Getting the Ken Burns Effect on the MAC

First of all, thank you to everyone who has purchased the book. I’m very gratified by your response.

In the book we talk at some length about the “Ken Burns effect”, or essentially smooth zooming and panning on your photos. We made some last minute updates to include the latest approaches and applications, but there’s still more new ways to go about achieving the effect in a method that is not time consuming or frustrating.

Time consuming? Frustrating? What could I be referring to?

Well, Final Cut Pro, of course. Since Apple totally rewrote iMovie after Version 6, that program has gone from a traditional timeline, multi-track editor to something else. And it is something else, very powerful in its own way, and maturing even more in the the new iLife version 9. But it is different.

So some people have looked for alternatives. If they are planning to stay on the Mac– nothing wrong with that, mind you– they have just a few choices. These include iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, and Adobe Premiere Pro.

I’m going to assume that Adobe Premiere Pro– at $1299– is a bit too pricey. I’ll also assume the same for the Final Cut Studio 7.0, which is priced at $999.

This leaves Final Cut Express at $199, or iMovie, which is free with a new Mac or $49 as part of iLife.

I might also add that you could use BootCamp, Parallels, or Fusion to run windows on your Mac, and that would open up such programs as Sony’s Vegas family of programs, which are quite capable in in the most a stripped down, $79 version. But I’ll review and demo that in another tutorial.

So, being that we’re left with some version of Final Cut, we bite or borrow the bullet, install it, and play around. What we learn is that it is a very, very capable editor, so capable that it is capturing the professional marketplace from companies like Avid, which has made professional editing hardware / software combos for eons, and has an entire leasing company dedicated to helping bedazzled entrepreneurs pay the thousands and thousands that their systems cost.

$199? You got off cheap.

But for all you marvel at that Final Cut, along wih Motion, LiveType (now built into Motion) and Soundtrack can do, you attempt to do a nice slow push in and pan across a photo you’ve imported.

And your brains fall out.

Sometimes, software can be too cpable for the simple things we want to do. It isn’t just that in this instance Final Cut’s keyframing is a bit much for what we want to accomplidh, it’s that we probsbly want to accomplish it dozens or hundreds of times in a very short period.

Are we doomed? No.

There are three programs we need to investigate:

FotoMagico from Boinx Software. $29.00; $149.00

Photo to Movie from LQ Graphics. $49.00

And Photomotion from GeeThree’s SlickFX line for Final Cut Pro. $79.00

All solve the problem, by making the pan and zoom effect easy. They have different capabilities. Two are standalone programs. One fits right into Final Cut as a plug-in.

Next time, some actual hands on videos demonstrating each.