I want to know if there is a way to add slight random motion to images - I have about 100 - I don't want to do it by hand if I can avoid it. I know that Ultimate S and Excalibur do, but I was hoping for a script that might do it.

Thats basically what US and Excal are is scripts. But I suppose you are looking for something gratis?

David, I haven't hear of a free script that does that.

But if you do it regularly Ultimate S not only does that, but it allows you to set the parameters, the type and occurance of transitions, the length of transitions, etc. and to top it all off it will fit the image lengths to match the length of your soundtrack.

Basically after you set your parameters, in one click it gives you a finished slideshow with music. Instantly. It also turns on de-interlacing for the photos which should be done also.

You might already know all that it does, but I thought I'd point it out in case.

Obviously Excalibur does the same things, and many love it, but I haven't used it myself.

The only problem I have with these auto Ken Burns scripts is they don't know where faces are so they may panoff into nothing, or crop out important things. I run the script mainly to randomize my movements, and then I usually touch about every picture to tweak where the motion is goign or coming from.

I still think it saves me some time . . may be.

You are right about tweaking, but another thing is to mimimize the motion and the percentage of movement, which Ultimate S does. If you set your parameter correctly the amount of tweaking needed is minimal. Personally I do tons of tweaking and adjust every photo, but you can get away with almost none if you set the settings correctly.

Excalibur and Ultimate S definitely both handle the task with ease. As you said, the movements are basically random but I still find it faster to run the script and then tweak over adding movements individually to each image.

One thing I do when using Excalibur, I can double-click an image (to get playback looping on that image) and then just click the video scrapbook button multiple times. It will only affect SELECTED images so only that one image will be changed. If I like the way it comes out after a couple of clicks, I can then double-click on the next image that needs adjusting.