How to Create Videos with Ken Burns Photo Zooms in 10 Steps

by Barrett

If you don’t know what to do with all of those photos you snap, why not make some videos out of them with cool zooms. Don’t know how? Well, today is your lucky day!

In the spirit of April Fools’ Day, I’ve decided to play a little hide and seek with a few of my photos and the Ken Burns effect in Final Cut Pro X. Can you figure out what the photo is before it zooms out?

I’ve got seven pictures to share in a little over 30 seconds…
Go!


Quickly Create a Photo Montage Video with Ken Burns Effect in FCP X
Here’s how I pulled it all together…

1.
Find a few unusual horizontal photos in your Lightroom collection.
(What? You don’t use Lightroom? Here’s how to switch.)

2.
Export your photos into a separate folder.

3.
Open Final Cut Pro X.
(You can also use Adobe Premiere Pro… although these steps are for FCP X.)

4.
Import the photos into a new timeline.

5.
Use the Ken Burns zoom effect, which you can access by first clicking ‘Crop’ on the bottom left drop down located next to the right video window.

 

 

 

 

 

6.
And then click on ‘Ken Burns.’

 

 

 

 

 

7.
Add a brief freeze frame to the top of each zoom to help set up the tight shot by clicking on the ‘Edit’ drop down menu and then clicking on ‘Add Freeze Frame.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

8.
Then, just freeze the very first frame of each zoom and add it to the timeline.

 

 

 

9.
Go to freemusicarchive.org to find some music.

10.
Export and voilà!