Pan and Zoom Effect for Photos
The Pan and Zoom effect (also known as the Ken Burns Effect) adds motion to still photographs. Watching a static image in a video can feel dull. With pan and zoom, the camera glides across the photo while zooming in or out. Applying the effect in Bolide Movie Creator is simple: set a start and end area on the photo, and the program smoothly moves the camera between those regions.
Step-by-step pan and zoom setup in Bolide Movie Creator
- Start by adding the photo you want to animate to the project. Prefer a high-resolution image — the higher the resolution, the deeper a zoom you can use while staying sharp. Drag the photo onto the timeline.
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Right-click the block, or click the Operations on visual blocks button and choose Pan and Zoom from the menu. The effect settings dialog opens.
- Configure the effect. Note the two rectangles — A and B. They define the start and end areas of the photo that will be in frame. Motion goes from rectangle A to rectangle B.
- You can set the effect manually or automatically. Manually, place the rectangles where you want and size them (for zoom in/out) yourself. In this dialog you can drag them with the mouse and scale them by pulling the selection handles.
- For automatic setup, use the motion template buttons and the Motion intensity slider. Moving the slider to the right spreads the rectangles farther apart and makes the motion stronger. The template buttons cover different motion directions (hover a button for a tooltip), plus zoom in, zoom out, and random motion (the program picks rectangle positions and sizes at random).
- Click Preview to see how the effect will look in your video. If something is off, adjust it without closing the pan and zoom dialog.
- There are also sliders for delay at the start and at the end. Delay is a percentage of the block duration. For example, with a 20% start delay on a 5-second block, the first second shows a still image, then motion between rectangles A and B begins. End delay works the same way — it finishes the motion before the block ends.
Good to know
If you are building a slideshow from many photos and want pan and zoom on every photo on one track, you do not have to configure each one by hand. Click Automate and choose Set random pan and zoom with intensity, then pick the intensity you want. The program applies random pan-and-zoom settings at that intensity to all photos on the selected track.
Template buttons are also handy for scrolling panoramas. When adding pan and zoom to a panorama photo, set motion intensity all the way to the right and click the left-to-right template for a smooth panorama scroll.
Video tutorial: pan and zoom effect
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