OS X Software: Still Life
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has made a career out of panning and scanning - the act of taking a series of still photographs and sliding, zooming, and cross-fading them together with music and narration. Sure, good editing and solid storytelling skills certainly help, but technically Burns' style is easy to emulate, and you don't need expensive film editing software to do it yourself. As a matter of fact, you don't need to spend a single penny. Enter Still Life - a free application for OS X that allows you to create professional looking, stylish movies using your own home photos. Import your images, change their order, and chose how you want each photo to zoom, slide, and how long to hold before fading into the next. When your masterwork is complete, you can export the animation as a standalone QuickTime movie, or in DV format for use in iMovie or other applications. I'd bet money Apple will incorporate this somehow in the next iPhoto update, but until then (if at all) Still Life is a welcome, easy to use solution.
Comments
ha! I'm the first commment-er. I'm gonna have to try that. seeing as I don't have a dv camcorder...
Posted by: robert at December 2, 2002 11:36 AM
Check out PhotoToMovie (http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=15681&db=mac) as well. Similar end result, still free.
Posted by: Fargoboy at December 2, 2002 4:00 PM
Ken Burns is great. Simple yet effective documentaries. What a great job he has.
Posted by: Andrew Baasch at December 2, 2002 7:41 PM
I tried out Still Life. I think it's worth the $10 to spend on Photo to Movie. While I think Still Life could be better in another couple of versions, I don't like the interface. I actually had to look at directions to get it to work. I also don't like that it doesn't (at least mine didn't) show me the transitions I'd just created. Looks like a promising app, though.
Posted by: Doy at December 3, 2002 5:34 PM
Poweful app....much more than photo to imovie, and it is free. It did take 5 minutes for me to figure it out, so it is harder than the other program.
Posted by: Craig issod at December 9, 2002 2:29 PM
