A recent discussion on the MC - PC Forum was centred around a question about how to import digital images into MC and keep their sharpness etc.

The replies got me thinking about the old saying: Can't see the wood for the trees.

The different Pan & Zoom filters used in MC were often mentioned as the answer to the question.

I decided to do a test with one of my own ideas.

Now, if the objject of importing the still images is to use them in some forms of Ken Burns' effects, then one of the Pan & Zoom filters is the correct way to go.
But even there I would suggest that the images are prepared in a way similar to those I prepared before importing into MC.

If no special Pan & Zooming is going to be applied then I feel that the method I show here gives a better mage quality and sharpness.

Regards,
Douglas

What format is the tutorial? I cannot open it. thank you , Pam 

pwise:

What format is the tutorial? I cannot open it. thank you , Pam 

Hi Pam, it's a Flash Video. If you're using Safari browser on the Mac, you might switch over to Mozilla Firefox. Let me know if that works for you.

Adam

Hello Pam,

Did Adam's advice help?
I hope it did.

Regards,
Douglas

D - would have been interesting to see the side by side with the right hand image blown up with Pan and Zoom on the original full size still.

Pan and Zoom can resize a big JPEG very quickly to fit the screen and framing you desire and all within Avid.  It is also good for managing aspect ratio between HD square pixel projects and SD anamorphic pixels.

Cheers & keep 'em coming!

D

That's it! I need to use Firefox. Thank you. pam

Douglas, by pre-cropping your image to 1920x1080, you have reduced the number of pixels to fit the HD format as a full-frame image. That's fine if you are not going to zoom in. If you're planning "Ken burns" zooms and pans, you need to make sure that the image has more pixels. Your original image was 3888x2592. If you had set your cropping tool in photoshop to 3888x2187 - the crop would still be 16:9 ratio, but you will have many more pixels to zoom in to. Actually, if you use Avid Pan and Zoom, you don't need to crop the image at all - just leave it at its original size and ratio (assuming square pixels). The Pan and Zoom tool will maintain the correct aspect ratio when imported into Avid. For initial plotting of moves, use the realtime filter setting in PAN and Zoom. When happy with the moves, change the filter to Gausian and re-render and everything will look lovely. The only other thing to get to grips with, is the easing in and out of the start and end of moves. By the way, if your original image doesn't have that many pixels in the first place, you can increase the number (up-rez) in Photoshop and use re-sample the image with the bi-cubic setting. This will obviously not give more detail than the original, but will soften the edges of the original pixels which reduces the effect of line/pixel jitter - especially if you do moves with such an image.

danny:

That's fine if you are not going to zoom in. If you're planning "Ken burns" zooms and pans, you need to make sure that the image has more pixels.

Welcome to the Forum, Danny

Thanks for your input.
I completely agree with you.

I see that the text to my first post here is misleading.
I'll edit it it later.

But if you listen carefully from the first 30 seconds to about 1 minute into the tutorial I do say that the method in the tutorial is not suitable for Ken Burns effects.

I hope to hear some more input from you in the future as you seem to know your way around these sort of effects.
There can never be too many ideas here on the Forum.

Regards,
Douglas

"Welcome to the Forum, Danny. Thanks for your input. I completely agree with you"

Thanks for your welcome Douglas.

Over the years, I've done quite a lot of docs featuring loads of stills with "rostrum" moves - as we say in th UK. Until 3 or 4 years ago, I used to get a lab print the jpegs and tiffs onto 10x8 inch photo paper and have a proper rostrum cameraman re-film them. Not as clumsy as it may sound - no plotting of moves and waiting for things to render, just cut them into the timeline, job done!

One advantage of this was that one could introduce ramdom lighting across the image and also add props such as frames, surface textures behind the image. Another benefit was that the process of printing and re-filming eliminated some of the awful line and pixel jitter that one sees often today.

I grew up with an awareness of PAL and NTSC interlacing atefacts too - often overlooked today if you monitor only on LCD screens. Something which looks fine on the LCD (with fine detail) can look appalling when down-scaled to SD interlaced. This is why I reccommend the Gausian setting for rendering - it seems to round off the pixel edges somewhat. If you use the higher rendering setting, not only does it take longer to render, it is so perfect that the pixel edges can make things worse with fine detail - particularly with rostrum moves.

I have a question to Douglas that maybe would make a good demonstration: How to make rostrum (Ken Burns) moves with picture rotation - something which I find very easy on Final Cut. Does the Avid 3D effect allow this (I see a tab for "axis"), and how does using the 3D effect compare with Pan and Zoom?

Danny,
I have made a lot of Tutorials for this Community.

That means that I don't have much time to do any editing! (Well, maybe that is a little exagerated)
But just because I made a tutorial does not mean I am an expert on the topic. Quite often I teach myself the technique being asked by someone on the forum in order to illustrate the answer better with a video tutorial.
Or I read something interesting about a function of MC that I hadn't known before etc. etc.

I think I have used some Ken Burns effects about 6 or 7 years ago, and then it wasn't on MC.

So where does it leave us?

Avid FX 3D warp has a lot of interesting (and for me unexplored functions).
Others on the Forums use them daily, and I am sure they will pop up and add their tips too.

I don't know if you have the full-boxed set of MC, the Academis version or even the free trial.
But there are some more plugin effects from Boris (BCC filters) which can also do a lot of moves that I am sure lend themselves to Ken Burn effects too.

Let this exchange of thoughts mature a little here, and see if any real experts turn up.
Otherwise, in a few days, drop me an email and we can discuss this further off the Forum.
Your idea sounds interesting.... we can look at that a little closer too.

Regards,
Douglas

Douglas,

Your tutorials are invaluable, and I can't thank you enough.

I do think on this one you should of included your import settings. I've just upgraded to v4 from some old version. I miss the "same as source" setting.

Thanks again (and if you covered import settings in another tutorial forgive me, you've done so many and I'm just starting to look at them all).

Lash

larue:

I do think on this one you should of included your import settings. I've just upgraded to v4 from some old version. I miss the "same as source" setting.

Nice to hear from an old cowboy! ]:D]

After watching one of my newly uploaded tutorials for the first time online.... I seethings that I should have done.... or shouldn't have done.
Also, although I have a machine setup with MC 4.x I haven't a copy of Camtasia Studio on it yet.
So I am still using version 3.1.2 of MC for the tutorials.

Thanks, however, for adding your comments to this thread.
All constructive criticism is welcome.
Always.

Regards,
Douglas

As usual an excellent video!  I can't believe anybody knows who Lash Larue is today!  Thanks again for all your hard work.

JR

Douglas,

As I build up my knowledge of how things are done in MC, I occasionally find things taken for granted that are not obvious to someone who has just started to learn MC. One of these is the "loading" of stills ...

"Back here in MC I'll open the largest of the shrine picutres I prepared in Photoshop ...."

How easily that rolls of the tongue! How lost I am in understanding how you did that! I have looked at "importing" stills (they come in as video clips the way I have done it) and they do not show up with a ".jpg" name in the monitors.

Could you please do a tutorial on how best to open or load or import stills into MC - or at least give a hint on the normal approach?

Thanks!

When you use the Pan and Zoom effect, you are actually pointing to a high resolution image on your platform, instead of actually importing the image and creating an Avid media file. This method allows you to do truly resolution independent moves. But if you do want to actually import and create a media file, in the import options choose "do not re-size image", RGB for color space and "ordered for current format" for file field order, not either even or odd fields first. If no alpha channel, "ignore".