Final Cut Pro X: Create a Ken Burns Effect

The Ken Burns effect does a move – a pan, tilt, zoom or combination of all three – on an image.

The Ken Burns effect, named after legendary filmmaker Ken Burns who popularized this technique, creates smooth moves on still images in the Final Cut timeline.

While this effect can be used on video clips, you’ll get the best results using it to create moves on high-resolution stills.

Here’s my first example: An image that fills the frame. I want to create a move that zooms from full frame into the berries.

BEFORE YOU START

Understanding bitmaps is essential to getting good results with the Ken Burns effect. All digital images – both still and moving – are composed of bitmaps. Bitmaps are rectangular grids of pixels, which are fixed in size and resolution.

For example, a typical HD image is a bitmap 1,920 pixels wide by 1,080 pixels high for a total of 2,073,600 pixels. That’s it. No more and no less; and each frame is the same.

• When scaling an image smaller, you are not reducing the size of each pixel. Those are fixed in size and never change. Instead you are removing pixels from the image.
• When scaling an image larger, you are not increasing the size of each pixel. Rather, you are duplicating each source pixel so it fills into the space of the pixels around it.

The upshot of all this is that scaling images smaller does not damage image quality, while scaling images larger makes them look blurry – because we are stretching fewer source pixels across more space than they were originally captured to fill.

To compensate for this, if we know we are going to zoom into (enlarge) an image, we need to create an original source image with more pixels than the frame it will fill.

For example, if I want to zoom into an image so that the image doubles in size, or I want to start at the bottom of an image and tilt up to the top, I would need to create a source image with more pixels to accommodate the zoom or tilt.

Here’s a table with some potential image sizes.

Source image	2X	4X
1280 x 720 pixels	2560 x 1440	5120 x 2880
1920 x 1080 pixels	3840 x 2160	7680 x 4320
3840 x 2160 pixels	7680 x 4320	15,360 x 8640

 

NOTE: While Final Cut Pro X does not have a specific limit to still images, I’ve run into problems when importing images with more than 10,000 pixels on a side.

Keep this need for higher resolution stills in mind when creating your images. This is why video does not work well with a Ken Burns move – video doesn’t have enough pixels in each frame to move around an image.

CREATE A KEN BURNS EFFECT

Here’s how to create a Ken Burns effect using the image I illustrated at the beginning of this tutorial.

• Edit the clip into the timeline.

• Then in the lower left corner of the Viewer, select Crop.

NOTE: You can also select this option from the Crop section in the Video Inspector, but I find this small menu faster.

• Then, in the Viewer, click the Ken Burns button in the menu at the bottom. This displays two rectangles: Green defines the starting frame, Red defines where the move ends.

NOTE: The Ken Burns effect always begins at the first frame of a clip – even if that frame is under a transition – and ends on the last frame of a clip. If you need the move to start or end in the middle of clip, you’ll need to use keyframes to animate position and scale settings.

• Drag a corner dot of the red or green frame to scale the image or drag in the middle of an image to change it’s position.

NOTE: The Ken Burns effect creates video that must fully fill the frame at all times. For this reason, we can’t rotate images or scale outside the image itself.

• To switch positions between the Start and End position, click these curved icons in the top left corner of the Viewer.
• To preview the effect, click the right-pointing arrow just to the right of the curved icons.

• When you are done configuring the effect, click the Done box at the top right. Failing to do this often means other on-screen menus don’t work – which then makes me doubt my sanity when a button that worked a few minutes ago doesn’t work now.

MAKE ADJUSTMENTS

To re-display the Ken Burns boxes and controls, click this icon at the top of the Crop box in the Video Inspector. (Blue means the on-screen controls are displayed.)

To change the speed of the zoom, change the duration of the clip in the timeline. Longer clips create slower moves. (The duration of the timeline clip determines the speed of the move.)

By default, the Ken Burns effect starts and ends slowly. To change acceleration, control-click anywhere inside the frame and select the option that works best for your project.

I tend to like Linear, but that’s purely a personal preference and depends upon the direction of the move.

DEALING WITH VERTICAL IMAGES

You can use the Ken Burns effect for vertical images as well. In this screen shot, I turned on Safe Zones, so you can see the edge of the frame in the Viewer.

• Edit the image into the timeline
• Make sure Video Inspector > Spatial Conform is set to Fit

NOTE: Don’t worry about black on the edges, you’ll fix this next.

• Set the starting, green, frame so that it is entirely inside the image.
• Set the ending, red, frame so it, too, is entirely inside the image.
• Determine if you want to change acceleration by Control-clicking inside the image.
• Preview and tweak until you are happy with the finished effect.

WHEN TO USE KEYFRAMES

The Ken Burns effect makes creating moves on stills very easy. However, there are several situations where it will make more sense to create moves using keyframes:

• When you need the effect to start after the beginning of the clip.
• When you want the effect to end and hold before the clip itself ends.
• When you want the move to start at Point A, move to Point B, then move to Point C.
• When you need to vary the speed or direction of the move during the move.
• When you need an image to rotate during the move.

SUMMARY

The Ken Burns effect makes creating moves on still images fun and easy. When used properly it can quickly bring a still image to life.

As with every effect in Final Cut, the Ken Burns effect works best when used sparingly and where the speed of the move does not call attention to itself.

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