KEN BURNS effect

source: Digitial Juice Forum

) Do you have Adobe Encore DVD 2.0? If so, it has the world's easiest and faster "Ken Burns" style slideshow making utility built right into the interface. I am not kidding when I say that you can create a dynamic, very impressive slideshow / photo montage that has pan and scan, zoom in / zoom out, crossfades every picture AND automatically fits the pictures to the duration of the audio you use, all in less than 5 minutes! Seriously, I can import 99 photos and a song that is around 5 minutes long into Encore 2.0, apply all of the transitions with the click of ONE button, all of the motion with the click of ONE more button, the zooming capability with a third button click, and a final fourth button click to make the music and photos' duration match, all in around 60 seconds. Of course, the real trick is to have your assets fully prepared in advance, ready to import. It takes around 15-20 minutes to render and burn a single DVD with the assets I described above. Not too bad at all! One minute's worth of work, go get a cup or two of coffee, come back, and VIOLA'! Instant Ken Burns style photo montage.

2) Alternately, you can use AE7 (After Effects) to create a montage in about 5 minutes as well, all with the similar types of motion, panning and scanning, crossfades, etc. I found a cool tutorial HERE that describes the approach from AE expert Andrew Kramer (VERY cool!). Timing the music is the trickier part that is not covered, but you can slice-n-dice different segments of music to make it fit...heck, with DJ's music library, that's even easier than before! Stacktraxx and Backtraxx make that task a lot easier, for sure, Definitely worth your time and money to invest in a few of those, especially the "Soft and Subtle" ones for traditional romantic, slow moving montages.

3) Last, but not least, you CAN get there from here using PPRO 1.5 or 2.0 (or even 1.0, as I recall). Make sure your project's settings are enabled (selected / checked) for "Scale clips to project dimensions when adding to sequence". This is found under the PROJECT->PROJECT SETTINGS->GENERAL area.

Next, go to your EDIT->PREFERENCES->STILL IMAGE menu. You need to set the duration that you want each photo to display on screen. Remember, if you plan on having a crossfade as the default effect between pics, then you may want to add a second or two to the normal duration. I suggest an on-screen duraion of 5 to 7 seconds total for slow, romantic style montages, which means you will need 210 for a 7-second clip duration (one second on the front, one second on the back of each photo. The first and last pics can be adjusted later on if you wish to remove the extra second). If you want only a 5 second duration, then choose 150 frames. This number is calculated by multiplying the desired number of seconds (7) times 30 FPS (7x30=210; 5x30=150, etc). Even though you are probably using 29.97 Drop Frame, that is not relevant here. We are only concerned with whole numbers. Once you have your onscreen duration set, click OK at the bottom of that window.

Then, import your photos. Hopefully you scaled back anything over 1000x1000 pixels, as PPRO can't handle anything larger very well. The tell-tale sign that you pics are too large is that the monitor screen in PPRO is pure green, like a greenscreen. If you see that, back up a step, scale down your pics in Photoshop using a batch process or "Droplet", delete all photos already imported into PPRO from the PPRO bins (ONLY!), and re-import the pics again into PPRO.

OK, once you have the pics in your PROJECT assets window, select all (CNTRL-A), then deselect any non-photo asstes like your timelines or project bins. You can deselect a single item at a time by holding down the the CNTRL ket and left clicking on the asset that you wish to deselect. Once you have photos ONLY selected, click the "Automate to sequence" button at the bottom of your PROJECT window (where your assets are). This is the third bitton from the left, and looks like the symbol for a volume control or meter (progressively diminshing bars / lines). This is directly to the left of the binoculars icon.

You will see a pop-up window asking you for your choices to a few different questions. First of all, I suggest just letting the "Sort Order" stay as it is, and hopefully you sequentially numbered all of the photos previously in Photoshop with a 3-digit name, eg, 001.JPG, 002.JPG, etc. This will place them in the chronological order you selected while editing the photos. If the photos are all you have on your timeline, than it is a moot point to worry whether you are using the "Insert Edit" or "Overlay Edit" method. For "Clip Overlap", choose 60 frames (2 seconds). This gives a nice natural dissolve from one pic to the next. Finally, click on "APPLY DEFAULT VIDEO TRANSITION" (assuming that your cross dissolve is still your default transition!), and click on the OK at the bottom. None of the other settings in that window matter as much at this time, so you should be "good to go". You should see all of the pics populate the timeline area, in the numeric or alphabetical sort order you chose, with the default cross dissolve transition applied between them.

All of this sounds much, much more complex than it really is. This whole process, includin all of the settings changes AND placing the photos in the timeline as described can easily be done in less than 1 minute.

OK, now for the fun, lesser-known trick of creating that ultra-cool Ken Burns style panning and scanning motion to your photos.

You have a decision to make at this point. How many different types of motion do you want? One is kind of boring, frankly. Two is just BARELY better than one, but not by much. Three is starting to get there, but four might make for a good, simple choice. Let's assume that FOUR is the magic number.

Select the very first photo on your timeline, and open up your "EFFECT CONTROLS" window / tab. Make sure that your CTI, or Current Time Indicator (the pointer thingy!), is all the way at the "home" position, frame zero. Next, drill down / twirl down the blue pointer under the EFEECTS CONTROLS "MOTION" effect. In other words, just click on the blue triangle until it opens up the POSITION, SCALE and ROTATION attributes. Now, click on the stop watch icon to the left of the word POSITION. This will set a key frame. Next click on the "PAGE DOWN" key on your keyboard. I always like to back up one frame, so that I can see what the motion looks like in its final resting place, so click on your LEFT ARROW key. You should be in the very last frame of photo #1 at this point in time.

Now for the fun part: you have several ways to proceed next, but I suggest that you do the easy solution. Simply click on the word MOTION at the top of the Effects Controls window, go to your monitor / preview window, and drage the photo to its final resting place, where you want it to be at the end of its animation. You will notice that a keyframe (small diamond) is automatically set in the MOTION area for your "OUT" frame. Then, click the "PAGE UP" key on your keyboard, click on the SCALE stopwatch icon, and set that at about 60% or so. Experiment with this for your own personal taste, and the appropriateness of this effect in your project. Click on the "PAGE DOWN" key again, then the LEFT ARROW key (so that your keyframes all line up correctly). This time, just type in the number 100 under the SCALE percentage.

Now you have full motion, panning and scanning across your video canvas, with the cool zoom in effect!

Next, click on your "PAGE DOWN" key on your keyboard, select the SECOND photo,  and repeat the same last few steps, starting with setting a keyframe by clicking on the stopwatch icon in the EFFECTS CONTROLS window.  This time, make a completely different move. I suggest that you set the first motion to be from East to West, the second photo's motion to be West to East, the third to be North to South, and the last to be South to North (or any variation that works for you!).

You should have created 4 separate, unique values for the first four photos at this point in time. You could keep on going and hand-create each photo as a separate, unique entity, but that is far too time-consuming to do. Let's automate the process again, shall we? (LoL!)

Now for the easy part: Select your first photo again, and in the EFFECTS CONTROLS window, RIGHT-CLICK on the word MOTION and choose COPY from the drop-down context menu. Then, select the fifth or any subsequent photos tha you wish to apply this effect to, go to the effects controls window, right-click in any area on the LEFT PANE beneath the words MOTION or OPACITY, and choose PASTE from the drop-down context menu. This applies that effect to the previously raw photo. Copy and paste your SCALE function as well, from the first photo to the target photo. Unfortunately, in version 1.5, you cannot copy groups of effects, only one at a time. I have not installed PPRO 2.0 yet, even though I have it, as I am waiting to build a new monster PC before I install install. From what I have seen, PPRo 2.0 is a memory and resource hog, and even with a 3.0 GHZ P4 / 800 Mhz FSB / 2 GB's of DDR 400 RAM, that is not enough to run it appropriately. I am told you need a dual core CPU, or Xeon based system to make it really cook. I'll trust Adobe and Matrox on their input and just wait until I can afford the Axio LE card a two quad-core Xeon CPU's. Anyway, if anyone knows about PPRO 2.0's effects copying abilities, I would like to hear from them. Can you copy GROUPS of effects in the Effects Control panel, or just a single effect at a time? If you can do it all at once, so much the better, less tedium for sure.

For a variation on the zooming in and out, you could reverse the percentage and START with 100%, and scale down to 60% or 70% or even less, The choice and preference is all up to you. Whatever works best in that particular instance.

OK, WHEW! That's a lot to type. I sure hope that helps you! Let me know if I am unclear in any part of that, or if you need any additional help on this subject, I will be glad to assist.

Peace!

_____________________________

====
Scot
====
 

Really good answer Scot. Informative for the question, and well thought out. Great resource.

I will add a few things to this for you as well.

On projects, pans/scans/zooms/transitions may need to be different than what a standard one-size-fits-all scenario. If you want to put something together rather quickly,
the process Scot mentioned is fabulous. Even the AE one is really nice. The problem can be, that not every photo should zoom out or in from the same point, or be on screen
for the same duration, or have the same pan across on it. For this reason, using the motion controls for each photo is really a great asset. THis gives you the most flexibility to
make the movie something personal.

Also, duration on screen and transition speed can be adjusted based on your project. It is the same as video editing, so think of it as that. If you project is fast paced with hard edged
music, and the theme fits, you can get away with cuts between images even, or very fast fades. For a heartfelt project, one that goes with most Wedding themes, remembering videos,
or of say baby being born, you should look for more subtle feels, mostly. I like to go with on screen duration with slow themes of anywhere of 7-10 seconds on screen, and a 2-3 second
transition from one image to the next. Like Scot said, account for your transitions in the beginning when setting image lengths as default. With an on screen duration of 10 seconds, and a 3
second transition (1 1/2 sec at each end of the image), you should have image default length at 13 seconds. Not all images will work at this length, but if you predict that most will, it will save
you time later on when you only have to adjust the length of on screen images of a few images.

Finally, not all images will look right with a longer duration on screen. If you have low res images that you cant really move or zoom in on too much, it will look pretty boring having an image sitting
there for 13 seconds. Use good personal judgement on what looks good, what you would want to see if you were the viewer, not the editor. Timing to music is a great key as well. A long duration, slow
pan across a close up of a new born babies high res image with a nice soft subtle glow and a really nice slow piece or dramatic chord in a song will really sell the feel of the movie.


Choosing your theme from the start, and working from there is a great start.
Work the images based on image size, music feel, image content.
Keep it interesting and dont drag things out if it needs to move along.

Hope those help out as much as Scot's info

Actually, Ken Burns went to the very same high School that I did, except that he graduated a decade earlier in 1971 (Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, MI, same as Bob Seger! YAY! What a great, cool school to be part of!).

HERE is another more visual approach to the tutorial I described, except this is a more basic approach. Always nice to have pictures!

Also, even though Burns did not invent this technique, he did popularize it many years before Macromedia created FINAL CUT PRO, and certainly long before Apple bought that from Macromedia. Apple did NOT invent the term, just applied it as a moniker to a button within the NLE GUI just a few years ago. The "Ken Burns Effect" term was used directly after the release of "The Civil War" in 1991 to help describe the panning and scanning / zooming effects, as well as the popularity of the famous narrators who appeared in that series.

Apple, that wonderfully disfunctional plagarist...what would we do without them? Oh, yeah, that's right...just use Windows and Linux instead! Along with our Cisco / Linksys iPhones! Lol!
 

Look for points of interest in the pictures such as sharp lines that define something, or geometric patterns to follow. An idea of what i mean is, if you have say a group of people looking up or right at the camera in picture in a huddle or a circle, this would be a great picture to maybe slightly zoom out and rotate a little.

Dont feel you HAVE to use an entire picture in each section. Look for points of interest that you can maybe pan across, slightly revealing what it is you are looking at. You can get the idea of what it is, without actually seeing all of it.

Dont go with the same zoom or pan or crop or rotate on several pictures in a row. Vary everything, so that the pictures dont look methodical. If 10 pictures in a row zoom out to reveal a group shot, after about the third one, people will get board of it. Seems wierd, but do it on purpose and you will see what I mean. Change things up, and look for interesting ways to use the motion controls. Slow it down, speed it up, whatever.
 

Try not to go from one extreme to another in the same image. Dont zoom in on an image from the start at say 200%, and then zoom out by the end of the animation to 35%. You can, but if you look at if that is done, the animation is so fast, it actually looks cheesey. Unless your theme is fast paced, then it may actually be a good thing.


These are some things I have come across in my own trials and errors. I have done them all, and most have actually slipped into a project by accident until it was too late. I learn by reviewing my stuff before, during and after, and its the afters that give you the best feel if you nailed things or not. It sucks when you miss something and go, "ah man!" and the project is already done or out the door, but if you learn from it, things will go by smoother the next time.