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  Animating stills in FCP X weird issue…

  Posted by Nick Natteau on July 5, 2011 at 6:20 am

  I’m using FCP X’s “Scale” and “Position” keyframes to animate stills for a WWII-related documentary, and I’m running into a weird issue: FCP X is adding unwanted movement to my stills.

  Please see these two examples [1] Keyframes and [2] Animated Still here.

  Pay close attention to the red animation line on the image and if you look to the lower left of the image you’ll notice that the red line goes beyond the keyframe point. It shouldn’t. The image should pan and then stop and then pan again. Instead, where it should stop, it jerks back and forth left and right. I have no idea why this is going on. But when I laid my four keypoints (only three are visible because first one is all way to left and out of sight) I made sure to have no motion between keypoints 2 and 3.

  Nick Natteau replied 14 years, 10 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Simon Ubsdell

  July 5, 2011 at 7:46 am

  You need to change the problem keyframe to linear if you don’t want this behaviour – right click it for the interactive menu. You appear to have a “smooth” handle there right now.

  You might find that you get better (or just as good) results quicker using the Ken Burns effect.

  Just be aware that FCPX doesn’t give you a ability to manipulate “temporal” animation keyframes, only spatial ones (you can affect how your object moves through space between keyframes but not the speed of the motion to and from those keyframes) – which for many will be a real limitation right now. If you can’t live with that you’ll need to do your animations in Motion.

  Simon Ubsdell
  Director/Editor/Writer
  http://www.tokyo-uk.com
• 

  Nick Natteau

  July 5, 2011 at 3:20 pm

  Hi Simon,

  Thanks very much for your help. Actually I liked the Ken Burns effect but the problem is that it lasts the entire length clip and there’s no way to adjust it: for example no way to have the Ken Burns effect stop and then resume. That’s why I had to resort to doing the animation myself.

  But I’ll take your advice and try it in Motion. There are many things to love about FCP X but unfortunately the program is extremely limited at this stage. I already sent feedback to Apple telling them that the much needed updates can’t come a minute too soon!
• 

  Nick Natteau

  July 5, 2011 at 3:41 pm

  Thanks Simon, problem solved!

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