Slideshow Animation

Peter C.

Peter C.

Veteran
I often do videos that incorporate ken burns like motion to photos. Very simple sliding, zooming in and out etc. I'm always looking for new techniques and pickup tips from other peoples work. I stumbled upon this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0jYVjs_dyQ I was curious if anyone recognizes what software was used? I like how elements of the photos were animated. How difficult is this? This looks very slick and high end so it might be out of my reach.
 
It's difficult and time-consuming for a novice. The best-of-the-best still do it from scratch. A lot of PS, AE, some NLE.

In the more faster-paced modern world, 99% purchase premade templates from services such as this one...hundreds of options used in all kinds of everyday content.

https://www.motionvfx.com/store,templates,1.html

Still need some experience and a familiar brain as even tweaking the custom controls inside the templates will offer advanced flexibility.

Some will purchase the templates and build upon them, or even break them down and completely change them (but it's very helpful to have most of the groundwork complete).
 
I agree I've had the best luck with specialized programs that have templates that can be tweaked. I'm fond of Proshow although they've been bought out by a company and now runs it as a subscription. I've had less luck with plugins for NLE programs. I use FCPX and I can't update it do to hardware restrictions, because of os update restrictions. In addition money is quickly lost as plugins you bought are obsoleted because they're not supported by newer NLE version. Or you can't buy current plugins because they won't support your older version NLE. I also find many of these NLE plugins work slow and clunky requiring renders and susceptible to crashes. NLE don't seem very good tools dealing with lots of photos.

I've got a project where I'll be doing a short historical movie mainly based on photos so I'm looking at ideas. I'm a big fan of Ken Burns and saw this interesting video on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wz_HSBydsw After watching it I realized I don't need anything too fancy just need concentrate on the story and images to support it.
 
Just like in the other thread, sometimes simple is enough and will work even better.

As far as the highly complex templates with a lot of moving parts...in short, you need a very good computer.

And they usually work better in Motion and After Effects rather than FCP X or Premiere. (I only purchase the FCP X ones for a faster integrated workflow with all of the other elements - imported, third-party or stock - that are already in that software.)
 
Apart from the opening bouncing loop earth animation the rest looks very much achievable in After Effects. There are dozens of great AE templates you can buy at reasonable prices that are easily customisable with your own footage, maps, graphics, text etc. That particular clip use some of the popular "ink splash" type reveals and spreads. A selection of which can be seen here.

Chris Young.

https://elements.envato.com/video-templates/ink/compatible-with-after-effects
 
Chris thanks for the link looks like they used some of those effects. I've had mixed results with those templates. I found the simpler ones like titles are good but I once had a client send me a complex one, where you insert the images and they flew in and around but I had now idea how to control things as simple as the timing to match the music. I'm a bit scared of AE. In this project if I want to time text to what's being said or an image to hold for a set amount of time... I have Motion on the Mac but feel the same way about it.
 
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