John Purlia

Q: Copy Ken Burns coordinates to Crop of subsequent still?

I'm exploring a move from iMovie to FCP X, and seem to have hit a bit of a road block (surely due to my ignorance on the full capabilities of FCP), so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

 

In iMove I was able to string together several still frames and create the illusion of a contiguous pan'n'zoom effect across a long series of stills by playing some clever tricks with iMovies Crop and Ken Burns tools.  Basically, I'd do this:

 

Part One

  • Crop is applied to Still One.
  • Copy the crop from Still One and paste it onto Still Two.
  • Insert a dissolve transition between the two stills.
  • Still Two would have a short duration, briefly freezing playback following the transition from Still One to Still Two.
  • Still Two was then copied and pasted into the timeline, effectively making this Still Three.
  • To Still Three I'd apply a Ken Burns effect, which — in iMovie — conveniently defaulted the start rectangle to precisely match the Crop coordinates that had carried over with the duplication of Still Two.  In other words, having never previously touched Ken Burns for this still, iMovie defaulted each of the crop options (Trim and Ken Burns) to the one set of coordinates I'd already set — Crop. This was REALLY convenient and allowed me to switch between cropping options that all began with the same rectangle.

 

Part Two

  • Since iMovie defaults the Ken Burns start rectangle to match the Crop coordinates, all I had to do was establish the end rectangle to zoom to a different part of Still Three.
  • Here, I'd copy Still Three and paste it in as Still Four, with the intention of freezing for a moment before the next move of the camera,
  • To get Still Four to freeze, I alter the cropping by:
    • Swapping the start and end rectangles of the (carried over from Still Three) Ken Burns effect
    • Changing the crop from Ken Burns to Crop

 

Voila!!  This works because iMovie is smart about coordinated between each of the three crop options.  FCP doesn't seem to do that, and it appears that the Ken Burns start/stop rectangles default to some preset coordinates that are unrelated to either of the other two crop options.

 

I tried copying and pasting, specifying Crop as the attribute to be pasted from one still to the next, but that doesn't seem to "cross cropping option boundaries" (so to speak) from Crop to Ken Burns, or vice versa.

 

Am I missing something that would otherwise allow me to precisely have the Crop from one still be applied as the start coordinates on another still?

 

I generally have hundreds of these still-to-still transitions and I can't imaging eyeballing this from one frame to the next for an entire video.

 

Thanks!

iMac and MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.6), 20th Anniversary Mac, 128K Mac, original Apple II

Posted on Mar 2, 2013 2:04 PM

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Q: Copy Ken Burns coordinates to Crop of subsequent still?

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  • by plausible_deniability,

    plausible_deniability plausible_deniability Jan 29, 2015 7:28 PM in response to John Purlia
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    Jan 29, 2015 7:28 PM in response to John Purlia

    You have a clip (or series of clips) from which you want to get start/continue smooth Ken Burns crop, pan, zoom motion effects-

    1. Click on that first clip

    2. Edit -> Copy

    3. Click on the next clip in the sequence

    4. Edit -> Paste Adjustments -> Crop. The first clip's Ken Burns crop effect is now on the second, but we're not done yet.

    5. Now click on the Crop icon above the playback window (upper right)

    6. You should see: Style: ... Ken Burns ... circular arrows pair (on mouseover it says "Swap the Start and End areas")

    7. Click the circular arrows pair. The start of the second clip's Ken Burns crop effect will now exactly match the previous clip's crop effect.

    8. Repeat from #2 above, if you have more clips in your sequence.

     

    Once you get the hang of it, you'll find it gets easier and easier to create fluid, natural-looking zoom and pan effects, a la Ken Burns.

     

    I often find it necessary to split up an original clip into a series of shorter clips, so that each small segment has its own Ken Burns effect.

     

    Cheers!  (Yes, I know the question is almost two years old - it comes up high on a Google search for "imovie crop zoom pan" type searches, so it needed answering).

  • by OldNCrabby,

    OldNCrabby OldNCrabby Feb 3, 2015 7:52 AM in response to plausible_deniability
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apple Watch
    Feb 3, 2015 7:52 AM in response to plausible_deniability

    2 follow-up questions:

     

    1. Is there a way to make one of the KB frames the same size as the other, other than eyeballing it?  I think it could be done by copying various parameters from one to the other, but am hoping there is something more straight-forward.

    2. One thing iMovie still has over FCPX is transitioning between Crop & KB effects: if you switched between them, KB's start frame was the same as the frame used for Crop.  Haven't seen a way to accomplish this in FCPX.