Posted Friday, April 16, 2004

Ken Burns Zooms Out Too Quickly

There seems to be a problem with the Ken Burns effect in iMovie 4: If you zoom out on a photo, the resulting move is often very awkward: the zoom-out begins very slowly, then very rapidly ramps up. The move is not at all what iMovie displays in its preview monitor.

This problem is particularly noticeable in short clips -- a few seconds long, for example. It's ugly and makes zooming out pert-near unusable.

But where there's a will, there's a workaround: Rather than zooming out on a photo, zoom in. Then, select the resulting clip and choose the Advanced menu's Reverse Clip Direction command. You'll get a much smoother zoom-out.