Chapter 14. Working with Stills: Motion and Advanced Keyframing

With the release of Premiere Pro 1.0, the ability to preserve the overall quality of still images was increased dramatically. Instead of resampling and reducing the resolution of imported still files, Premiere Pro now processes the full resolution of the still files, rendering the final result to your output video settings.

In former Premiere versions and in competitive nonlinear editors, when you imported a 1600 x 1200 still image, the still was automatically resized to 720 x 480 or your project dimensions. If you wanted to zoom in on the image, you were no longer zooming in on your 1600 x 1200 image; instead you were zooming in the resized 720 x 480, which yielded lesser quality results. With Premiere Pro 1.0, this was no longer a worry. With Premiere Pro 2.0, the same resolution maximizing behavior remains; however, now you can automatically resize an image to your project dimensions.

This chapter aims to help you understand how to properly prep your images, import individual stills or groups of images with ease, and then create smooth and dynamic image pans like those Ken Burns used in The Civil War and Baseball. Along the way, you'll learn some good guidelines for working with still images, as well as how to save the image pans as reusable custom effect presets. You will also investigate some new features of the Effect Controls panel, such as the Value and Velocity graphs.