importing scans vs. actually filming stills

[Jason Maeda]

as some of you may remember, i posted recently about the best way to physically shoot stills for a documentary with zooms and pans etc. a la ken burns. since then, i have been told to scan the photos, then import them into the editing suite, then do whatever the heck i want to with them.

 

do any of you have experience with this? is it easy to make "pans" and "zooms" etc?

 

jk :ph34r:

[Mitch Gross]

as some of you may remember, i posted recently about the best way to physically shoot stills for a documentary with zooms and pans etc. a la ken burns. since then, i have been told to scan the photos, then import them into the editing suite, then do whatever the heck i want to with them.

 

do any of you have experience with this? is it easy to make "pans" and "zooms" etc?

 

jk :ph34r:

I can tell you that while this is the quick and easyy route, most professional productions might do scans for the offline and then replicate them using a rostrum camera. There is a qualitative difference.

[WarrenYeager]

There are three ways to get a still into a project:

 

1) The motional control camera. The most expensive method, there are houses which specialize in this. You can zoom, pan, etc.

 

2) Shoot the stills with a motion picture camera. This is great when you can't take possession of the original. The downsides are the difficulty lining the camera up so the image doesn't 'keystone', lighing the image so there aren't reflections or glares, and the quality of the camera moves. You're typically working a long lens, so any movement in the camera is exaggerated, zooms are difficult, and if the image is really small and you're using a macro lens, you can't zoom anyway.

 

3) Scan and manipulate in post. I like this method the best, especially since I hate shooting stills. If you scan at a high enough resolution, you can zoom in quite a bit without exceeding the resolution of video. I'm working on a HD documentary where the director is scanning every still he's planning on using. So far, on NTSC versions of the project, everything looks great. He scanned the images at a very high resolution, so he can push in two or three times the actual size and theoretically still exceed HD resolution. We'll see.

 

I think that scanning is a good option, just make sure you create files at a high enough resolution.

[Jason Maeda]

can you give me some idea about the amount of resolution you're talking about? i'd be scanning family mini-prints from the 70's: roughly 4in.x6in., and i would need to get into some real extreme close-ups for that haunting zoom-in-on-a-face-in-an-old-photo thing.

jk :ph34r:

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Well, it's fairly simple - you need to scan at such a resolution that the smallest area of image you want to show is at least 720 pixels across. Personally I prefer to figure out whatever that would be, and double it, so that the software has better data to work with. Digital moves are OK so long as they're pretty slow, your software understands interlace correctly, and does the motion at a fine enough granularity of interpolation (Premiere, at least to v6.5, messes this up.) Use with caution, but it's so infinitely cheaper and easier than the rostrum camera approach that I think it's unavoidable.

 

Phil

[Jason Maeda]

phil, what exactly is it that premier messes up with these moves?

jk :ph34r:

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

It seems to interpolate the move based on the resolution of the final frame, not the resolution of the still. This can cause movement to be jerky (stays the same for several frames, then pops on) especially on a slow move.

 

Horribly primitive thing to get wrong.

 

Phil

[Jason Maeda]

is this a problem that is impossible to get around, or does it just demand an extra step in the process?

jk :ph34r:

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I know of no workaround, other than using an external stills renderer. You can avoid the problem by avoiding the Image Pan filter with slow, high-magnification moves.

 

Phil

[Guest oscar]

Hi.

I have done this but only san the photos ( it is better to do it from slides ) and from 600 dpi up, if you are zooming onto them so they don't pixelate

Cheers

Oscar

[Jason Maeda]

gentlemen thank you once again for your inestimable help. phil i guess just to lay to rest both this, and my other post about final cut vs. premier/Xpress DV, if you work without the "image pan filter" in premier, what happens? in other words what does that filter do that can't be done without it?

jk :ph34r:

[Alvin Pingol]

Instead of using the Image Pan effect, couldn't one simply place the image on the timeline, and enable the "motion" option? You can set a motion path, do zooms, etc.

 

Is the Image Pan effect the same thing (I've never used it)?

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

The "motion" effect downsamples the image to video resolution before it does the zoom, so you can't push in more than fractionally, irrespective of the resolution of your original image. Image Pan retains the full resolution of the image, as well as being better about images which are not the same aspect ratio as the frame.

 

Phil

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

The "motion" effect downsamples the image to video resolution before it does the zoom, so you can't push in more than fractionally, irrespective of the resolution of your original image. Image Pan retains the full resolution of the image, as well as being better about images which are not the same aspect ratio as the frame.

 

Phil

[Jason Maeda]

so, i guess what i'm so painstakingly driving towards, is an attempt to understand if "image pan" is necessary to create a move over the "surface" of an imported still image, or if it is just a convenient aid (like it lets you set a begginning and an end point, speed, zoom, etc) as opposed to physically creating many, slightly different frames from the imported image.

i promise to let this die,

jk :ph34r:

[smirkbyfire]

any known way of sourcing an image file's full resolution in an Avid, instead of imorting into the Avid which compresses to video resolution? I remember Boris FX could do this, but my office doesn't have that anymore. Should I use Adobe After Effects?

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Unless you're going to online somewhere else, I'd ditch Avid, at least the lower-end ones. There's huge rafts of things they won't do.

 

Phil

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Yes, Image Pan is pretty much the best (despite its problems) way of doing it in Premiere. Bear in mind that Premiere cannot render motion blur.

 

Phil

[Alvin Pingol]

The "motion" effect downsamples the image to video resolution before it does the zoom, so you can't push in more than fractionally, irrespective of the resolution of your original image. Image Pan retains the full resolution of the image, as well as being better about images which are not the same aspect ratio as the frame.

Ahh, I see. Thanks.

 

Also, did you say that this problem was fixed in Premiere 6.5? Or that it exists in this version and has been fixed in "Pro" or whatever that XP-exclusive version is called?

[Jason Maeda]

Unless you're going to online somewhere else, I'd ditch Avid, at least the lower-end ones. There's huge rafts of things they won't do.

 

i assume you mean it is faulty in relation to the real, online, thing. not in relation to premier or final cut. true?

jk :ph34r:

[Phil Rhodes]

The "motion" effect downsamples the image to video resolution before it does the zoom, so you can't push in more than fractionally, irrespective of the resolution of your original image. Image Pan retains the full resolution of the image, as well as being better about images which are not the same aspect ratio as the frame.

Ahh, I see. Thanks.

 

Also, did you say that this problem was fixed in Premiere 6.5? Or that it exists in this version and has been fixed in "Pro" or whatever that XP-exclusive version is called?

Hi,

 

I've no idea if it's been fixed in Pro, since I haven't bothered upgrading (I'm hoping to have a fiddle at NAB or something.)

 

Phil