Poor mans Ken Burns effect

[Monroe]

Hi,

I’m sure most of you are familiar with Ken Burns’ PBS series on the
civil war. He had a slew of
still photos that he very effectively simulated motion on by either
panning a video(movie) camera
across the stationary photo or by moving the photo in front of a
stationary camera. So how to
simulate the same effect but with the added problem that I only have
“tiff” images and I don’t
want to go to a hard copy to do the same thing that Ken Burns did. I am
thinking of either
cropping the images and then “stitching” them back together again in
successive video frames or
trying animation with cropped images. Any further suggestions will be
greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Monroe

[Jeff Markham]

Using a video editing package would be the easiest way to accomplish this.
Try the preview version of Axogon at www.axogon.com.

[Schobie]

To paraphrase what Monroe wrote..
=====
...Ken Burns’ simulated motion on by either panning a camera across the
stationary photo or by moving the photo in front of a stationary camera...
So how to simulate effect with only “tiff” images?
=====

Hmm... my animation skill is very basic, but you might try this. You might
be able to script (I don't write them) some effects to semi automate them.

1) create a movie (say a 640x480 pixel landscape Image Size) with desired
number of frames (say 10 frames). I've never worked with a large number of
frames, so I can't suggest the best way, only the basics. Defaults to *.AVI
(optional compression) format. Can MPEG.

NOTE: The movie file size is very Image Size sensitive (21 uncompressed
frames of 640x480 is abt 19MB). If your Image Size is large, you might have
to keep the frame count loaded into the program quite low. You -can- just
keep appending more frames on to the end of the disk file by partial loading
the last frame, but I can't vouch for the 'reliability'.

2) The picture (obviously) must be larger than the view screen size unless
you just want to zoom in. If your TIFF
is not large enough for your view screen, then you must resample it. (A
touch of Unsharp Mask [50-150%, 1-2 radius, 1-4 threshold] will help restore
crisp focus lost to anti-alias).

NOTE: I've heard that there is a 'fractal' compression plugin that really
rocks when you need a range of sharp image sizes... way better than standard
resample.

3) Import the large picture as an object into the smaller sized new movie
and position it for the first frame. The excess will just 'hang' over the
edge of the desplay area for now. COPY the picture to the clipboard.

NOTE: Objects exist seperate from the movie frames, which are a sequence of
backgrounds. Initially all the frames will be blank (the paper color).

4) Repeat the following sequence for each frame in the set.
a) Combine Picture Object with background (hotkey: <ctrl><DnArrow>).
b) Paste clipboard picture as an object reposition for next frame.
c) Copy Newly positioned Picture to Clipboard and Advance to next frame.

NOTE: When you Combine the Duplicate with the background it gets cropped.
(no wasted file size)
HINT: Repositioning the picture for the next frame before advancing to it
allows you to turn it off to see the effect of your motion.
NOTE: You can vary opacity, etc for fading to/from paper color or second
picture object. Motion blur might help
for fast pans/zooms

5) On the last frame, MAKE SURE you DELETE objects from the object docker
before saving the file, because they'll be combined into the backgrounds and
screw up everything. The copy in the clipboard is OK TO KEEP. You can then
close the file, partial load the last frame, add another... say 10 frames,
select the first new frame, and paste the clipboard picture into it and go
back to step 4. This way you can edit a -large- file in memory.

HINT: Record the XY position of the last object merged into the last frame
so you can index your pic easily at a later time.
NOTE: You can also insert or append other movies into your current movie,
But I suspect it will quickly get kinda kludgy with large numbers of frames.

Hope this helps... might be worth the hassle if the moves can be scripted.
Rob

[Monroe]

?Thanks, I do appreciate the time and effort you put in to responding to
my query. You gave me
a great start in laying out the procedure. All I have to do now is
figure out what picture
movement and frame rate will give me the look of a smooth pan.

Again, Thanks again.

Monroe

[Steven Simmons]

what is the final output format? If it will always be shown on a
computer monitor, I would consider using Flash. That will save a
ton on file size, and it will be easy to add a sound track as
well.

> Hi,
>
> I’m sure most of you are familiar with Ken Burns’ PBS series
on the
> civil war. He had a slew of

> still photos that he very effectively simulated motion on by
either
> panning a video(movie) camera

> across the stationary photo or by moving the photo in front of
a

> stationary camera. So how to
> simulate the same effect but with the added problem that I only
have
> “tiff” images and I don’t
> want to go to a hard copy to do the same thing that Ken Burns
did. I am
> thinking of either
> cropping the images and then “stitching” them back together
again in
> successive video frames or
> trying animation with cropped images. Any further suggestions
will be
> greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Monroe
>

Steven G. Simmons Jr.
www.ToadServers.com

[retro]

just what I was going to suggest - flash would make easy work outta this
problem, plus the benefits of smaller files, and better effects such as
panning in and out - after you prepare the images in PP first of course

8-)

Retrogrrl