Motion vs Efter Effects for "Ken Burns"

OK, i know he didn't invent it, but man, he does it so well he owns it!
(i also know it's done with a controlled camera, so let;s cut to the chase)

a producer friend is planing a show where the editors will rough out some pan & scans across photos.

the indicative moves will then be sent to a graphics person, who will recreate them in high res and with more finesse using with AE or Motion.

and this was the question put to me:
which would be better AE or Motion?
and why?

i imagine that the back and forth between Motion and FCP might be easier,
but it doesn't take much (automatic duck) to get the same going with AE,
or so i believe.

also...

in light of the recent fascinating debate on FCP, Avid and when you would use one over the other,
any thoughts on Motion vs AE in general?


thanks,
nick

I've worked with both (very lightly) and as far as basic titles and lower thirds, Motion is great in it's simplicity and quickness for getting the job done. But the things I've seen done in After Effects, it will never be a true competition between the two. After Effects as far as shear robustness (Shane, is that a word will win hands down, everytime.

But, to answer your question, it just really depends on:

1. Who the designer is and which application are they more comfortable with?

2. How complicated are the graphics planning to be (simple text animations and graphics, I'd say Motion for the integration with FCP - more complicated effects and graphics, definately After Effects).

But that's just my opinion
(after Joey)

Steven Gladney



Sometimes the obvious is hidden in plain view.

1. designer
yes, absolutely. they will make the choice, but i got asked the question, and now i;m curious

2. nature of effects i was asked about is pan & scans across photos
there may well be supers & other graphics, so motion could be part of that equation.

i should mention that the editors are all working at DV res, and final show will be on-lined in HD, quite possibly on an avid.

thanks
nick

For me...After Effects will always beat out Motion for the big photo animation because of the Camera & lights. I don't animate the photo...just the camera. This gives the photo more depth than just sliding it around & zooming in & out.

I can write up & post a tutorial if there is enough interest in how to accomplish this cool effect in After Effects.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

"I don't animate the photo...just the camera. This gives the photo more depth"

that's it, i'm sold!
but how do you handle dissolves?
2 cameras?
create individual moves, export, import?

if you wrote that up, Joey, i'll bet it would be a classic


cheers,
nick

Yes Joey,

I'd be interested in seeing that myself (the tutorial or post, I mean).

Nick, if you ARE just animating the photos, I don't know if you really need AE or Motion. You can Pan and Tilt the photos across the screen directly in FCP just by scaling them up a bit, setting keyframes, and adjusting the positioning between keyframes. Might be a waste of time setting that up in Motion or AE if it's just going to go back into FCP in the end anyway. Just make sure if you are going to scale your photos up like 200%, you adjust your files in Photoshop accordingly.

Steven Gladney



Sometimes the obvious is hidden in plain view.

Robustness is a word...in MY dictionary. But most the world doesn't read my dictionary...

I agree that After Effects is better for most motion control for the scaling ability it has. But for quick and dirty ones, you can use FCP just fine. I do all the time. I only use After Effects when I do funky things like THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE effects...layering of photos.

Here is my tutorial for FCP movement on stills:

[forums.creativecow.net]

>>> I only use After Effects when I do funky things like THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE effects...layering of photos. <<<

It takes a little more than After Effects to achieve this effect...you nee to separate the photos in Photoshop.

I wrote a tutorial for that too - not really for a beginner

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Well, yes, it does require Photoshop as well...

Motion is very very good for the Ken Burns effect and i'll tell you why.

There are two tools that make this beautiful, Grow/Shrink and Throw. With throw you set up the speed of the pan regardless of keyframes. How far you want to move and where you start is up to you, just move the layer in the canvas, no resetting kayframes. Same thing with Grow/Shrink, find a slow steady speed and just adjust the position and timing. Also, set up a fade in/fade out time for the dissolves.

then...

Copy and paste the behaviors to whatever new layers you want and using dashboard change the direction of the throw with the mouse. I had to do a 10-min patriotic slideshow for a fireworks display for the fourth in two hours last week. I set it up once, copied pasted and then tweaked for the individual photos. I even had time to start animating filters to enhance certain pictures.

I would like to try the animating camera approach tho, im sure that looks real good. Once Motion gets cameras, i'll be stoked...

thanks for all the feedback.
the editors will be concentrating on story structure, and timing.
working in DV res.
they will rough out the "Ken Burns" sections
someone else will finesse.
(the assistant, actually. good idea: they've got a good graphics person who is also a good assistant. they'll shepherd the shows thru to on-line)
they will create an HD version of the "Ken Burns" that will go "on the shelf" & a DV version for the editors to slot back into the offline

it's my guess that anything would be better than FCP for this (Snake of doom, anyone?)

hey, scott.

how about slowing to a stop?

that's the killer in FCP with a pan & zoom or tilt & zoom

Nick,

It's called "Ease In" in After Effects. It's a keyframe property that allows any parameter to "Ease In" to another. In AE Pro 7, there now is a Graph Editor where you can tweak the keyframe velocities using Bezier Points. Pretty cool.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

You can basically replicate the bezier or Ease in/out functions of keyframes with the curvature function and end offset.

Lets say you have a 20sec graphic. Start grow shrink 5 secs in and have it run to the end. Use end offset to pause the last 5 secs and than adjust the the curvature to make it ease in and out. Watch the scale in the keyframe editor to adjust with a visual representation...

yes joe, the keyframe graph is pretty sweet, although Motion's had it for awhile and Combustion even longer...neither as dynamic tho, thats the best part of the new one



Post Edited (07-13-06 17:19)

We've been using Moving Pictures software from: [www.stagetools.com] and it does excellent work, including ease-ins and HD...learning curve is about 30 seconds!

how about slowing to a stop?

that's the killer in FCP with a pan & zoom or tilt & zoom

I can do that. You just have to know how to tweak the velocity handles. I have a cool technique in my book where you loop in QuickView while teaking velocity in the Canvas. You can really finely adjust motion path acceleration that way.

O' course not many know my technique. ;-)



Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead, DV Products
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There is a huge difference between Motion and After Effects.
Kinda like comparing imovie to FCP.



Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Kevin:
"O' course not many know my technique. ;-)"

well, i imagine a lot of people have read you book, Kevin
at least i hope so!

if you had a choice, though, what would you use?

nick

Nick -

Motion is probably not going to work if they have to pass this stuff on to other editors, but I'm interested to hear it has some cool moco and I wish I could try it out, but I'm locked out unbtil I get a Quad or intel box.

AE is great, but very rich for such a simple task.

You can moco natively, as covered here. I do it all the itme, and those velocity handles work. As Kevin or Tom Wolsky will tell you, the scaling algorithm has improved too. Of course, the photo imports have to be rich enough to support enlargement without softening, either offline or online. That's why we have ScanGuide? Pro in the LAFCPUG store!

Scan each photo intelligently for enlargement. In offline, they could cut the render quality for speed, and in the online, cleverly reconnecting to the same rich scans in the online sequence, they can re-render at full uncompressed. Hope it's a damn fast machine!

Joey wrote-
[I can write up & post a tutorial if there is enough interest in how to accomplish this cool effect in After Effects.]

Yah! I'd read that.

Meanwhile, take a look at intermediate (easier and native to FCP) products like StageTools MovingPicture plug-in, which gets applied like other effects to any placeholder clip in the timeline (I like to use a text clip which describes what the moco will be) and when you step in you have an entire animation stage interface for the image. Has control of rotation (costs extra) but taper control (eases, feathers, etc). is available. It's a pretty mature product now.

When you render your crafted moves, it takes over the placeholder clip! Kind of elegant. Plus, once inside MovingPicture you can load in up to 8000 pixels square of RGB TIFF -- and as I recall, PSD too. 8K is the kind of width HD required for any significant push, scan, etc. I recall those re-rendered without issues in high rez. That should be tested.

Ken Burns *plots* the photos and roughs 'em in using Avid pan and zoom. It's Ed Joyce at Boston's Frame Shop who shoots 'em! Ed recently downsized his studio but he's still chugging along because lot sof folks need "the Ken Burns Effect."

Oh, he does real film title crawl animation too, not yet a dead art.

www.members.aol.com/frameshop1
The contact numbers are old. Just email me for contact info while the website gets updated.

- Loren
Today's FCP 5 keytip:
Preview effects sections with Option-P or Option-Backslash!

The FCP 5 KeyGuide?: a professional placemat.
Now available at KeyGuide Central:
www.neotrondesign.com

joe
we definitively want that tutorial about animating with camera in AE, (vs center & anchor)

thanx



---------------------------------
A Day late & a Dollar-short Productions

Read this, then decide&#13;&#10;&#13;&#10;[forums.creativecow.net]



|| To ask for permission is to seek denial. ||

founder,

That cow tut you posted is about Exponential Scale and has nothing really to do with what we're talking about (except for the "Ease In" demonstration that the demo dude saved for his next tutorial).



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Exponential Scaling the key. It's why After Effects works and FCP is garbage. Kevin's workaround not withstanding, it's basically cobbling together inadequate tools. Try doing ease to a stop, hold, then ease into motion. Good luck with that in FCP. It's dreadful for serious motion control, always has been, and apparently always will be.



All the best,

Tom

See, when using the AE Camera, there IS no need for Exponential Scale. You Animate the POSITION of the Camera in Z-Depth and it automatically exponentially changes position. Not to mention the photo holds up better when using a Camera than just scaling the photo up.

I haven't used Exponential Scale since AE 5 came out with the Camera & lights. I fly cameras through text & around photos & screencaps for a more organic presence that you will NEVER get in Motion in it's current state.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

a question for Tom

Say you have one displacement from a point to an other :

Fcp propose an " ease in - ease out " for EACH keyframe, starting and ending when Motion propose an "ease in " OR an "ease out,

something is not very clear in FCP



---------------------------------
A Day late & a Dollar-short Productions

That's true, but obviously there are no cameras in FCP. Even without AE's 3D capabilities, restricting it to comparable functionality in FCP, AE still handles motion control properly and has since before FCP was created.



All the best,

Tom

That's only part of the problem. The real problem is that the center keyframes in the hold function can't be accessed properly because they're directly on top of each other. Because you can't access and control them in the keyframe graph there's no to way the motion behave correctly.



All the best,

Tom

yes that's why Pan & scan in Fcp as to be simple, one curve and ... you are out of the road

Motion is good for easy stuff that you wan't to handle fast

I use Boris Red for delicate work and stay IN my timeline ( I think AE's "anchor point technique remains better than Red), Red is excellent but is only "position point" animated

I 'd be curious to read Joe's tuto about camera in AE for pan & scan ...

miam miam



---------------------------------
A Day late & a Dollar-short Productions

...doesn't look like more than 4 people are intested, though



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Only 4 people who responded...

Im sure they'll host it on the front page as a tutorial so people will see it for a long time...

Come on, illuminate us in why after effect's camera is so powerfull, otherwise im gonna stay in Motion all the time...