Final Cut Pro - panning stills

karavite

Registered
Hi, I'm beginning to explore editing movies on my Mac and am outgrowing iMovie. What I need to do is this - have still images with slow panning and/or zooming on the still - kind of like what Ken Burns does on all his stills in his documentaries.

I read somewhere that Final Cut Pro deosn't really do this well. I'm not sure where I read this or if it was referring to an older version, but I do remember the article or site saying these types of effects came out kind of jerky on FCP (it was comparing FCP to Avid). Does anyone know if this is true and/or if there are other less costly apps that would allow me to do just this one thing. Believe me, I really really want to buy FCP for all kinds of reasons, but I cannot justify this right now and if I did buy FCP and found it could not handle this type of thing with stills, well that would be a major dissapointment!

Oh, my goals is to print edited video to tape or DVD - quicktime is not my first priority. Thanks in advance.
 
First, FCP doe image pans plenty well. I have not had any problems in quality or jerkiness.

There is a plugin that makes pan and scan edits much easier but I can't recall the name, which leads me to my last comment.

Go to www.2-pop.com for the best FCP forums on the net. Choose from the pulldoan menu on the left.

As for other apps, Premiere can do it (but I would never ever buy this App again after working with FCP). After Effects can do it for a little cheaper than FCP. I may have even seen some shareware Pan & Scan apps? Not sure, do a search...
 
mindbend - thanks for the information - this new forum may get me in trouble and take more of my time than macosx.com!

I think I just need to bite the bullet and buy FCP.

One question - does FCP have a fair amount of options and control for panning on images? Can you zoom as well as pan? Control and and all directions of panning, speed...? Wait - I just found the answer on the forum you sent me!
 
Yes, yes and yes.

FCP's tools for that are not as sophisticated as After Effects'. but still very usable.

That pan & scan plugin will make your job a piece of cake, though an expensive start up cost (plugin not included with FCP).
 
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