I've been trying to create a smooth Ken Burns effect with Pan and Zoom. Sometimes it works fine. Other times, especially with small objects like tree branches, it flickers very badly and is uncomfortable to watch. It's been suggested that I add some blurring effect to ease the problem. This only works to a limited extent, with the end result being that the flickering is now blurry too. Is there another way of creating Ken Burns in Kdenlive? I've tried using composite transitions and it's not much better.

Thanks,
waynevid
kdenlive 0.8.3
mageia 2011

Try this: http://www.photofilmstrip.org/1-1-Home.html

Thanks for the tip. Photofilmstrip does work better than Kdenlive's Pan and Zoom tool. It's a bit crude and cumbersome but it does work.

waynevid

There won't be any difference with OpenShot, it also uses the affine filter/transition from MLT.

While Photofilmstrip is an improvement over Kdenlive's Pan and Zoom tool, it does still display some flickering especially with small objects.
I'm still looking for the Holy Grail of the Ken Burns Effect.

waynevid

Have you tried Cinelerra? It has an advantage over Kdenlive in that it can do smooth acceleration and deceleration with its pans and zooms (I think that's called "spline-based interpolation" or Bezier curves). I tried playing with it but I just couldn't stand the UI.

I've tried Cinelerra in the past and it has a steep learning curve. I agree with you about the UI. Can Blender do Ken Burns?

waynevid

I think in terms of usability Blender is the far superior solution for those animating purposes because you have full controly over the keyframing with the cool curve editors. But I do not know which intedpolation method is used for transformations by blenders VSE so you must take a try how smooth those structurs will be scaled over time. The node editor has a scaling and translating node which provides selectable interpolation methods, but without some tricks you can't get a smooth preview out so the compositor itself is very uncomfortable for animations.

While Photofilmstrip is an improvement over Kdenlive's Pan and Zoom tool, it does still display some flickering especially with small objects.
I'm still looking for the Holy Grail of the Ken Burns Effect.

Yes, I've noticed this too. I think the problem is to do with how it is interpolated. To be honest, I only use it for the quick and dirty. If I want to do a high quality ken burns effect I do it in blender where I have absolute control over everything.

I won't go into great detail, but the basics of doing it in blender is to import images as planes (shadeless), set up an orthographic camera, and then manipulate the planes and camera for whatever type of motion you want. It's much more of a learning curve though. Blender is quite complex, especially if you have not had experience in the past with full featured 3D animation programs.

Unfortunately, I'm still stuck with Blender 2.49. I may be wrong but I don't believe it can import images as planes.

waynevid

In blender you simply add a plane, assign a new material, which is set to shadeless like fish said, to it and give the material an image texture ;)

As I said you could also try it without blender's 3d finctionality by using the sequencer. Then maybe you should try a newer blender version

Thanks for the Blender tip. Yes, I'm able to create Ken Burns clips now. And they look quite good. The trade off from Photofilmstrip is that Blender is a bit more complicated to use but the results are worth it.

waynevid

Have you tried stills2dv?

http://deniscarl.com/stills2dv/

Here's an example (created by me, but with Kino):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itdfHY9HHdw

stills2dv also can do HD formats.

hi

this topic is old but i want to alive this important ken burns effect.. for kdenlive 15.12, is there?

pan and zoom is not good.. because like as "buggy"
any news for kdenlive?

What do you mean by "buggy"? What could be better?