On Sun, 02 Feb 2003 21:07:39 GMT, Milburne Drysdale <milburnedrysdale@aboy.com> wrote:

>I'm surprised to find that none of the common desktop nonlinear

>editing programs for PC's seem to include "pan and zoom" (also known

>as the Ken Burns effect) which allows motion to be added to a still

>photo, as the camera appears to zoom in and move the viewer around a

>still photo.

>

>On the web I found Stage Tools company's Moving Picture software, a

>$70 standalone program which does exactly this task, but which runs

>only reluctantly on my system.

>

>Any other progs affording this important effect?

OK, here we go...! ;-)

I have just tried out, for pan-zoom within

larger-than-720x480 stills, Premiere, AE

(with my VERY limited knowledge of its use),

Vegas Video, Stage Tools Moving Picture, and

Canopus Imaginate. I used a 1280x960 image

of a house, with lots of shingles and

clap-boards (plus a black against white

horizontal car roof edge), moving a 640x480

image within it from lower left to almost

upper right, in 5 seconds or so... In all

cases sharpening the original was to be

avoided to minimize artifacting, though the

original was not astonishingly sharp to

begin with (it was not bad, though...;-).

The results: Premiere was unacceptable;

AE was worse (!!! - yes, I know this is

unlikely, but I thought I had found the

quality settings, etc. to optimize it,

short of applying directional blur...);

Vegas Video produced the smoothest result,

though also the least sharp; Moving

Picture was the next smoothest, and a bit

sharper; Imaginate was a bit less smooth

(though quite good), but sharper yet.

In the last three cases, sharpening the

motion-video results to match in sharpness

pretty much equalized the motion-artifacting,

so the differences in the last three appear

to come down to the amount of auto-blurring

of the original image that is built-in.

None looks as good as a photo moved properly

in front of a good camera, though, but all

of the last three are useable with images

with minimal contrasty edges (this is rather

limiting, though...). The easiest to use

are Imaginate and Moving Picture, with Vegas

Video OK (I can see why people like this

editor - with a few interface screen layout

changes [or dual 21" monitors...;-)], I

could easily like this program for general

editing...), Premiere a bit "klunky" (image

pan), and After Effects unacceptably poor

in its interface. Imaginate and Moving

Picture are both $200, rather pricey for

the limited uses. I prefer the interface

of Imaginate (though Moving Picture is not

bad), and it gets you more directly to

a result (I would probably sharpen most

of the output of Moving Picture), but I will

look further for other differences that may

be more important. Vegas Video has their

good pan-zoom tool built-in, though I found

it too soft for my uses (sharpening the

results works, though), and it is more

"finicky" to use than Imaginate or Moving

Picture. I suspect that the results from

all of these, with optimized pre and post

manipulations of the images, would be very

similar - and, given the nature of the D25

medium used, all have problems balancing

image sharpness with motion smoothness.

Some are easier than others to use, and

cheaper. Well, these are my preliminary

observations...;-)