Ken Burns - iMovie '09 Very Limited

[KMac777]

I'm new to the iMovie arena and I am creating slideshows with photos. I'm trying to use the Ken Burns effect, but basically in my mind it 'sucks'. Sometimes the green 'Start' square does not cover the entire picture and the red 'Stop' square does not get tiny enough to focus on one face. So either I don't know what the heck I am doing or there is a better alternative to create the effect from soemwhere else and bring it into iMovie. Anybody know of a better way to do the ken Burns effect in iMovie '09?

 

[huntercr]

I'm new to the iMovie arena and I am creating slideshows with photos. I'm trying to use the Ken Burns effect, but basically in my mind it 'sucks'. Sometimes the green 'Start' square does not cover the entire picture and the red 'Stop' square does not get tiny enough to focus on one face. So either I don't know what the heck I am doing or there is a better alternative to create the effect from soemwhere else and bring it into iMovie. Anybody know of a better way to do the ken Burns effect in iMovie '09?

I think you might be slightly misunderstanding the purpose of the controls for the Ken Burns effect on imovie. The green "start" window can't be as large as the whole picture... your aspect ratio isn't the same from photo and movie. If you shrink the photo down so it fits in the movie's aspect ratio, you'll see pillar bars that "zoom" in the finished product. This is iMovie preventing you from doing something that looks silly.

Similarly with the end window... the red box only lets you shrink down to as low of a resolution that will still look good when applied. If you wanted to use this for some sort of pixelation effect, I'm afraid that won't work.

If you are zooming in to a photo that needs more precision than this, you can always do it in FotoMagico ( professional version, unfortunately since the home edition won't let you export back to imovie) or Final Cut Express ( no built in KB but you can do it manually with motion curves ).

Hope this helps!