7 ms·

Cool. But that’s not what we call the Ken Burns Effect in the industry. This is 2.5 D parallax shift as seen in the documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture. K

by amayne 7y ago

Cool. But that’s not what we call the Ken Burns Effect in the industry. This is 2.5 D parallax shift as seen in the documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture. Ken Burns Effect is panning and zooming to highlight features in a photo then fading into another.

onemoresoop 7y ago
Pretty much what I thought as well. But cool nonetheless.
sgt 7y ago
Perhaps it would also be worth mentioning Ken Burns and his documentaries. They're absolutely worth watching and gives BBC a run for its money. Perhaps start with The West and then move on to Civil War. My personal favorite was perhaps the one on Jazz, made in 2001.
- bgeeek 7y ago
  I'm not sure that they give the BBC a run for its money - you're talking about quite a lot of Beeb output ;-) I agree that they are of an unusually high standard.
  - billfruit 7y ago
    BBC documentaries, many of them atleast are having a reputation beyond what they deserve I think, often times the real information in them is sparse, and they present overtly simplistic narratives, with too much padding.
    - bgeeek 7y ago
      In comparison to what, though? It's easy to knock the Beeb, but compare the output (TV, Radio, and Web) to anything vaguely similar and you will probably appreciate the quality. They're not just making docus, it's so much more. Funnily enough, the Beeb aired the Burns Vietnam, too.
      - billfruit 7y ago
        For example compared with the work of Asif Kapadia in recent years, which almost entirely avoids voice over narratives.
- criddell 7y ago
  A new one starts tonight on Country music. Even though I'm not a big fan of the genre, I expect it to be fascinating.
- theluketaylor 7y ago
  Baseball and National Parks are two of my personal favourites. His Vietnam is particularly powerful since it's filled with personal accounts.
- ms512 7y ago
  The Roosevelts was my intro to Ken Burns and it was the only TV show ever that I could not stop watching. Since then, I've also been very impressed by the quality of all the other Ken Burns documentaries.
- afterburner 7y ago
  His Vietnam series was great. Civil War... I guess I already knew a lot about it, so what I noticed mostly was more sympathy than I'd like for a sort of Lost Cause nostalgia, and not much talk of slavery. But I guess he had to sell it for its time...
  - pier25 7y ago
    Loved the Vietnam series too. Have watched it a couple of times on Netflix. I'm 40 yo European so I knew close to nothing about the Vietnam war other than what I had seen in some movies. Very in depth and emotionally powerful. It also seemed pretty objective to me as a complete outsider.
  - BurpIntruder 7y ago
    That's because he had hacks like Shelby Foote trying to convince people that the Civil War wasn't caused by slavery.
- spodek 7y ago
  The Central Park 5 is utterly heartbreaking. I think it's Ken Burns' closest to today. I believe all its main people are alive today. One is in the White House. What he did in this case was unconscionable. https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-central-park-five https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-central-park-five
- alexilliamson 7y ago
  I watch episodes 5-8 of Jazz like once a year
- timrichard 7y ago
  Those are great documentaries.... I also really enjoyed Empire of the Air, covering the history of radio.
- RichardCA 7y ago
  His brother Ric Burns made a documentary about the Donner Party. It really is a masterpiece of non-fiction horror. Unfortunately it's unavailable for streaming. Every time someone uploads it, it gets taken down. This Peabody Award clip is all that's available. The DVD can be had for cheap on Amazon. https://youtu.be/w-eTjCuNDoE https://youtu.be/w-eTjCuNDoE https://film.avclub.com/the-most-terrifying-pbs-special-of-all-time-1798241596 https://film.avclub.com/the-most-terrifying-pbs-special-of-a...
semi-extrinsic 7y ago
Looking at the website of OP, they agree with you in the classic definition of Ken Burns effect, and call this "3D Ken Burns".
- sniklaus 7y ago
  We were doing a lot of reading to better understand video producers an their usage of the Ken Burns effect. We are ultimately still research scientists with no hands-on video-production experience but we made sure to do our homework. :)
  - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
    Some thoughts based on looking at the video a few times more (disclaimer - I'm not a video professional) * There needs to be some variation in the zooming if you use this in a slideshow. I'd even say bias it towards zooming out more often, since that gradually reveals more of the image. * You might have enough information to work with here to develop a similar "focus pull effect from single image" algo. That would be really cool. * Maybe also you could try to develop a "sunset fade" for images where you detect blue sky. Graduallu adding a gradient yellow-orange fade for the sky, gradually warmer and darker foreground and non-sky background.
    - sniklaus 7y ago
      Thank you for sharing your thoughts! * There definitely should be more variety in terms of camera paths. Our framework either supports fully automatic results (as shown) or ones with a manual camera path. For an automatically generated slideshow, one should probably add more variety. * There is some great work in this area, commonly focusing on portrait images. But yes, once the scene geometry has been estimated sufficiently well, one can definitely add some nice out-of-focus effects. * That would be an interesting research direction. I am not an expert in relighting, but I can imagine that this requires a lot of work to make sure that the scene composition looks believable.
      - 7y ago
sniklaus 7y ago
The examples in the video were automatically generated without user feedback. It is actually also possible to manually specify the camera path in order to achieve the effect that you are expecting, for more information feel free to have a look at the video on the project website.
- amayne 7y ago
  Understood. This is an area of image research I have an interest and some experience in (image segmentation, background inpainting, etc., through machine learning.) I think your results are wonderful. I was just pointing out that from my background (a television producer - most recently Shark Week, etc.) that the Ken Burns effect and parallax effects are considered two different concepts (that can be combined, but mean different things.)
  - sniklaus 7y ago
    I did not mean to shoot you down or anything, I in fact greatly appreciate your feedback! I unfortunately do not have a television / movie producer background but wish to learn more to better understand and support the workflow of professionals in this area. On a different note, I have recently not had time to watch television and hence just looked Shark Week up. It looks popular, congrats!
    - coldtea 7y ago
      The grantparent is right when it comes to terms: - Ken Burns effect -> zoom and pan around the image. The Ken Burns effect is a type of panning and zooming effect used in video production from still imagery. The name derives from extensive use of the technique by American documentarian Ken Burns. (Wikipedia) - 2.5D parallax effect -> what we see in the link https://blog.pond5.com/16853-create-2-5d-parallax-effect-images-photoshop-cc/ https://blog.pond5.com/16853-create-2-5d-parallax-effect-ima... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcSdhtxId2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcSdhtxId2o Note that these two can (and frequently are) be combined, and Ken Burns himself does so occasionally.
greggman2 7y ago
Amazing but yea, not the Ken Burns effect. MacOS has "Ken Burns" screen saver if you are on Mac. There's also plenty of examples of "Ken Burns" effect on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjdWvmjgBa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjdWvmjgBa0 Also Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_effect The authors might want to change the description on their amazing effects if they want to avoid lots of threads and comments about it not being the Ken Burns effect (or maybe that will generate more comments)
- sniklaus 7y ago
  I am confused, a quote from Wikipedia: "The Ken Burns effect is a type of panning and zooming effect used in video production from still imagery." Our framework takes a single still image and animates it via panning and zooming while adding 3D parallax. Does adding the 3D parallax not make it the Ken Burns effect anymore? Please let me know in case I am misunderstanding anything. Yes, the examples that we have shown do not zoom as much as common Ken Burns examples. This stems from our framework processing the input at low resolution due to limitations in deep learning and the overall complexity of the problem. As such, there is not enough detail that could be zoomed into. This will be improved in later generations.
  - jlebar 7y ago
    > Does adding the 3D parallax not make it the Ken Burns effect anymore? Yes. Specifically, the Ken Burns effect describes taking a still, 2D image and panning and zooming on the 2D image in a motion picture. Adding 3D parallax makes it something quite different in the eyes of many of us on this forum. It is cool! We would just not use the words "Ken Burns effect" to describe what you've made.
    - jchook 7y ago
      On the contrary I think it basically serves the same purpose as the Ken Burns effect, except it tastefully incorporates the natural depth of the image. One might even argue Ken Burns would have paired the panning and zooming with this parallax effect if he could. I look forward to this enhancing basically all photo slideshows for a long time to come.
RichardCA 7y ago
It's called, "using a rostrum camera". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostrum_camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostrum_camera If you grew up watching PBS documentaries there was always a rostrum camera operator somewhere in the credits. In the UK, Ken Morse was/is best known for this. https://twitter.com/kenmorsecredits https://twitter.com/kenmorsecredits

by amayne 7y ago

onemoresoop 7y ago

Pretty much what I thought as well. But cool nonetheless.

sgt 7y ago

Perhaps it would also be worth mentioning Ken Burns and his documentaries. They're absolutely worth watching and gives BBC a run for its money. Perhaps start with The West and then move on to Civil War. My personal favorite was perhaps the one on Jazz, made in 2001.

bgeeek 7y ago
I'm not sure that they give the BBC a run for its money - you're talking about quite a lot of Beeb output ;-) I agree that they are of an unusually high standard.
- billfruit 7y ago
  BBC documentaries, many of them atleast are having a reputation beyond what they deserve I think, often times the real information in them is sparse, and they present overtly simplistic narratives, with too much padding.
  - bgeeek 7y ago
    In comparison to what, though? It's easy to knock the Beeb, but compare the output (TV, Radio, and Web) to anything vaguely similar and you will probably appreciate the quality. They're not just making docus, it's so much more. Funnily enough, the Beeb aired the Burns Vietnam, too.
    - billfruit 7y ago
      For example compared with the work of Asif Kapadia in recent years, which almost entirely avoids voice over narratives.
criddell 7y ago
A new one starts tonight on Country music. Even though I'm not a big fan of the genre, I expect it to be fascinating.
theluketaylor 7y ago
Baseball and National Parks are two of my personal favourites. His Vietnam is particularly powerful since it's filled with personal accounts.
ms512 7y ago
The Roosevelts was my intro to Ken Burns and it was the only TV show ever that I could not stop watching. Since then, I've also been very impressed by the quality of all the other Ken Burns documentaries.
afterburner 7y ago
His Vietnam series was great. Civil War... I guess I already knew a lot about it, so what I noticed mostly was more sympathy than I'd like for a sort of Lost Cause nostalgia, and not much talk of slavery. But I guess he had to sell it for its time...
- pier25 7y ago
  Loved the Vietnam series too. Have watched it a couple of times on Netflix. I'm 40 yo European so I knew close to nothing about the Vietnam war other than what I had seen in some movies. Very in depth and emotionally powerful. It also seemed pretty objective to me as a complete outsider.
- BurpIntruder 7y ago
  That's because he had hacks like Shelby Foote trying to convince people that the Civil War wasn't caused by slavery.
spodek 7y ago
The Central Park 5 is utterly heartbreaking. I think it's Ken Burns' closest to today. I believe all its main people are alive today. One is in the White House. What he did in this case was unconscionable. https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-central-park-five https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-central-park-five
alexilliamson 7y ago
I watch episodes 5-8 of Jazz like once a year
timrichard 7y ago
Those are great documentaries.... I also really enjoyed Empire of the Air, covering the history of radio.
RichardCA 7y ago
His brother Ric Burns made a documentary about the Donner Party. It really is a masterpiece of non-fiction horror. Unfortunately it's unavailable for streaming. Every time someone uploads it, it gets taken down. This Peabody Award clip is all that's available. The DVD can be had for cheap on Amazon. https://youtu.be/w-eTjCuNDoE https://youtu.be/w-eTjCuNDoE https://film.avclub.com/the-most-terrifying-pbs-special-of-all-time-1798241596 https://film.avclub.com/the-most-terrifying-pbs-special-of-a...

semi-extrinsic 7y ago

Looking at the website of OP, they agree with you in the classic definition of Ken Burns effect, and call this "3D Ken Burns".

sniklaus 7y ago
We were doing a lot of reading to better understand video producers an their usage of the Ken Burns effect. We are ultimately still research scientists with no hands-on video-production experience but we made sure to do our homework. :)
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  Some thoughts based on looking at the video a few times more (disclaimer - I'm not a video professional) * There needs to be some variation in the zooming if you use this in a slideshow. I'd even say bias it towards zooming out more often, since that gradually reveals more of the image. * You might have enough information to work with here to develop a similar "focus pull effect from single image" algo. That would be really cool. * Maybe also you could try to develop a "sunset fade" for images where you detect blue sky. Graduallu adding a gradient yellow-orange fade for the sky, gradually warmer and darker foreground and non-sky background.
  - sniklaus 7y ago
    Thank you for sharing your thoughts! * There definitely should be more variety in terms of camera paths. Our framework either supports fully automatic results (as shown) or ones with a manual camera path. For an automatically generated slideshow, one should probably add more variety. * There is some great work in this area, commonly focusing on portrait images. But yes, once the scene geometry has been estimated sufficiently well, one can definitely add some nice out-of-focus effects. * That would be an interesting research direction. I am not an expert in relighting, but I can imagine that this requires a lot of work to make sure that the scene composition looks believable.
    - 7y ago

sniklaus 7y ago

The examples in the video were automatically generated without user feedback. It is actually also possible to manually specify the camera path in order to achieve the effect that you are expecting, for more information feel free to have a look at the video on the project website.

amayne 7y ago
Understood. This is an area of image research I have an interest and some experience in (image segmentation, background inpainting, etc., through machine learning.) I think your results are wonderful. I was just pointing out that from my background (a television producer - most recently Shark Week, etc.) that the Ken Burns effect and parallax effects are considered two different concepts (that can be combined, but mean different things.)
- sniklaus 7y ago
  I did not mean to shoot you down or anything, I in fact greatly appreciate your feedback! I unfortunately do not have a television / movie producer background but wish to learn more to better understand and support the workflow of professionals in this area. On a different note, I have recently not had time to watch television and hence just looked Shark Week up. It looks popular, congrats!
  - coldtea 7y ago
    The grantparent is right when it comes to terms: - Ken Burns effect -> zoom and pan around the image. The Ken Burns effect is a type of panning and zooming effect used in video production from still imagery. The name derives from extensive use of the technique by American documentarian Ken Burns. (Wikipedia) - 2.5D parallax effect -> what we see in the link https://blog.pond5.com/16853-create-2-5d-parallax-effect-images-photoshop-cc/ https://blog.pond5.com/16853-create-2-5d-parallax-effect-ima... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcSdhtxId2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcSdhtxId2o Note that these two can (and frequently are) be combined, and Ken Burns himself does so occasionally.

greggman2 7y ago

Amazing but yea, not the Ken Burns effect. MacOS has "Ken Burns" screen saver if you are on Mac. There's also plenty of examples of "Ken Burns" effect on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjdWvmjgBa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjdWvmjgBa0 Also Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_effect The authors might want to change the description on their amazing effects if they want to avoid lots of threads and comments about it not being the Ken Burns effect (or maybe that will generate more comments)

sniklaus 7y ago
I am confused, a quote from Wikipedia: "The Ken Burns effect is a type of panning and zooming effect used in video production from still imagery." Our framework takes a single still image and animates it via panning and zooming while adding 3D parallax. Does adding the 3D parallax not make it the Ken Burns effect anymore? Please let me know in case I am misunderstanding anything. Yes, the examples that we have shown do not zoom as much as common Ken Burns examples. This stems from our framework processing the input at low resolution due to limitations in deep learning and the overall complexity of the problem. As such, there is not enough detail that could be zoomed into. This will be improved in later generations.
- jlebar 7y ago
  > Does adding the 3D parallax not make it the Ken Burns effect anymore? Yes. Specifically, the Ken Burns effect describes taking a still, 2D image and panning and zooming on the 2D image in a motion picture. Adding 3D parallax makes it something quite different in the eyes of many of us on this forum. It is cool! We would just not use the words "Ken Burns effect" to describe what you've made.
  - jchook 7y ago
    On the contrary I think it basically serves the same purpose as the Ken Burns effect, except it tastefully incorporates the natural depth of the image. One might even argue Ken Burns would have paired the panning and zooming with this parallax effect if he could. I look forward to this enhancing basically all photo slideshows for a long time to come.

RichardCA 7y ago

It's called, "using a rostrum camera". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostrum_camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostrum_camera If you grew up watching PBS documentaries there was always a rostrum camera operator somewhere in the credits. In the UK, Ken Morse was/is best known for this. https://twitter.com/kenmorsecredits https://twitter.com/kenmorsecredits