Motion Stills in Final Cut Pro

Recently I’ve been experimenting with different software used to animate still photos with pan and zoom motion for video, otherwise known as the “Ken Burns effect.” These types of effects can add a lot of visual interest to a presentation when producing animated slideshows or video projects. Since video is increasingly becoming popular for many Web marketing uses, adapting high-quality architectural photography to this medium is a natural evolution. With regard to the real estate market in particular, research has shown that animated still images are just as effective as captured video. In fact, the video quality can be even better, through the use of higher-quality stills as source images.

There are several software options available, but I was looking for an approach that would integrate well with my video editing workflow in Final Cut Pro. I’m fairly new to FCP and the learning curve seems fairly steep so far. Although it’s not hard to learn the basics, advancing to more complex projects quickly reveals a daunting set of issues, options and controls that require more than a casual knowledge of video theory. My impression is that full mastery of FCP is probably achieved only by video professionals. Most users only scratch the surface of its very deep toolset, somewhat like Photoshop.

Final Cut Pro natively has all the necessary controls to animate stills, but the process is somewhat laborious, with no provision for automating multi-image projects and requiring manual intervention with each image and transition with modifications in the timeline. I’ve discovered that a better solution is to use a third-party software plugin called PhotoMotion from SlickFX. Using this plugin within FCP greatly simplifies the process of animating still effects, either for still images combined with other captured video, or for entire slideshows built from a series of still images. The software manages both the mechanics of each image’s motion, as well as the transitions between images. This latter is particularly helpful when the user inevitably begins to edit a project timeline, and the software automatically updates the required motion and transition parameters. This makes it easier build projects from scratch and then to experiment with different creative choices in the timeline.

I’m quite pleased to have discovered this software and expect that it will save me a significant amount of time when producing animated slideshow videos. I highly recommend it for those doing similar projects in Final Cut Pro.

Video: Nightfall in New Braunfels, authored in Final Cut Pro 6 with PhotoMotion