Keyframe <i>fly-through</i> still photo

johnmeyer wrote on 9/29/2004, 9:13 PM

I am using a high-res still pic, taken from a mountain top, looking down into the valley below. I want to use keyframes to "fly through" the valley, banking left and right as I go. I have spent the past half-hour in Vegas 5.0b and cannot get the keyframes to create smooth, natural motion. I have tried, for each and every keyframe, every combination of linear, fast, slow, smooth, etc., and have changed, for each keyframe, the smoothness control from 0 to 1 and everything in between.

I have always had problems getting smooth results with photos, so I just spent some time trying to think about what is going on. I think this is the issue:

If you want to pan, zoom, and rotate, the smoothness controls affects all three types of motion in the same manner. However, if the move you are trying to make involves a gradual turn to the right, but you want to simulate the feeling of acceleration by zooming in rapidly during the turn, then you need independent control of the zoom smoothness. Same comment applies to rotation.

It is therefore virtually impossible -- no, make that flat-out impossible -- to create complex movements of still photos within Vegas.

What makes this all worse is the inexplicable removal of the path from the keyframe dialog, but I posted about that a month ago (Keyframe now too marginal for still photo work so I won't repeat that post here.

I have come to the conclusion that there are several deficiencies that make keyframes virtually unusable for this type of "Ken Burns" effect:

Is there a third-party plug-in or some other approach that would let me create smooth, complex moves with still photos?

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 9/29/2004, 9:14 PM

Stage Tools, but that won't work in Vegas. Commotion Pro can do this well, so can Red.

johnmeyer wrote on 9/29/2004, 9:19 PM

Spot,

Thank you! I will look into those.

Spot|DSE wrote on 9/29/2004, 9:21 PM

On the 'cheap' side, look at Canopus Imaginate. Vegas does *most* of what Imaginate can do, but Imaginate does have some additional control. And a lot simpler learning curve, lower price.
Email me off line if you'd like to know more about it.

johnmeyer wrote on 9/29/2004, 9:55 PM

On the 'cheap' side, look at Canopus Imaginate.

Spot, this looks like what I was looking for. They have a demo for download, so I'll see what it looks like. Many thanks!

For others that might be interested, here's the link to the product specs:

Canopus Imaginate

apit34356 wrote on 9/29/2004, 11:33 PM

johnmeyer, will you post your results using Canopus Imaginate. or your review of the product.
I had a similar problem, had to increase number of frames per second, with mult tracks, complex moves on seperate tracks.

thank you in advance,
AJP

Grazie wrote on 9/30/2004, 12:13 AM

Thanks John for the Link . .. I looked for a "sampler" Canopus call them "Swatches" . .quaint! . . Anyways here they are !

. . .can't these be done in Vegas? Is it the smoothness you want? I'm gonna have a gio in Vegas soon with some stills I need to do for a "paid" project . .. hmmm .. . maybe this is a reason to purchase Imaginate . .. . like I need an excuse! ! ! !

Grazie

BrianStanding wrote on 9/30/2004, 7:57 AM

I use an old copy of After Effects 4.1 to do this kind of thing. Cost me, I think, $100 on E-Bay.

AE has long excelled at keyframe control. The "Smoother" function is probably exactly what you're looking for.

RichMacDonald wrote on 9/30/2004, 8:33 AM

John, I'm speaking without experience here, but have you checked out Satish's tools (e.g., Wax) to see if his controls are any better?

johnmeyer wrote on 9/30/2004, 9:31 AM

looked for a "sampler" Canopus call them "Swatches" . .quaint! . . Anyways here they are ! . . .can't these be done in Vegas? Is it the smoothness you want?

Grazie,

Hey thanks for that link. I was looking for exactly that, but didn't find it. I think every effect I see there can be done in Vegas. The real question is whether the action at each keyframe point can be made smooth in all three axes: pan, zoom, and rotate. The examples actually were not entirely encouraging. The one of the tennis match still looks somewhat "jerky" (technical term) at several keyframe points. I'll be trying out the product sometime in the next week and will report back.

AE has long excelled at keyframe control. The "Smoother" function is probably exactly what you're looking for.

Brian,

I don't have AE, although it seems that sooner or later I'll need to get it. Not quite ready to make the plunge today, however.

John, I'm speaking without experience here, but have you checked out Satish's tools (e.g., Wax) to see if his controls are any better?

Rich,

I thought about this last night, and then for some reason got onto something else. This is an excellent suggestion, especially since I already have it installed. I've never used this part of Wax, so it will be interesting to try.

BrianStanding wrote on 9/30/2004, 10:14 AM

johnmeyer,

Take a look at the "Opening Credits" veggie file by TLT (4/30/2003) on www.vasst.com. (Go to "All Things Vegas," login and "Project Files." )
Is this the effect you have in mind?

I haven't picked it apart yet, but looks like the kind of results you were talking about.

johnmeyer wrote on 9/30/2004, 10:35 AM

Take a look at the "Opening Credits" veggie file by TLT (4/30/2003) on www.vasst.com. (Go to "All Things Vegas," login and "Project Files." )

Not exactly. The tennis match "swatch" on the Imaginate site is actaully quite close to what I am trying to do. It's a little like the original "This is Cinerama" Grand Canyon flythrough (I think they mounted the huge camera in the nose of a B-25, but that's a story for another time)

jsteehl wrote on 9/30/2004, 2:46 PM

John,

I have one word for you "Cinema 4D" well two words (but who is counting).

You could do this in AE (I don't own it), BorisRed (own it but can see to get the hang of it) or other tools (Maya, Lightwave, Combustion etc.) Of course BorisBlue to coming down the pike (more $$$ and more time to learn).

Just having keyframes is not going to cut it. You need a Camera object with all the perspective tools. In C4D you can lay down a spline (think biezer) and track a camera to it. You can even put a Rail Spline to get the bank left/right perpestive.

You would import your pic, model the camer/angles, render to AVI/MOV and import into V5. I'm learning C4D 8.5 but there is a free version 6 around which should do well...

Johnny Roy talks about it here...
http://users.rcn.com/rofrano/3d/3d_modeling.htm

If I was not into C4D at the moment I'd be doing more with Boris but man is this thing fun (to me it's the V5 of the 3D world if you know what I mean).

-Jason

DavidMcKnight wrote on 9/30/2004, 3:39 PM

I'm gonna swing this a bit off topic, but maybe not...I have Hollywood FX 4.6 Pro, and it has camera objects and such. Can it do the types of movement that is being asked about?

I know it sounds absurd to be asking a question like that on this board when I OWN THE PRODUCT, but I've never used it beyond some canned fx with Pinnacle in my pre-Vegas days.

apit34356 wrote on 9/30/2004, 4:23 PM

yes, C4D is great for this, especially if you stitch together a number of photos into a pana view of 3d shell. Then you can pan thru the scene, output to vegas for final rendering.

clearvu wrote on 9/30/2004, 6:55 PM

I've got Imaginate and used it for 1,400 + scans. Definitely much easier to manage than Vegas.

Additionally, if I'm understanding your requirements, as far as I can say, Imaginate can do it. You can get very smooth and flowing movements of in, out, up, down, left, right, with swinging too.

The example on line that Grazie linked to is not a good one. I'll agree that it is "jerky". I looks like many frames are missed for the purpose of streaming, I guess.

johnmeyer wrote on 10/1/2004, 12:05 AM

I've got Imaginate and used it for 1,400 + scans. Definitely much easier to manage than Vegas. Additionally, if I'm understanding your requirements, as far as I can say, Imaginate can do it. You can get very smooth and flowing movements of in, out, up, down, left, right, with swinging too.

That's good to hear, because Imaginate is the direction I seem to be heading.

farss wrote on 10/1/2004, 1:16 AM

Perhaps Icarus could do this very well. I still have the 'free' beta version here somewhere. I had a brief play with it but it seems to have a huge learning curve plus setting up anything is pretty complex and being a beta version it did what beta versions are meant to do, crash reliably.

Maybe I'm getting jaded, looking at the Canopus demo, no matter how good a job it does it's still 2D objects being manipulated and it doesn't provide anything like the POV correction that I've seen Icarus used for and even that still doesn't truly cut it compared to a real fly thru.

I think some of the work in Intermezzo Dualis was done with Icarus but that guy had a LOT of time on his hands.

Bob.

johnmeyer wrote on 10/1/2004, 8:32 AM

I think some of the work in Intermezzo Dualis was done with Icarus but that guy had a LOT of time on his hands.

I have been meaning, for over a year, to load up the Icarus demo (I have about three different versions) and try it. Perhaps this is the time.

For those that haven't see the Duals Reloaded, it is an aboslute "must see." The guy's site is still up. Download and view the film, and while watching, remember that you can do most of this with the tools available to you (with 5.0b masking, some of the effects can be done in Vegas). After you've viewed the movie, click on the "Behind the Scenes" link to find out how he did it all. This was done by one guy with, as farss already said, lots of time on his hands, but with virtually no budget whatsoever.

To be or not to be? That is the question answered by this film. Here's the link:

Duals Reloaded

nickle wrote on 10/1/2004, 1:08 PM

I found something which seems to do the job:

http://www.stagetools.com/

called "moving picture" . Plugs into everything but vegas (almost) but has "producer" which is standalone and renders avi's.

Can download the trial versions.

GTakacs wrote on 10/1/2004, 2:23 PM

Here are some thoughts that might save you some money:

1) Add more keyframes. This might be a big PITA to do, but if you have more keyframes you can control the linearity and the status of your rotation/pan/zoom better.

2) Put the actual movie in a grandchild and only control pan on that layer. Control zoom on the parent layer and control rotate on the grandparent layer. This way all 3 attributes will be independent from one another and you can assign separate curves to each.

All my ideas might be just lame or too complex, but this is all my simple mind could come up with.

Good luck!

TeetimeNC wrote on 10/2/2004, 4:22 AM

Imaginate looks very interesting. Does it provide a way to easily synchronize a large number of photos to the beat of the music? In Vegas I tap the "M" key to the music and then use the "Images to Markers" script to synchronize a number of photo transitions to the beat.

-jerry

Erk wrote on 10/3/2004, 3:12 PM

Johnmeyer,

I'm interested in seeing that Intermezzo Dualis thing, but the site link you posted isn't correct, or something. I poked around the parent site, but couldn't find anything related to video.

Thanks,

Greg

EdRob wrote on 10/17/2004, 2:58 PM

After reading this thread I am testing the demo version of Imaginate. However the Canopus DV-AVI files it creates will not load on a Vegas video track. Any suggestions?
Thanks
Ed Robinson

johnmeyer wrote on 10/17/2004, 4:04 PM

After reading this thread I am testing the demo version of Imaginate. However the Canopus DV-AVI files it creates will not load on a Vegas video track. Any suggestions?

I still have my copy sitting here next to my computer. I'll try to get around to it this week and report back if I have a solution to your problem. Without having looked at it, the only idea I can think of is to ask whether there are other rendeirng options available inside of Imaginate?