# Deforum - Infinite Morphing Zooms

Period: Aug 2022 – 2023 · Era: 2022 · The Dawn

The zoom that ate 2022: programmable cameras on top of Stable Diffusion.

Deforum put a programmable camera on top of Stable Diffusion. You typed schedules for zoom, rotation and how much each frame could change, hit go, and got a flowing, morphing animation, often timed to music. It was the first animation tool thousands of people used, and its look defined a year.

## How it worked

1. Generate frame zero, or supply an init image.
2. Warp it by the schedule: `zoom`, `angle`, `translation_x/y/z`, `rotation_3d_*`, with MiDaS depth in 3D mode.
3. Run img2img at a scheduled `strength` (0.4–0.65 was the sweet spot: higher fell apart, lower froze into mush) and repeat for every frame.
4. Layer `cfg_scale_schedule`, `noise_schedule`, `seed_schedule` and color coherence to a reference to keep the drift musical instead of random.
5. Sync to music: Parseq mapped beats and amplitude to zoom pulses and prompt switches across forty-plus parameters.
6. Video-input mode used each source frame as the init; Hybrid Video (2023) pulled optical flow from a driving clip.

## Why it mattered

The first mass-adopted animation tool with programmable camera and parameter schedules, and the direct ancestor of prompt travel and keyframe editors.

## Why it faded

The Deforum look (an endless morphing zoom) became instantly recognizable and cheap. It could not hold a character or a shot; ControlNet and AnimateDiff gave structure and temporal modules it never had.

## Tools of the era

- Deforum (2022): https://github.com/deforum-art/deforum-stable-diffusion
- Parseq (2022): https://github.com/rewbs/sd-parseq
- Kaiber (2023): https://kaiber.ai
- Stable Diffusion (2022): https://stability.ai

## Example videos and posts

- AI animation with Deforum in Stable Diffusion · Vladimir Chopine (GeekatPlay): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrY7qoXb_Go
- Deforum with ComfyUI · Shiccup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHNTGvaH7OE
- Dreamforum 2023: horizontal videos · Deforum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_29TzFw4NOI
- Deforum Studio tutorial for beginners · Heather Cooper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTAuIhxeLVw

## On the timeline

- [Deforum Stable Diffusion](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/deforum) (2022-09)
- [Stable Diffusion 1.4](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/stable-diffusion-1-4) (2022-08-22)

## Sources

- Deforum v0.1 release: https://twitter.com/deforum_art/status/1562999935414333441
- Parseq: https://github.com/rewbs/sd-parseq
- Hybrid Video mode: https://gist.github.com/kabachuha/6d341d3219c944d103716f39c0fea3fe
- Linkin Park "Lost" with Kaiber: https://decrypt.co/120958/linkin-park-new-music-video-nft-pplpleasr-shibuya

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Source: https://aifilmhistory.org/workflows/deforum-animation