FCE Zooming within clips

Keyframes

Sue,

I'm using Final Cut Express 3.5 but I think this should apply to you. The biggest thing you need to understand when working with effects in a Final Cut application is that you'll be working with Keyframes.

Basically, a Keyframe determines when you want an effect to begin and when you want it to end. Think of them as starting and ending points of motion.

Here you want to zoom in on an object? Sort of like the Ken Burns effect from iMovie, only applied to video?

When you double click on a video it opens in the Viewer. There is a tab on the far right called "Motion." Click the Motion tab and you'll see a window where you can control the Keyframes.

There will be one section called "Scale." Under scale it should be set to 100%. To the right of that there should be a small diamond shaped button, that is your Keyframe button.

Place the playhead on the timeline where you want your zoom to begin, click on the Keyframe button. Here set the starting scale of your image, for example let's say 100%.

Now move the playhead to the ending position of the zoom. Click the Keyframe button again to create an ending scale. Now set the scale to something larger, say 150%.

When you playback the movie, the clip should slowly zoom from 100 to 150% between those two keyframes.

Hope this helps, good luck!

 

in the timeline double click the new clip it will bring it into the viewer and then go to the motion tab..

 

Hi,
This post helped me greatly. I'm relatively new to FCE (3.5) and was having the same issue.

I do have one follow-up question. How do you keep the letterbox bars when zooming like this? Thanks.

 

hey taylor
add your bars at the end of your edit. Nest your timeline and then add the bars to the nested sequence, that way you're not having to render the effect for all of the clips. I have final cut studio but im assuming you have these features in fce.
ken stone has some great examples of both the matte and the ken burns effect on his site as well as a lot of other great info.
good luck

 

Sorry for my ignorance. What do you mean by "nesting"? Thanks for the help.

 

That's ok Taylor. Nesting is when you take various things, in this case a timeline with various clips, then basically put them into a sequence that acts as a container. Again look at Ken Stones website, a lot of good stuff there.