Several years ago I was asked to create a going-away slide show for the director of a volunteer center where I did a good deal of work, which taking hundreds of photos and shooting hours of video over a period of years. First, thinking it would be an easy way out, I tried out iMovie’s new (at the time) “Ken Burns” pan-and-scan effect and discovered that I had little control over the results. In theory, Final Cut Pro would do what I needed but the interface made the workflow far from ideal. Finally, I settled on After Effects to build the move on each image (batch rendering overnight) and Final Cut to assemble the project for the DVD. The end result was a farewell worthy of my colleague and friend at the cost of several evenings of hard work.
If I had had Boinx Software’s FotoMagico 3.5, I could have done just as well in a single evening with a single application. FotoMagico is the real Ken Burns effect, giving the auteur full creative control over the project. The program comes in “Home” and “Pro” versions ($29 and $149 respectively). The bulk of the new features in 3.5 have been added the Pro version.
Adding images (as well as video clips) to FotoMagico is almost too easy. You can drag them onto the Storyboard panel from the Desktop or call up an image library from iPhoto, Lightroom or Adobe Bridge. Though the program will accept files in any format your Mac can read, it will alert you if you’ve chosen a file type that may be impractically large. (Exporting your selected files to full-size JPEGs would be recommended.) Pulling Camera Raw images in directly from Lightroom and a PhotoMerged panorama from Photoshop immediately raised the caution flag. The program took some time to “digest” the panorama, but it played perfectly well on my Mac Pro, albeit one with an NVIDIA CUDA-based graphics card. (The effect of panning across a three-image panorama was pretty impressive, too.)
Getting the Picture If you’re just interested in static images, simply lay them out end to end on the storyboard, assign durations and transitions. The real fun comes when you enable the pan-and-scan mode. This brings up two windows: where the image starts and where it ends. Controls in the center adjust the zoom level of the image and its rotation. Once you’ve zoomed in, it’s easy to drag the image around behind its window. By default, the program will provide visual and audible cues as well as a “snap-to” effect when an image is centered or aligned with an edge of the frame.
On the downside, the amount of choreographing you can do with the move is fairly limited. Even though there are ease-in and ease-out controls that serve double-duty to permit transitions in the midst of a move, you’re still limited to one move per image. So if you want to zoom into one point and then pan across to another, it’s a multi-step process simplified somewhat by the ability to easily duplicate the image/move combination and then swap start and stop points.
The program provides a variety of transitions, more than enough to let you show off your artistic flair (or lack of good sense). The Pro version also gives you the ability to nondestructively adjust the image to help match color and brightness. One of the programs best features is its ability to perform very subtle moves, an effect that can be extraordinarily powerful.
A Sound Investment FotoMagico 3.5 Pro lets you assemble multi-track soundtracks with the ability to record narration on the fly if desired. It can automatically duck the levels of background tracks under the narration. Adding sounds is simply a matter of dragging clips to the Storyboard, either from your Desktop or iTunes library. You should be aware that FotoMagico adheres very strictly to the digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on your sources. If it sees a copy protection flag on something you downloaded from the iTunes Music Store, the soundtrack will only play on the computer that’s authorized for that song.
With a soundtrack, the timing of the transitions becomes critical and FotoMagico has a rather unique way of dealing with it. Normally, the duration of each slide is set individually; each slide will inherit the timing of its predecessor by default. Turning off the slide based timing lets you set time cues as tags in the audio track. Each tag will trigger a transition. The tags will be logged by time code and you’ll have the option to add a text label any or all of them. It’s not the intuitive way of editing to audio but I found that working with presentation section by section made it a bit more manageable
Sharing The program provides a variety of options for sharing, including a direct iPad export. Pro users can also create a distributable player application for the shows. If you’re using FotoMagico for a live presentation, the program gives you a couple of cool options. One is a teleprompter mode that lets you see your notes on your local screen while your audience watches the actual show. The other is an iPhone App that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a wireless remote control.
The videos can be saved as virtually any format your Mac can handle. The Pro version also includes a plug-in, so FotoMagico can be brought in as an effect in Final Cut, After Effects and Motion. However, this comes with a big caveat. The plug-ins are provided by FxFactory and when you agree to install them, the program automatically loads literally dozens of other FxFactory plug-ins as demo and trial versions that you’ll need to individually remove via the FxFactory application. If you choose to keep them, it’s a great suite of digital effects but a rather pricey one.
In order to succeed, FotoMagico had to make quite a few compromises. It needed to offer a level of control that would be artistically satisfying at the same time as keeping cost and complexity down to a point where the program is both widely affordable and useful. There are features like multiple motion keyframes within a slide that I’d love to see. However, in terms of personal productivity, artistic freedom, and bang-for-the-buck, FotoMagico Pro is among the best of its breed. For the hobbyist, the Home version is one of the best bargains you’ll ever find in the multimedia market.
