FCPX Quick Tip - The Ken Burns Effect

Kevin P. McAuliffe
Toronto Canada

©2011 CreativeCOW.net. All rights reserved.

One of the most common effects that editors do on an almost daily basis is the "Ken Burns" effect. The panning and zooming of still images to create a powerful visual. Creating the effect in FCPX is quick and simple, and with this Final Cut Pro X video tutorial quick tip, Kevin P McAuliffe will have you creating it in no time.

Comments

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Re: FCPX Quick Tip - The Ken Burns Effect
by Luis Palacios

How can I apply this effect to multiples pictures at the same time?

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Re: FCPX Quick Tip - The Ken Burns Effect
by Ed Kulis

Hi,

Good tutorial on Ken Burns effect. Thanks.
My question is how to get a random ken burns throughout a series of pictures without the need to edit each one.

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@FCPX Quick Tip - The Ken Burns Effect
by David Long

If you want to hold before or after the effect, you can take the picture, apply the Ken Burns effect to taste, and then convert the clip into a compound clip (option-G by default). Once it's a compound clip, you can use retiming. For example, go to the start frame or end frame and shift-H to apply a hold. (If the clip is at the end of your project and you try to go to the end frame, make sure the little film edge isn't shown. If it is, you're actually beyond the end, so use the left arrow to back up to the real end frame.)

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Re: FCPX Quick Tip - The Ken Burns Effect
by Remo Liechti

Nice explanation.

Question: Imagine I have 1200 pictures in an image sequence and I want to do a timelapse combined with the ken burn effect. What's the best way to achieve this?

I can think of this solution:
1) import all pictures to an event
2) add all pictures with default length of maybe 0.05 seconds so we end up in a 60 seconds movie
3) export the movie as a movie file and re-import it to the event
4) do the ken burn effect on the movie

BUT: since my project is with 1080p, but my cam dslr shot images with 21MP, I loose much of details!

Any other solution?

Thanks

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Re: FCPX Quick Tip - The Ken Burns Effect
by Bill Vincent

Nice tutorial, Kevin - however I thought the "real" Ken Burns effect was the subject growing in relation to the picture background - not just a simple zoom in any direction, or pan. That requires graphics editing software that "cuts" the subject out of the picture and onto another layer, which then gets enlarged while the background stays idle. Guess that's too much to be able to do easily.

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Re: FCPX Quick Tip - The Ken Burns Effect
by Sean Thomas

Once you move in to your face with the END keyframe - how do you hold on our face for 2 sec.?

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Re: Quick Tip - FCPX - The Ken Burns Effect
by Alexander Kallas

Jerky plug at start for Richard Harrington is un-watchable

Cheers
Alexander

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Re: Quick Tip - FCPX - The Ken Burns Effect
by Alexander Kallas

Unless you know where all the options are in FCPX (and that will take lots of experimenting) this effect is much more logical and intuitive in Motion 3 or 4.

Cheers
Alexander

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Re: Tutorial: Quick Tip - FCPX - The Ken Burns Effect
by Ben Bowden

Thank God I found a good tutorial for this finally. I love this effect thanks!

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Re: Quick Tip - FCPX - The Ken Burns Effect
by Gerry Fraiberg

Cool! Thanks for this, Kevin. This can be a big time saver in projects with many photos.

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Re: Quick Tip - FCPX - The Ken Burns Effect
by Tangier Clarke

How do you get the effect to stop at a designated point in the clip rather than for the duration of the clip?

Funny I started trying to do this before (see this thread) using the transform controls only to find out that there's no smoothing for keyframes as there were in FCP 7 and there's no animation curve option for keyframes (which was just a hope - I know that's what Motion is for).

Tangier

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Re: Quick Tip - FCPX - The Ken Burns Effect
by Lance Moody

As mentioned above, this effect is useless for any fine control--it doesn't look smooth and there are no timing controls. Strictly for the "look at me, I is an editor crowd".

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Re: Quick Tip - FCPX - The Ken Burns Effect
by Jordan McGehee

What about several transitions in Ken Burns Effect? Example: Starts small, zooms out and then goes small in a different part of picture.

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