-
slomo problem
I have been using alternative methods of slowing pictures down, but as most of my work is sport its not ideal.
Are Apple planning to improve slomo within FCP
Thanks -
3 Replies
-
[scott] “Are Apple planning to improve slomo within FCP”
Doubtful. All the NLEs I’ve ever used have had the same issues. Whether it’s AVID, Media100, or FCP. Personally, I like to add the Blend Fields free plug-in after a slomo. Gets rid of the messy interlace issues, or Nattress’ Film FX plug-in. Depending on what I’m doing.
TC -
Over on apple.com Patrick Sheffield has been using Compressor to create intermediate fields for what he calls “superb” slow motion. Compressor’s rendering apparently tracks pixel position. It’s nothing like Twixtor’s system of vectoring but the results are, he says, remarkable.
The pathway to perfection is a bit confusing:
https://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?13@172.V6MjaH5ATKj.999039@.68b3d36f> Based on something Cap’n Mench posted in another thread, I decided to try Compressor 2’s optical flow technology to perform a slow-mo in a music video I’m finishing.
As you may have noticed when you slow down footage in FCP and use smoothing, it goes a bit “soft”. This is because in order to make the “in-between” frames it contructs an average of the previous and following frames. Compressor 2 actually does an analysis of the pixel movement and constructs an inbetween frame that is sort of the equivalent of motion tracking each pixel. This is the same kind of stuff that the Twixtor plugin does.
Here are the results: A still from my 75% slow-mo from Final Cut and from Compressor. Note the difference in detail…
In order to use Compressor, I had to do some monkey motion. I exported my clip from FCP as a self contained Quicktime. Because the video was shot on film and transfered with a 3:2 pulldown, I used Shake to remove the pulldown. You could also use Cinema Tools to do the same thing.
After that a little math is required. I wanted to run the footage at 75% or 3/4 speed. That means I need 4/3rds the number of frames. Multiply that by 24 fps (my original footage speed w/o pulldown) and I get 32 fps (if my footage had been at 30, I’d be using 40 fps).
Knowing that, I plugged my clip into Compressor 2, selected a codec (probably the same as you are feeding into it), set the frame rate to 32 (calculated above) in the codec options, selected the Frame Controls panel, turned Frame Controls to Custom – now here’s the key: Set Rate Conversion to Best (High Quality motion compensated). I then saved this setting as 75% Slowdown for future use.
Submit the batch and wait a while. When it completed, I used Shake to set the frame rate to 24 and insert a pulldown, but again, you can use Cinema Tools to resolve the frame rate.
Brought that clip back into FCP and Voil -
That’s what happens when you don’t keep up at all the forums… Something sneaks by ya. Thanks for the info! TC
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up