Need to replace pictures without affecting the Ken Burns & crop effects

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Need to replace pictures without affecting the Ken Burns & crop effects

How do I replace pictures in iMovie without changing the Ken Burns effect that I've already set? I have multiple copies of the same picture with different Ken Burns settings. I mistakenly used .tif files that I just want to convert to a .jpg files with the same ppi resolution.

Almost all pictures appear multiple times in the movie, depending on how much panning, zooming & cropping I applied for a given picture.

If I can't make the change with iMovie is there back door approach? It seems to me, there must be some information that identifies the files and then other information that identifies the iMovie effects, titles, etc. that I've applied.

iMovie '11, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Jan 11, 2013 5:32 PM

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Answer 1

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AppleMan1958

Level 7

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Jan 11, 2013 6:23 PM in response to b3e

First go to iMovie/Preferences and make sure that the Advanced Tools are enabled.

You can drag the new photo and drop it on top of the old photo. A popup menu will appear. Choose Replace.

However, I am not sure if that will retain the Ken Burns settings after the replace. If it does not, try this.

Before doing the replace edit, go to the current photo and select it. Then Command-C to copy (or EDIT/COPY).

Now, drag the new photo and drop it on the old photo and do the replace edit. Finally, select the new photo and click EDIT/PASTE ADJUSTMENTS/CROP ADJUSTMENTS.

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Answer 2

b3e Author

Level 1

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Jan 11, 2013 9:06 PM in response to AppleMan1958

Thank you very much.

Replace by itself loses the original effects.

I'll summarize your sequence of events that replaces the image while preserving the original adjustments and duration:

select original image

copy original image Command-C

replace original with new image Your instructions for drag, drop, choose Replace

paste [original] adjustments [to new image]->All Shift-Command-V

BTW, to preserve the duration, replacing the original with the new image was required. I had attempted to 1) add a new image 2) copy the original, and 3) paste adjustments to the new image, only to find out that I lost the duration.

I have to do this to over 100 images. Is there a script that can do this, or is there a way to modify some file that identifies the name of the images?

Note, once the original is replaced, the adjustments are lost and can't be applied a 2nd time. While testing this, I made errors with either the copy or paste adjustment. So I plan to keep a copy of the original until I'm sure everything works correctly.

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Answer 3

Jan 12, 2013 5:26 AM in response to b3e

Your method of Shift-Command-V works great if you made no other adjustments to the clip besides Ken Burns.

If you have mad a color correction, that would be applied, too, to the new photo.

For all the adjustments, see here. http://help.apple.com/imovie/#mov3a88306e

Command-option-R would paste only the Crop Adjustments and leave the rest intact.

Here is a list of all keyboard shortcuts. (which you probably already have) http://help.apple.com/imovie/#mov3ae8c33b

You can apply adjustments to multiple clips. For example, if you wanted to change every photo from FIT to CROP you could do that. You could also apply the same Ken Burns settings to multiple clips. You could apply the same color adjustments to multiple clips. To do this. EDIT/COPY (Copy a clip and also put the adjustments of that single clip on the clipboard). Command-A to select all. (Or Command -Click to select only certain clips). Then Edit/Paste Adjustments/xxx/ to apply the adjustment to all selected clips.

This will not help in your case where you have different Ken Burns settings for each photo. There is no way to copy adjustments from many to many. You can only do one to many.

I dont know of a way to script this either.

Glad it was helpful.

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Answer 4

May 27, 2015 3:54 PM in response to AppleMan1958

Thank you for this because it saved me a TON of time replacing photos that needed some retouching without having to start all over again. Thank you for this! I had a One to One appointment at Apple, my teacher Googled for this, understood it, we did exactly what you said and it worked perfectly!!!

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