Am I going insane here? After upgrading from iMovie 9, I cant for the life of me seem to find the Zoom feature for the Maps and Backgrounds. Please see attached screen shot. Before I would be able to zoom in and capture more animation, now the dots barely seem to move. Any ideas? 
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)
Click on the Map in the project timeline to select it. Now click on the Adjust button at the top right of the window above the Viewer. Select the Crop tool from the range of items in the toolbar, then for Style click on Ken Burns. You will now be able to adjust the Start and End positions for the Map animation. For my test I left the Start in the default position and adjusted the End position. Just click on the rectangle you want to adjust then drag the corners to the desired size. Finally, move the rectangle to the required position and click on the Tick mark at the right.
John
Hi John,
Thanks for your reply. I tried the ken burns feature, but it does not work as intended. It zooms in on the already zoomed in map, if that makes sense. So my trip from San Francisco to San Jose still looks like a single converged dot, just closer up and blurrier 😝. The feature I am talking about for the old iMovies was this one:
If you checked the zoom in option, it would zoom so that the length of the region would fill up the screen. So my trip from San Francisco to San Jose would actually be a substantial line instead of two dots right next to each other. I hope that made sense... Thanks again.
I see what you mean. The two cities are probably too close together for the Maps function to work effectively in iMovie 10.
The "Zoom In" feature is still available in iMovie 10, but only for the Globes (not Maps or Stills). When you click on a Globe in the project timeline, the toolbar above the Viewer shows 2 separate elements - Route (for Start and End points) and Style. Click on the Style button on the far right and the last item in the drop down list is "Zoom In".
Unfortunately, the "Zoom In" feature still doesn't give the result you are looking for. See the following screenshot which shows the drop down Style menu items:
An alternative to using iMovie's Maps function is to create your own animation. It can be done fairly easily.
The next step is to import both Maps into iMovie. Once in the Project timeline (original followed by the lined copy), using the Crop tool under Adjust (above the Viewer), change the setting to Fit for both stills (they default to Ken Burns). Now insert a wipe transition between them. In your case a Wipe Down transition works best. Adjust the duration of the two stills and the transition to suit.
Now you have an "animated" map showing the route travelled (albeit in a straight line over water)!
This technique can be extended to show changes of direction. Simply draw separate lines on maps and use the appropriate wipe transition. A little experimenting will soon give you the feel for it. In your case you could draw lines along the approximate road route between San Francisco and San Jose, changing direction where necessary. It may sound like a lot of work but really doesn't take long.
John
So apparently I'm not the only one surprised.
What I find the most annoying is that my projects have been "transparently" updated but the actual video itself is modified!
It's sometimes very frustrating to follow Apple's "updates"...
iMovie 10 (iLife '13) Maps do not have zoom
