Why Do Ken Burns Effects Look So Ripply & Poor...

They look great when previewing in High Quality setting, but look like crap when eventually burned to DVD. Too many ripples, undulations, cellulite, whatever. And this is from frames saved in PICT format in iMovie.

Do you notice this mostly on slow moving text? Photographs can get away with more, but lines or text will have more noticeable artifacts. What you're seeing is the ever changing anti-aliasing of the lines or words as they are drawn to match the few lines in a TV picture. You may have seen similar ripply effects on home made credits. There's almost a science to getting the speed just right to avoid the issue.
If possible try a different movement speed. Ideally you want the image to be moving across the screen, or if it's up or down the screen then it would need to move at exactly a multiple of two scan lines per frame to avoid all artifacts. Thicker lines or larger text would reduce the effect too, because it's only at the edges of shapes that the effect would be really noticeable.

Similar Messages

  • Why is ken burns effect not working on individual slides I have amended when sent to iDVD

    When making a slideshow in iPhoto, I changed the zoom and scan on individual slides as instructed in the Help dialog; these showed perfectly when played.  However, when I shared the slideshow to iDVD, those particular slides were just 'still' and there was no Ken Burns effect at all.  Why did this happen?

    The Slideshow was created in iPhoto and then shared to iDVD.  The Ken Burns effect works on all the photos that used the basic "Ken Burns' setting.  However, on some of the photos I tried to amend the scanning to zoom into particular faces or parts of the photo.  When I played the slideshow in iPhoto, these amended photos were exactly as I wanted, but after 'sharing' it and viewing it in iDVD, those photos I had altered were 'frozen' and the Ken Burns effect did not work at all, neither the automatic version, nor the specific way I had set it.  All the other photos still had the Ken Burns effect as expected.  I am using  iPhoto 11, 9.1.5, I haven't had this problem in the past.
    If you have any ideas why this should have happened I'd be grateful.
    Thanks

  • Ken Burns Effects Look Darker On Preview

    Not sure why, but effect previews on deinterlaced movie stills look darker and "better" than after the effect is applied and played back. Why?

    Do you notice this mostly on slow moving text? Photographs can get away with more, but lines or text will have more noticeable artifacts. What you're seeing is the ever changing anti-aliasing of the lines or words as they are drawn to match the few lines in a TV picture. You may have seen similar ripply effects on home made credits. There's almost a science to getting the speed just right to avoid the issue.
    If possible try a different movement speed. Ideally you want the image to be moving across the screen, or if it's up or down the screen then it would need to move at exactly a multiple of two scan lines per frame to avoid all artifacts. Thicker lines or larger text would reduce the effect too, because it's only at the edges of shapes that the effect would be really noticeable.

  • Why does iPhoto have Ken Burns effect and Aperture does not?

    Does anyone know why this is? In fact, I can't figure out why DVD Studio Pro (I have version 2 still, perhaps version 3 has it) and iDVD don't have it either.
    Why would the "Pro" level apps not have this cool slideshow feature that the entry-level app does? Is this buried somewhere in Aperture and I haven't found it?
    Brad

    Kevin Burns? Never heard of him.
    We have this battle about once a week in one or more of the world's Final Cut Pro forums. Folks moving up from iMovie expect access to a collection of pre-canned transitions and image movements inside the expensive upgrade. "Why else would it cost so much?" one can legitimately ask.
    Having Burns in Aperture might be important to you so please don't take the following observations personally.
    The issue for most video professionals is one of pride and deep, deep resentment. Designing and programming of appropriately timed and composed rostrum camera moves in x-y-z space is far more complicated than the more or less random settings the K-B button will impose. And Mr Burns, bless his pointed little head, is somehow getting credit for an animation technique that was perfected long before his grandfather was born.
    Including junk like the Ken Burns Effect in Aperture, come to think of it, might have been the deal breaker for us. Such tripe would have telegraphed the overall emptiness of the application.
    Again, I don't mean to poke fun at anyone who feel they get useful movies out of the KB button. These are my issues. But consider the presence on your Nikon/Canon of the "Helmut Newton Effect" button. Would you be tempted to use it? More than once?
    bogiesan

  • 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

  • Imovie templates, titles, ken burns effect wont render. why?

    Hi I am having great issues.
    Once my templates or ken burns effected pictures are in a timeline they wont render. Ive tried everything, but no rendering takes place. Just sits there and does nothing.
    Ive even tried wiping imovie and reinstalling still does the same thing help!!!

    Hi gregles76 - welcome to the forum!
    Two possible angles on this:
    1. You are not applying the KB effect correctly - make sure you are following the procedure shown in this tutorial:
    http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/imovie/im3-2.html
    2. Were you trying to change the setting on photos that already have a KB effect applied? If you were, and you have emptied the iMovie trash after creating KB effects on your photos, you will not be able to further modify the setting, because of the way iMovie deals with the photos.

  • Ken Burns effect makes photos shimmer when playing, Why?

    When viewing a slideshow type project using the Ken Burns effect in iMovie,the photos sort of shimmer, which can distort the picture. Is this normal? Is there something that I am not doing, or something I can do to fix this problem?
    MacBook Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.7)   17"

    Hi Tifany, there are MANY threads about this if you want to search for them.
    First thing I will ask though is: are you using iMovie to create a STILL photo slideshow? If so, you will be disappointed with the quality. There are some photos that just seem to attract this shimmering effect, and others that dont. perhaps turn the KB OFF on the ones that do, and see if that makes a difference?
    I personally have found that FotoMagico or iPhoto create better quality slideshows than iMovie (which is, afterall, a video editing tool).

  • Stutter when playing back photos with Ken Burns effects

    I am new to iMovie (& Macs) and am trying to replicate some complex motion on a still photo that I had on my PC with Adobe Premiere.
    The motion I would like is to pan and/or zoom around a photo, then pause at the end of the motion for a few seconds before transitioning to the next photo. I tried to do this by basically using two paired clips:
    1) add ken burns effects to the clip to accomplish the pan/zoom
    2) copy the clip
    3) on the copy, use the option key to transfer the settings from the "End" to the "Start" (which should make the clip motionless, but give it the same zoom and location settings as the end of the first clip)
    4) set the second clip duration to a few seconds (first clip is generally between 6-10 seconds originally)
    Sometimes this works great, but other times I get an inexplicable stutter between the two clips (both during playback on my computer or in the finished DVD), even though theoretically, the frames should be exactly the same between the two clips. It seems to happen after I've added transitions between photos (but not between the 2 paired clips that make up the motion), after it's re-rendered items.
    Does anyone know why I would be getting this stutter (it looks like a flash of white, actually, that is only 1 frame long) ? When I walk through the movie, frame by frame, it looks like somehow I am actually getting a single white frame at the end of the first clip, but I have no idea where this frame is coming from or how to get rid of it.
    Is there a better way to accomplish this type of motion ? I did some searching, but didn't find any topics on doing complex motions - has anyone seen any.
    Thanks for any help.

    I have had something similar happen in my slideshows. I would first check to see if you have a flash frame between the photos (which I've found sometimes randomly occurs for some unknown reason). You can enlarge the timeline as big as possible to see if you have one and just delete it. But I've also had a flash of white that appears at the end of a photo that is not a flash frame on the timeline. The only way I've figured to get rid of it is to delete the photo and re-insert it. Which is a pain, but has worked for me.

  • IMovie producing scrambled video with ken Burns effect

    I was creating a movie with stills from iPhoto. The first 3 photos are using the Ken Burns effect just fine. Anything after that is absolutely unrecognizable. It looks like a scrambled mess of what is on my screen. I can actually see my Dock in the video. This is really strange. It occurs with photos I've edited and with ones I haven't. I have the latest version of Quicktime (7.0.4), iMovie (6.02) and iPhoto (6.0.4) as well as Tiger.
    I've never had this problem before. As long as I don't use the Ken Burns effect I'm fine.
    eMac   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

    Hi Appleman1958
    Thanks for the advise. I'll give it a try when I get home tonight. Went nuts last night looking for a way
    to do it. Didn't want to do them one at a time or delete it and start over. Any idea why the pictures
    are not nearly as sharp when I burn to a disc on iDVD. as they are when viewed on iMovie or Aperture?
    Thanks Again,
    kayaking1

  • Ken Burns Effect - OFF!!!

    I just imported about 45 pics into iMovie and they all came imported with the Ken Burns effect and I did not want it all on of them. I mean, every couple of pictures it's cool, but the same effect one after the other is beyond boring.
    When I tried to select them all and turn it off it "sort of" worked. It turned the effect off (or so I thought) but then the picture has this major jumpy action that it takes on. When it previews a clip where KBfx has been turned off it zooms in for a split second and then JUMPS to final full version of the picture. Not the look I was going for...
    Any suggestions?? Especially on turning thing off so that the pics are imported with that feature.
    Thanks so much!

    When I tried to select them all and turn it off it
    "sort of" worked. It turned the effect off (or so I
    thought) but then the picture has this major jumpy
    action that it takes on. When it previews a clip
    where KBfx has been turned off it zooms in for a
    split second and then JUMPS to final full version of
    the picture. Not the look I was going for...
    The Ken Burns Effect user interface takes some getting used to. Sometimes it appears to have a mind of its own. It doesn't, actually, but you have to figure out why it's doing what it's doing.
    • A crucial feature is that the displayed Ken Burns settings, and the miniature KB preview window, reflect the SELECTED CLIP. That means that if you configure the settings you want, THEN select a clip, the settings will switch to what they were when you imported that clip.
    So... to change a previously-imiported clip you have to FIRST select it, THEN change the KB settings.
    • When you select a clip, the Ken Burns preview window always does its dance, all on its own, if the checkbox was on when you imported the photo. You have to pause for that dance to finish before you change the KB settings. If you don't wait for the dance to finish, you'll probably accidentally set the wrong thing. Although you've intended to set the Start setting, for example, you will probably have set the End setting. That happens because, on its own, the dance has activated the End setting.
    • When you've figured out how all that works, there's one more hurdle.
    If the KB checkbox was off when you imported the photo, KB will fail to display the settings of the selected clip in the timeline. Depending on what those settings were, the Update button will create a clip that's not at all what you want. If the photo was imported with a pan or zoom, for example, updating the clip without manually resetting the KB settings will create quite a mess.
    It's a bug. It doesn't happen when the KB checkbox is ON when the photo was imported.
    • One final thing. It's not obvious how to re-set the pan and zoom to 1.00 (no pan and zoom.) The trick is to click on the Start half of the Start/End thingy, wait for the dance to finish, then click on it again, then drag the zoom slider a bit to the right, then all the way left. Repeat for the End half of the Start/End thingy. Now both the zoom and the pan are centered.
    I know, Apple didn't use the A Team when they designed this user interface.
    Karl

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Problems with Ken Burns effect

    Having a very frustrating time trying to get a decent slideshow. Like the KB effect but when I play it back the images jerk and jump. Smoothness totally
    gone. Strange thing is sometimes it is worse than others. Have tried closing all
    other unnecessary programs to save RAM , etc...does not help. Sometimes it
    looks ok played in iphoto but when I send to idvd the jerking is back. HELP.
    When going through process have about 250MB free and 10 GB on disk.
    Also when I export a slideshow (size-large 720X480)to Quicktime image
    quality degrades considerably. All I want is a decent dvd copy of my honeymoon
    pictures but can't seem to accomplish this. Am very disappointed at all the
    grief involved in this...any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Greetings Old Toad.
    It seems that a fair number of users have run into this same problem over recent months: namely, producing a slideshow with audio from iPhoto with the Ken Burns effect creates a "jerky" movie as a result. The advice I have seen is to either clean up your hard drive or get more memory. I consistently run into this problem even though I have a 1Ghz G4 iMac with 768MB main memory. I have tried this on my root drive with about 7GB available and on a firewire drive I have with ~30GB available space. I have also tried using Cache Out X to clean up caches and other various files, and still iPhoto produces jerky results.
    The one workaround that has worked was to turn off audio. That seems to fix the problem, but I do want audio in these slideshows to put onto DVD. Others have suggested using iMovie to add the audio track, but reading in the output of iPhoto into iMovie seriously degrades the quality of the video -- not to mention that it is a very slow and tedious process to do this.
    I would like to point out that this was not always the case. Unfortunately I cannot pinpoint the exact time when this started happening, but I could swear that I had been able to create slideshows in this manner before one of the many iPhoto upgrades I automatically received over the last year. I now have version 5.0.4.
    Have you heard of anyone successfully fixing or working around this problem? I love my Mac...and this is one of the fundamental reasons I switched from Windows a few years ago was for the great photo tools. But now, without the ability to make DVDs the way I want, I am considering switching back .
    1 Ghz G4 iMac   Mac OS X (10.4.3)   768 MB DDR

  • 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.

  • Slideshow -- Ken Burns effect

    IPhoto slideshows not only has the ability to dissolve between photos, but includes the Ken Burns effect. While the ability to use transitions like dissolve in a slideshow is supported in Aperture, I have not found a way to float the photo to the left, right, down, up, etc. while being displayed. This effect really adds polish to a slide presentation, however, it is not supported in iDVD, DVD Studio Pro (at least version 2 which I have), and it appears it isn't supported in Aperture. Is it hidden somewhere in Aperture that I haven't found yet, and if not, why is iPhoto the only app that seems to have this feature? It seems weird that iPhoto would eclipse two professional-level apps (DVD Studio Pro and Aperture) with regards to a feature.
    If anyone knows for sure, let me know!
    Brad

    Paul,
    Thanks for you reply. The reason for my reply above is that the discussion pages ask to add some remark to mark the thread as answered, so I just added that "no known answer". This was discussed with others in another topic, and yes you are correct, the discussion was on the very pro vs. amateur point you brought up.
    Brad

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