Ken Burns effect
 

Can someone help me with the ken burns effect in FCP?

What size should a graphic/photo be to bring into FCP from photoshop?

How can I make some zooms in and out of the photo...spinning into place etc...?

Also, let's say I place a color filter on a clip....how can I make the effect fade in and out? Would I make keyfames in the keyframe or motion editor?

Thanks,

Rich

Rich,
The size of the photo you import depends on how much panning you want to do. If you want to pan and zoom like Burns does then the image will have to be larger than 720x480 if you're using DV (and bigger if you're using HD, of course). So if you want to do a 2x zoom in Final Cut then make your image at least double the resolution of NTSC DV. If you are using DV, make sure when you're sizing your image in Photoshop that you use the pixel aspect ratio tools to get a better idea of how the image will look on video.

You do your zooming, panning and other movement commands in the motion tab, using the keyframes in that tab. Just experiment with the settings, and you'll figure it out quickly. Don't forget that you can manipulate your image in the canvas as well as with the sliders and controls in the motion tab.

If you want to keyframe a filter then use the keyframes in (surprise!) the filters tab. Hope this helps.

Rich,

I've been involved in another thread covering this same thing and have posted a sample showing the final result there.

I simply imported the photos into Photoshop as is--JPEGs at 300 dpi with resolutions of 1800x1200. I know there are ways to "optimize" photos and size them more correctly, but time was short for this, and after testing importing them as I received them, they look fine.

After importing them, I'd resize them and position them for the final look, then open the photo clip and at the end set keyframes for both scale and center.

Then, I'd move to the front of the photo clip, set keyframes again for the same two things, then simply drag and resize it as needed.

After that, all you have to do is check it out and tweak if necessary.