Moving the frame of your video

You may get the sense of movement that you are looking for by using the Ken Burns Effect.

Ken Burns effect can be used on both stills and video.

Lets say you want some movement over a time of 15 seconds somewhere in your video.

You select this 15 second segment by using Split Clip at the beginning of the 15 seconds and again at the end of the 15 seconds.

Now split this 15 second clip again into 3 segments of say equal lengths of 5 seconds each ( they don't have to be equal, it's up to you ).

Let us call these 3 segments clip A, clip B and clip C.

Let's say you want to zoom from full frame into your guitar over a time of 5 seconds, stay zoomed in for 5 seconds and then zoom out to full frame over 5 seconds.

Hover the mouse over clip A and click on the gear wheel symbol that is displayed and select Cropping and Rotation and then select Ken Burns in the viewer.

The start point will need to be the full frame. The end point will be a close up of your guitar.

Select Done.

Now hover mouse over clip B and again > gear wheel>Cropping and Rotation > Ken Burns.

Now the tricky bit. We need to select the Start point which is the same as the end point of clip A, otherwise there will be a jump when going from end of clip A to beginning of clip B .I am not aware of a method of copying the end point of A to be the start point of B, so some patience will be needed.

The end point of clip B needs to be the same as the start point of clip B for this scenario.

So to clarify so far.

Start of A is full frame. End of A is zoomed into guitar.

Start of B is zoomed into guitar and end of B is zoomed into guitar giving effect that Clip B is held zoomed into guitar.

Now we need to zoom out of guitar to full frame using clip C.

Hover mouse over clip C and again > gear wheel>Cropping and Rotation > Ken Burns.

Start of clip C is zoomed in position of guitar which is the same position as the end of clip B so as not to get a jump from clip B to clip C. The end point of C needs to be the full frame.

Overall effect will be that when you get to clip A a zoom into guitar over 5 seconds, zoom held for 5 seconds and then zoom out over 5 seconds.

The timings are your choice of course, but remember the shorter the clip, the faster the change.

You could perform the above a few times over the course of you video or pan from one side of the frame to the other, or up and down and back again.Don't over do it though .

In this example that I have given you could have the end of clip B different to the start of clip B, i.e. zoom from guitar to zoom to face and then clip C would be zoom from face to full frame. You could in fact have your entire video split up into say 20 clips and move from one position to the next over those 20 clips. You just have to make sure that the start point of a following clip is the same position as the end point of the proceeding clip to avoid a jump in the play back. And that is the tricky bit.

If you are going to try this then duplicate your project and experiment on the duplicate.

You might want to experiment with the lengths of the clips, too short could mean too fast.

It might be best to settle for just a few movements in order for you to achieve what you want as your audience may be too distracted otherwise.

I said

And that is the tricky bit.

Maybe not so tricky after all.

Adjustments from one clip can be copied to another.

In example above we set up going from full frame to zoom in on guitar using Ken Burns.

Now highlight clip A by clicking on it and go EDIT>COPY.

Now highlight clip B by clicking on it and go EDIT>PASTE ADJUSTMENTS>CROP.

Clip B will now have the same going from full frame to zoom in, but this is the reverse of what we want.We want clip B to go from zoom in to full frame.

So click on clip B and go to Ken Burns set up as above via the cog wheel.

Click on the reverse arrows to swap the start and end points, see red arrow. Now click DONE.

Clip B now has the same start point as the end point of A, hence no jump.

If you want to set up a new end point for clip B rather than it being full frame, because that is what the start point for clip A was, then you can do this in "Ken Burns" after clicking on the reverse arrows just described. Click DONE.

You can proceed to clip C and do the same procedure by copy/ pasting adjustments from clip B to C and again clicking on reverse arrows and adjusting the end point of clip C if you want to.And so on .

Be aware that the more you zoom in or pan across the image with Ken Burns the softer the video will become.

This is because the smaller image is being expanded in size, so detail will be lost.

Experiment with small movements first to see if it will suit.

thesurreyfriends,

Yeah, using Ken Burns would impart some interesting movement for sure. Never thought of that.

-- Rich

Interesting question. So, you want your tripod video to look like it was taken as if the camera were hand held.

I am not very familiar with iMovie 9, but I doubt that there would be a feature like you describe. iMovie 10 does not have such. If I am wrong about iMovie 9 hopefully someone else will chime in here.

-- Rich

Yes

It could test one's patience, but it might work.