Smooth Panning on Final Cut Pro?

How large is the still image?

Have you rendered the image?

In my experience, Motion with optical flow yields very smooth moves. If that doesn't work for you, there is always After Effects.

x

This does not sound like you are using a standard video format.

For example, a 1080p HD image in square pixels should be 1920x1080.

What's the story?

x

And, did you RENDER the move?

And, how are you playing it back?

x

It sounds like you have not tried the move in the program Motion.

If not, give it a go. Otherwise, a number of people like Fotomagico for this sort of stuff.

x

As X said, Motion (or After Effects) can do an exceptional job with moves on stills and give the best results. But FCP by itself typically gives much better results than you describe. So I'm curious what kind of sequence settings you're working with (command 0).

Russ

FCP's capabilities in this area are minimal - which is why Motion was a good part of the suite. The two programs work quite well together.

I can't explain why your project from Motion is not acceptable. It has always given me very good results for movement on stills (always with TIF format images).

There is always fotomagico.

Good luck.

x

None for compression? How big is your output file?

Try a Pro Res Sequence and see what difference that makes.

Russ

Let's see… I take a large jpeg into my sequence; then key frame scale and position for a slow pan. With my sequence compression set to none my ten second QT movie is over 1.8 GB, and my machine sputters trying to play it back. With my Pro Res sequence, the same movie is under 200 MB and it plays with a very smooth pan.

Is it as good as I can get in Motion? I agree with X that this is not FCP's strong suit, but it's reasonably decent.

If you could post a screen shot of your Pro Res sequence settings window it might shed some more light on this.

Russ

Just to be clear, I was asking for a screen grab of your settings, which will come up as a dialogue window if you make the Time Line area active and hit command 0.

As to the key framing steps, there are – as always – different ways to do things in FCP. Here's one, assuming you already have a clip in the Time Line: In Canvas, make sure it's set to Image & Wireframe; double click your clip (still image) from TL into Viewer and open Motion tab; on first frame of clip set the scale to desired value; in Canvas, position your image so that it the way you want it for the beginning of your pan and/or zoom; move the playhead to the frame on which you want the move to begin and set keyframes for scale and center; move the playhead to the frame where you want the pan/zoom to end; adjust scale and position of the image in your Canvas to your liking. FCP will automatically set the necessary second set of keyframes – as well as those in between the beginning and end of the move.

Russ