How To Pan & Zoom Time-lapse with Final Cut Pro

One of the cool things about time-lapse photography os the massive resolution that you can capture the individual images at. I usually focus my authoring on a 1920 x 1080 resolution movie which allows me to create great Blu-ray DVDs to showcase my work and I can easily down sample from there for posting to Vimeo or YouTube.

I am typically capturing images that are about twice the resolution needed for 1920 x 1080 so it allows me to do some cool panning in post processing as opposed to just panning at the time of capture with my Mumford step motor, which I love but can definitely be a pain to lug around and set up. Doing the panning in Final Cut Pro also allows me to make creative decisions after seeing the footage.  I can determine the speed and easing of the pan, choose what areas I want to provide greater emphasis on and even zoom in or out as well. Here is how you do it... 

1) Shoot your time-lapse at full resolution (my Nikon D700 shoots at 4256 x 2832)

2) Process your photos in Aperture or LightRoom and export out full resolution

3) Import your photos into QuickTime 7 Pro using File: Open Image Sequence... (Command + Shift + O)

4) Save the movie to your hard drive (I prefer to save it as a reference movie to avoid massive file sizes)

5) Launch Final Cut Pro and set your Sequence Settings to be 1920 x 1080 (HDTV 1080i)

6)  Drag the QuickTime movie onto your time line. Final Cut will automatically scale the movie to fit within your canvas

7) Double click the movie on the timeline and it will load in the viewer window

8) Click on the video tab and drag the yellow play head marker to the beginning of the video clip and press control + K to create key frame markers

9) Drag the yellow play head marker to the end of the video clip and press control + K to create key frame markers

10) Turn your canvas view to read "fit all" from the first pull down menu in the top center of the canvas window. Then set your scale and position for the end of the video by moving the video clip around the canvas and pulling on a corner to resize.

11)  Go back to the beginning of the video clip and set your start size and location

12) Watch your masterpiece and export

I put together this update compilation of my southwest time-lapse footage using pan & zoom where I thought it made sense most of the pans and zooms are in the second half starting around 3 minutes and 40 seconds.

Comments

[Jason DePerro]

Your time-lapse work is fantastic. And, it's not just because I love SF as subject matter. I followed a link to your blog from vimeo RE: searching for 'how-to' info on time-lapse photography. This entry is pay-dirt. thanks for posting.

You mention this Mumford step motor, which sounds like a lot of control. What do you think about using a tracking mount from a telescope? Do you think this might be a good way to begin controlling tracking while shooting time-lapse? It would only control x-axis rotation.