downscale. You may want to try it both ways to see which gives you better results.

Jaggies in Ken Burns effect

My Photos with Ken Burns effect usually have jaggies to one degree or another. I had same problem with windows programs (Roxio EMC 8, Adobe Premier and Studio Media by Pinnacle). I just bought an iMac because all of those programs would crash too often, and their Pan and Zoom effects produced jaggies. Apple has such a good reputation for video that I assumed their programs would not have the same problems. The good news is that the iMac has not crashed at all. The bad news is that the pan and zoom produces jaggies in complex pictures (flower gardens) or in pictures with a lot of lines (sail boats). I have read the boards here (thanks Karl !!) and I have tried many of the remedies (render in iDvd not iMovie, import with effect on, etc.,) but the results are still very very disappointing. it is almost misleading to say that you can add motion to a picture when the quality suffers so much on so many pictures.
But this isnt a rant - just a question. What do I need to produce a quality pan and zoom effect on a photo if cost is not a big issue? Is there an upgrade for Idvd or iMovie? Would Final Cut Express or Pro produce a better product? Would more memory help (I have 512 mb)? What do the pros use? I am willing to throw dollars to solve this problem but I dont know where to throw them.

Hi Mardot - welcome to Apple, and to this forum!
It might be worth looking at either Still Life, or Photo to Movie before trying the expensive FC route. Both of these applications create very good pan and zoom effects that can be later integrated into an imovie project.
http://www.grantedsw.com/still-life/
http://www.lqgraphics.com/phototomovie.php
You probably should up-grade your imovie. imovie 6 is part of the iLife 6 suite of applications, which includes iDVD as well. Just be aware that iMovie 6, or indeed FC uses 'non-destructive' editing which needs much more storage space.
It would be a good idea also to list your computer model, RAM etc in your profile as this will then appear at the bottom of your posts. It can be helpful when diagnosing problems.

Ken burns effect deny photo import

Hallo I updated iMove to 6.03, but now if I make a project encoded for MPEG4, it doesn't permit import photo on project if ken-burn effect has been selected.
On iMove 6.02 it worked!
What can I do? or please how can downgrade Imove release to 6.02?
thanks in advance
peppo

THIS IS WHAT MY CONSOLE.LOG SAYS....Basically when the burns efffect works onthe preview, but when i hit play the image that was burnsed goes all back
2006-10-06 10:08:46.939 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:08:50.812 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:08:51.228 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:08:54.133 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:08:56.987 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:00.293 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:03.481 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:09.290 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:12.211 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:15.433 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:18.237 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:21.309 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:24.030 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:30.223 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:33.610 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:36.482 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:39.486 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:42.558 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:53.642 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:09:57.247 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:10:00.252 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:10:03.206 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:10:06.044 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.
2006-10-06 10:15:39.627 iMovie HD[214] Looked for URLs on the pasteboard, but found none.

Ken Burns effect--all or nothing

It seems that despite its promise, it is not possible to get KB effect in individual slides in a slideshow. I have Automatic Ken Burns turned off (settings), and I have checked individual KB (sometimes "start", sometimes "end". but when the slideshow runs, no KB effect (unless Automatice KB, which affects each slide).
BTW, I noticed this annoying (non)feature with iPhoto 06 as well, and was hoping for a fix!

message to self: Try reading the directions, dummy! There's nothing wrong with Ken Burns Effect when you do it right!
iPhoto Help showed me how to use KB effect. What a relief!
unrelated comment: Until I typed the last line, I hadn't seen how the "i" in iPhoto, iMac, etc reads as an inverted exclamation point. Subliminal marketing. That has probably been more obvious to Spanish users. ¿Right?

Ken Burns effects in iWeb

Sorry if this is a dumb question. Im new to iWeb and am trying to to build a home page with photos as the background that rotate from one to another and have the Ken Burns effect on them while they are on screen. Any way to do this?

Lew ~ Welcome to the discussions. If you're referring to the background in iWeb's Inspector > Page pane > Layout tab, it's not possible to use anything but a static image — although perhaps someone could figure out how to use a moving image as a background outside of iWeb's Inspector.
An alternative is a large movie slideshow with the Ken Burns effect — but it may take some time to begin playing in a browser and, if it was a Flash slideshow, would tax the viewer's processor considerably. (A QuickTime movie would be less taxing on the processor.)
A compromise is to avoid the Ken Burns effect and simply create a QT movie slideshow having a basic fading transition. Here's an example (not mine) — note how fast it loads in your browser:
http://www.heese-cadieux.com
...and it's done like this:
iPhoto > select photos > File > Export... > QuickTime tab ...set width and height, etc.
Then iWeb > Media button > Movies tab ...drag in your movie created above by iPhoto.
Then iWeb > Inspector > QuickTime tab ...settings.
Note: The above generates a QT slideshow pseudo movie of small file size and thus appears quickly in a web browser. By pseudo, I mean that the non-fading parts of the movie sequence are actually one single static frame timed to stay on screen — not a series of movie frames.

Zooming into video clip a la Ken Burns effect

Sorry for what may be a dumb question with an obvious answer, but I've not ever seen this come up in any FCP forum.
Does the "Ken Burns" effect also work on video clips? That is, if you have a one camera interview shot or tutorial, can you "zoom" in on the person as you might with a still photo? If I had a 2nd camera or some one to shoot for me, it would be less of an issue. But, just to have some movement occasionally instead of a static talking head would be nice. I suppose if overdone, focus and quaility issues would come into play.
Thanks,
Dave

Tom Wolsky wrote:
The explanation isn't quite right. Scaling is a logrithmic animation. An image at 100% scale fills the screen; when the image is at 50% scale it's a quarter size of the screen. This is why when you scale an image up it seems to get slower and slower as it scales up, and vice versa. Position on the other hand is a linear animation . The difference in the two is the problem.
Tom, you have great experience of this, so I'm a little wary of criticising but are you sure? I see that when scaling an image its area does not vary linearly (technically it's quadratic, not logarithmic, I think) and this will produce the illusion of changing speed which you speak of. Nevertheless, any given point in the image will move with constant speed.
On the other hand, position is not implemented linearly in FCP X. I set up a simple animation to test this, and at the start and end of the movement, the image's Y-coordinate changes by 2 pixels per frame of animation, whereas at the mid-point it changes by 6 pixels per frame: three times as fast.

Mixing Ken Burns effected images w/ stills

I'm creating a slideshow that mixes images with the Ken Burns effect on, and images with the effect turned off. I've noticed that when I place a non-Ken Burns'd image immediately after a Ken Burns'd image, the playback isn't accurate. The still image appears black or doesn't accuratly play back what's represented on the timeline.
I've dug through a lot of threads here but haven't found my answer. And help or just links to other threads would be great!

The workaround for this, for people running Snow Leopard, is to insert a smallest possible Cross Dissolve transition between the Ken Burns clip and the still. Actually, probably any transition will work.
The problem seems to be related to Quicktime 7.6.6, and manifests with stills, not movie clips. However, Snow Leopard folks, unlike those running Leopard, have not successfully been able to revert to an earlier version of Quicktime--at least as far as I know. You will notice that the problem does not manifest between Ken Burns photos or video clips, but only when non-Ken Burns stills are involved. Ken Burns stills are really movie clips. Inserting a transition will also turn a still into a movie clip. Thus evolves the workaround.
Hope this works for you.

Turn off this annoying Ken Burns effect!

I haven't found a solution on the discussion board for turning off the Ken Burns effect. The checkbox doesn't work, nor does the "settings" button to the right of it. I check "none" for transitions, "none" for effect, "none" on Ken Burns. Still the pictures have the cliche twangy music and annoying pan/zoom thing. Works great in Ken's films, but why did apple screw this up? We need to be able to turn it OFF!
Has anyone found a solution???
Ibook G4 1.42 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Trashing this preference file has had limited success, because that's been posted on earlier inquiries, but I think it doesn't work very well. I found the gray-colored arrows (should be bright red!) next to the "adjust" button. When the arrows are clicked, up comes "music" and "settings". In those dialog boxes, one can actually turn off the Ken Burns and music successfully. Maybe my version of iphoto had this added from previous v.5?
I always wonder why software designers make so much money, and why would anyone actually want to use this overdone, outdated affect as a default??
j.
Ibook G4 1.42 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

How do I get rid of the Ken Burns effect on my photos

I would like to get rid of the Ken Burns effect on my photos I addes to my video. How do I do that

When you create a New Project and give it a name, the next thing you should always do is go to File>Project Properties and make sure in 'Initial Photo Placement you have selected either Fit or Crop. It seems the default setting is the Ken Burns annoyance.

Cannot get rid of Ken Burns effect on slideshow

I have turned off Ken Burns effect when creating slideshow on my Mac Mini (the one that I share iPhoto libraries with Apple TV). I did the same in Apple TV.
Still I have these funky effect that may fit some documehtaries, but is inappropriate to some other content... and one has to realize that (e.g. if you present photos from someones funeral you do not give some fancy effects to upset audience, right?)
Isn't it a bug in software? Anyone had the same issue? Under what circumstances the checkboxes to turn it of in APPle TV and iPhoto are ignored by Apple TV?
Thank you.

I figured out how to do this.

Preview of Ken Burns effect doesn't work with some pictures

I just recently installed a new graphics card (ATI Radeon 7500) on my Sawtooth, 1.2 GHz, so I could utilize the Ken Burns effect in imovie HD. It works but only partly. It works great but with some pictures the preview pane doesn't show the photo. What I see is a what looks like bad reception on an old TV (fuzzies and the picture is distorted so bad you can't even make it out). With other pictures the preview shows up fine. I'm sure I've loaded the drivers. What else can I do?

Hi Tonyy13.
I am presenting the same problem. I can set the Ken Burns' effect while I am with the pictures before placing them in the Clip or Timeframe viewer. After placing them there, if I try to edit the picture (either by right clicking and choosing -edit picture or by control clicking and doing the same, I ended up with a black background. If you change the setting in this black ackground and update this changes they will be effective. So, you can change the slide duration, and everything in the sliders but without an image.
I was running System 10.3.9 and I thought this was the reason. Today, I went and bought Tiger but it didn't sove the problem. I do believe it is a bug in the program. According to Apple's Help and David Pogue's "The Missing Manual" this shouldn't happen.
If you solve this problem reply to this posting. If I did I will reply to your posting. Thank You.

Preview of Ken Burns Effect is a black screen!!

So, I am doing a movie for my parents, and I have 102 photos that I have loaded into IMovie. I loaded them in to the clips section, as I am not a huge fan of iPhoto personally. At first, no problems, but later, as I dragged photos into the playhead area, my photos wouldn't allow me to preview the Ken Burns Effect. I would drag them into the playhead, click on "Meda" button, and then select the Show Picture Settings button. The preview screen goes black as the effect scrolls through the process, disallowing me to see the preview. I have deleted the pictures from IMovie, re-inserted them, and started over (AAAARRRRRGGGGGG!), and it happened again.
Any Ideas? Thanks for the help!
Oh, and I have made no modifications to my machine (no new graphics card), and the pictures are all in .jpg format.

Hi Tonyy13.
I am presenting the same problem. I can set the Ken Burns' effect while I am with the pictures before placing them in the Clip or Timeframe viewer. After placing them there, if I try to edit the picture (either by right clicking and choosing -edit picture or by control clicking and doing the same, I ended up with a black background. If you change the setting in this black ackground and update this changes they will be effective. So, you can change the slide duration, and everything in the sliders but without an image.
I was running System 10.3.9 and I thought this was the reason. Today, I went and bought Tiger but it didn't sove the problem. I do believe it is a bug in the program. According to Apple's Help and David Pogue's "The Missing Manual" this shouldn't happen.
If you solve this problem reply to this posting. If I did I will reply to your posting. Thank You.

Non-linear Ken Burns effect?

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