Motion & the Ken Burns Effect

Hi,

Can some one tell me if Motion would be a good application to use to animate stills, creating pans and zooms on still images and to layer and move them around? Thanks for your feedback.

Jonathan

Yes, you can make nice motion control moves using behaviors such as Throw, Wind, Grow/Shrink and Fade In/Fade Out. You can also use the Record feature to set keyframes and animate the position or anchor point along with the scale.

Only thing I would really like to see is a way to sequence clips with overlap so you don't have to manually adjust in and out point to avoid fade in and out of black. Also, a modifier key to turn the anchor point tool from a pan-behind ala AE to a simple anchor point tool that doesn't alter position at the same time.

--
Mark Spencer
Freelance Editor/Producer
[www.daystreet.com]

Apple-certified instructor, Final Cut Pro and Motion
Author, Motion Visual Quickstart Guide from Peachpit Press (coming soon)
[www.applemotion.net]

So, overall, how does the ease of use and level of control animating stills in Motion compare to working in AE, MovingPicture, or iMovie?

Can only comment on FCP, AE and Motion. Regarding animating a series of photos:

FCP:
plus: ablity to add any number of pix to the timeline with a wide range of transitions in one operation; copy-paste attributes for keyframes

minus: difficult to get good results with combined scale and position changes when stops and starts are visible.

AE:
plus: can add multiple pix sequentially with overlap for fades; excellent keyframing control; animate anchor point rather than position for better moves

minus: few standard transitions; need to render

Motion:
Plus: realtime feedback to adjust position and scale; add pix sequentially

Minus: tedious to create overlaps for fades

I'm about to start a new project animating a few hundred photos and I haven't decided which way to go yet....will probably do AE but really want to make Motion work.

all IMHO of course.
Mark

Yes, it's wonderful, if you don't mind the still pic is limted to 2048 x 2048 pixel (for most graphic card, like ati 9800 pro or xt)

The BEST part is the path editor (I love it most !)
It's lot better than the AfterEffect one.

Go a head, it run well even on low-end G4s !

Antonio Hui

Mark

do you mean the anchor point in Motion works ala AE ? (not like in Fcp) ?

I mean by default it works like the AE Pan Behind tool, which offsets the Position values to keep the object in the same location in the Canvas.

I need to work with huge photoshop images (18,000 x 12,150 and similar) and do the Ken Burns thing where you zoom in and out of photos. I've done this in AE and it works well. Is it true that Motion does not allow you to use images this big?

2,048 by 2,048 max

Hi Eddie

The answer is negative at the moment. That's because of of the graphic card. For my ATI 9800 pro, the import still pics is limited to 2048 x 2048 pixel ;-(

Antonio Hui

We make a product called Photo to Movie which works well for a really high quality Ken Burns effect. It is cheap, handles huge images, and outputs very high quality video.

If you're interested check it out at

[lqgraphics.com]

It is a good complementary application to Motion or Final Cut.

Yes - about Photo to Movie - I've noticed it changes the colour of the photo somewhat, end result seems a bit less vibrant than the original still - is this a known issue, an unavoidable limitation, or is it my own system doing it?

J

Has anyone else used "Photo to Movie"? Have you had similar problems as Jean described in her last message?

The avuncular folks at Photo to Movie have noticed it and will post a summary of our side discussion on this topic when we're through tweaking the thing, I believe. Just keeping the forum abreast from my end.

Jean

We think we have a fix for this problem that will be available in Photo to Movie 3.1.12. In certain cases the color table was not being handled properly and I thank the users who took the time to help us track this down.

If you want an early copy or would like to help test the solution, please contact us directly at software@lqgraphics.com

We will hopefully release this new version within the next week (week of 12/12/04).

Mark

on this thread , 10-10-04 you wrote :

>I'm about to start a new project animating a few hundred photos >and I haven't decided which way to go yet....will probably do AE >but really want to make Motion work.

would you have some comparative feedback ?

maybe on a new thread ? (so it goes upthere for everybody)