How to create a pan effect over a text document as part of a video?

October 27, 2018 6:16 PM

I've got a number of letters and other documents that I need to use for a video. You know when you're watching Dateline or such shows, and the camera pans quickly across a document before settling on highlighted text?

I need to use census records in the video. I want to start with the highlighted census title, then pan down quickly to the relevant name, then pan over quickly to the relevant data point about the named individual.

I suppose this is a variation of the Ken Burns effect, but I can't find the correct words to google for a how-to video.

posted by jefficator to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

In the old days it was done with a rostrum camera stand and called a rostrum effect. Here's a decent tutorial on Youtube.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:44 PM on October 27, 2018

AfterEffects was the canonical product/example but any video editing software should be able to do that kind of effect. "pan and zoom" and "key frame animation" would be the key words. DaVinci Resolve is high end professional software that has a free edition. Bit of a learning curve but would be high quality.
posted by sammyo at 6:47 PM on October 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

“Motion control” combined with photoshop or another graphics program to pull out the quoted text.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:39 PM on October 27, 2018

What software are you using? It should be possible in whatever you're using. In Premiere, you use keyframes. Say you want to start at one pint, stay there for two seconds, then move to another pointer the span of one second. You'd position your image where you want it in the viewer (make sure your scan is large enough so you have enough content beyond your focal point so that you don't have a blank area of the screen when you move the document). Then set a key frame there. Then move the timeline to two seconds later. Keep the image where it is and set another keyframe. Then move to one second later in the timeline, position there image where you want it, and set another keyframe.

This gives a Premiere-specific overview, but it should be fairly similar in whatever you're using.
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/adding-navigating-setting-keyframes.html
posted by jonathanhughes at 8:25 PM on October 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think if you could scan the document, you could do something like this with Apple Keynote.
posted by Wild_Eep at 9:27 PM on October 27, 2018