I apologise in advance if this has been answered elsewhere. I looked for a similar topic but couldn't find anything.

I have been using LRTimelapse with my static shots perfectly and have just started trying to do the Ken Burns effect via the automatic transition, and i'm getting mixed results.

Sometimes the pan/zoom is perfectly smooth, but other times it quite jerky.

In one clip in particular, the top left corner looks great but the bottom right corner looks very jerky. I know its not the actual shots i've taken because as a static timelapse everything looks perfect.

Are there certain limitations that you need to be aware of when doing the zoom/pan transitions that you can do in LRTimelpase?

Any assistance would be very welcome, thanks!

LRTimelapse can shift only pixelwise - if the speed of the Ken Burns is too high, it's not possible to get them really smooth. In such cases you have to do in in your edititing software which - in most times - can work at subpixellevel.
Because of this I do only tiltmovements within LRTimelapse, which are not possible in Premiere because of the 16:9 output-limitation when exporting with Lightroom.

Hi there.

I am having a similar issue. I am testing my newly acquired LRTimelapse. I don't quite understand the subpixel explanation.

When I peek at the data in the xmp files as modified by LRTimelapse, the crop values seem to hold something like 16 digits after the decimal, so I have a strong feeling that the limitation is from Lightroom when it converts back the info into pixels. Iinstead of subpixels? Is that what you mean? it would make sense, since most frames cannot be *exactly* 16x9 in ratio... If I am right, LRTimelapse does not control, therefore cannot fix, the issue.

I got around it for now by using the Warp Stabilizer from Premiere Pro. It works *beautifully* to fix that jagginess. Awesome. Too bad I only have a temporary 1-month licence for it... I aso tried a free stabilizer (VirtualDub with DeShaker add-on), the results are quite good but not as pristine. We all want pristine, don't we...

There are some circumstances when I would prefer doing the zooming within LRTimelapse to be able to fully take advantage of the pixels my D800 provides. It also simplifies my workflow. But it hey, guess what... it comes with a (another) price tag!

The alternative - producing higher resolution video (i.e. 4K+) files and doing the zoom and pan in another software (to be determined) - also works, obviously, and should be more predictable. Image stablization does have it's limitations; for example when very large parts of the environment are shaky, like wind in trees and grass or waves on water, the stabilizer can get confused.

I guess these are all tools that can be used, based on the circumstance, to circumvent the issue.

Thanks for the great software, by the way!

Explaining the technical details gunther is much more qualified than I'm ;-)

"doing the zoom and pan in another software (to be determined)"

Hmm - you write about Premier pro, so you've already determined on of the best software for doing this ;-) O.K., only as a trial version.
But I'm sure you're using some kind of video editing software otherwise you're limitated to only one clip?!? I think practically every editing software can do zooming.
A disadvantage of doing Ken Burns in LRTimelapse might bee, that the effects are "fixed" in your footage. If you get another idea when composing multiple clips you've to go back in LRTimelapse.

Explaining the technical details gunther is much more qualified than I'm ;-)

"doing the zoom and pan in another software (to be determined)"

Hmm - you write about Premier pro, so you've already determined on of the best software for doing this ;-) O.K., only as a trial version.
But I'm sure you're using some kind of video editing software otherwise you're limitated to only one clip?!? I think practically every editing software can do zooming.
A disadvantage of doing Ken Burns in LRTimelapse might bee, that the effects are "fixed" in your footage. If you get another idea when composing multiple clips you've to go back in LRTimelapse.

You make perfect sense. Your obvious experience makes you more concerned about real-life issues than my beginner's interest in technical details. I will worry about extreme Ken Burns when I get there. In the meanwhile, will stick to your recommendation. Thanks for the reality check!

I am more into stills as an amateur, video is new to me. I have good skills to learn fast, but still would like to make sure I enjoy timelapse enough before I invest much money into yet more software (i.e. Premiere, After Effects) and hardware (dolly, rotator), so maybe I will try to use a more entry-level software for now.

Thanks very much for the quick reply.

BTW, your work on Tenerife project (whatever it is!) is quite impressive. Thumbs up big time!

I've just purchased the software and am having the same problem with the Ken Burns effect. It is jerky, not smooth and quite unusable. Of course I may be doing something wrong? I set a crop for the first keyframe, copy it to the last keyframe (I only have two keyframes) make a slight zoom and pan adjustment. Am I missing something? It sounds from the posts above that I should not expect to have a smooth pan/zoom effect with this software. I hope that is not the case.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Bryan

Depending on the velocity of the ken burns it's impossible to get them real smooth becauce LRTimelpase can't do this at subpixel level like good video editing software can.
Export in 4k or so and do all video editing in the editing software.