iMovie 3, Ken Burns Effect

xaqtlyxaqtly
Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
Has anybody else noticed that the Ken Burns effect renders very, very slowly in iMovie 3? It takes me a couple minutes per still picture to render that effect, and I'm on a MDD dual 1 GHz Mac. Nothing else takes very long but that effect sure does. Is this just the nature of that effect, or is something weird going on? Does it render slowly for everybody else?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 15
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Moving to Digital Hub.
  • Reply 2 of 15
    ijerryijerry Posts: 615member
    about 30 sec a pic on my imac 17". Sorry dude. Not sure how to fix it for you. But at least you know that something is not quite right.
  • Reply 3 of 15
    robotkillerrobotkiller Posts: 24member
    iM3 is slow for everything....on a Ti 550/512Mb, Ken Burns on some stills can take almost a minute......i figured it was my proc, but if it's slow on your machine then that's just a shame
  • Reply 4 of 15
    mr. macintoshmr. macintosh Posts: 463member
    its slow depending on the length of the effect.
  • Reply 5 of 15
    murkmurk Posts: 935member
    You have to consider how long the clip is that you are rendering. On my old 450 G4 Sawtooth, a 12 second clip takes a little over 2 minutes to render. I just did a 3 minute long video with 27 shots. While rendering, I was always setting up the next shot, or setting up a title, so I really didn't pay too much attention to it. When I had free time, I was reading here. Just got Final Cut Express, however, and was stunned to find out it took about 7 minutes to render a Photoshop file into a clip. I also wasn't able to use FC for anything else while rendering.
  • Reply 6 of 15
    scottibscottib Posts: 381member
    [quote]Originally posted by Xaqtly:

    <strong>Has anybody else noticed that the Ken Burns effect renders very, very slowly in iMovie 3? It takes me a couple minutes per still picture to render that effect, and I'm on a MDD dual 1 GHz Mac. Nothing else takes very long but that effect sure does. Is this just the nature of that effect, or is something weird going on? Does it render slowly for everybody else?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I'm not sure if this applies, but it might be the picture's resolution. I just did a quick test on my DP800/1.1GB no other apps running.



    Length: 4 seconds; 100% zoom



    2272x1704 jpeg = 40 seconds

    640x480 (same image) = 12 seconds



    Now to get 2+ minutes, you'd need a huge file, but maybe that has something to do with it (?).



    [edit]ack--forgot to notice the clip length--whatever default is--5 seconds?



    [ 02-12-2003: Message edited by: scottiB ]</p>
  • Reply 7 of 15
    xaqtlyxaqtly Posts: 450member
    Okay, some more details. I ran a couple more tests. First I tried a picture straight out of my digicam. It's 2048x1536 resolution. I did a 10 second zoom from 1.00 to 1.55.



    Time: 55 seconds.



    Then I took that picture, brought it into Photoshop, reduced the size to 640x480 and imported it into iMovie. I applied the same settings to this one as I did the first one.



    Time: 19 seconds.



    Since I'm probably going to put these things on a DVD that will be played on normal TVs, there's no reason to use any resolution higher than 640x480. Unfortunately that means for all the pics I want to use, I have to convert them all to 640x480 first, and obviously iPhoto can't do that.



    Maybe I'll try GraphicConverter. Anyway that seems to be why it takes so long. Still kind of a pain because I have to convert all the pictures I want to use to 640x480 first before bringing them into iMovie, which for me essentially negates all the benefits of iMovie being able to access the iPhoto libraries directly. Are you listening, Apple?



    Maybe the next version of iMovie should have an option to convert all imported photos to 640x480 automatically. And maybe iPhoto should have an option to resize photos too, not just crop them.
  • Reply 8 of 15
    scottibscottib Posts: 381member
    I haven't played around with iMovie3 much (and may be totally off-base here), but when zooming in and panning, I'd think you'd want a larger size (say 1280x960), so the image doesn't get pixelated when zooming in tightly. Does it pixelate now in 640x480?



    I agree that iPhoto should offer a "resize for iMovie or iDVD option." I don't use iPhoto and do exactly what you mentioned: I run a batch convert in GC, then import in iMovie (but now, you can drag to the clip bin from the desktop, I believe).



    [ 02-13-2003: Message edited by: scottiB ]</p>
  • Reply 9 of 15
    ijerryijerry Posts: 615member
    ummm, choose the photos you want out of iphoto then go to the export menu, in there you have the option to export them to any size you want, including 640 X 480. I use it all the time for my webpages. or when posting pics here or there. So iPhoto does resize...
  • Reply 10 of 15
    kcmackcmac Posts: 1,051member
    iJerry.



    Thanks. I never knew that. I knew it resized when you click on the email icon/button. This is a very useful feature. Now if iPhoto would allow me to download all or some from my camera...
  • Reply 11 of 15
    kcmackcmac Posts: 1,051member
    Side issue, you all read this yet? Think I found it on Macintouch.



    From: Karl Hehr

    Subject: Killing Ken Burns effect in iMovie 3



    With the release of iMovie 3 we were all introduced to the Ken Burns Effect. A very nice effect, but not on every single picture, so looked into ways of stopping the zoom and pan effects. The easiest and most simple is just holding the esc key on the cmd+. keys, but I wanted a better solution so I found these easy steps work wonders.

    navigate to and open ~Library/Preferences/com.apple.iMovie3.plist (use TextEdit, plist editor doesn't work)

    Locate the entry 'autoApplyPanZoomToImportedStills'

    Then two lines down it says 'true' change this to false

    Save and open iMovie 3



    Now Ken only comes to visit when you want him to. (by hitting the 'apply' button)
  • Reply 12 of 15
    ijerryijerry Posts: 615member
    You can do that or just drag the photo from your library instead of hitting apply. That works just as good, and you don't have to do any hacking.
  • Reply 13 of 15
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    That's a smart hidden pref though for those so inclined. If there's enough demand for more control like this, a GUI toggle in the prefs could easily be added by Apple later. In the meantime...
  • Reply 14 of 15
    xaqtlyxaqtly Posts: 450member
    [quote]Originally posted by ijerry:

    <strong>ummm, choose the photos you want out of iphoto then go to the export menu, in there you have the option to export them to any size you want, including 640 X 480.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Ah yes, but that involves exporting them first, then importing them into iMovie. That's the extra step I was hoping to do without. I can just as easily batch convert a bunch of photos in GraphicConverter or something else, the point is that it's still an extra step, and I still can't simply use photos from my iPhoto library inside of iMovie, which still renders that particular function useless to me.



    I am aware that it's a minor complaint and it's not a big deal to just export then import. As far as higher resolution pics, I noticed the same amount of blockiness with the 2048x1536 pics as I did with the 640x480 ones. The Ken Burns effect apparently doesn't care if the photo is high rez or not.
  • Reply 15 of 15
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    I assume that when you bring your iPhotos into iMovie, it converts them to the screen resolution. Actually, if it doesn't it would mean that you can export to almost any size without compomising the images' quality (well, unless the movie is bigger than the original images' resolution). So you could see that as an advantage.



    The blockiness is probably the TV pixel resolution you're seeing in iMovie. TV pixels are rectangular and NTSC TVs are low-res, so that's probably why the main windows looks blocky -- it's impersonating a TV. When you export to the final to DV, QT or anything else, it should look fine.



    [ 02-15-2003: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>
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