Shooting for Twixtor

[Peter Litwinowicz]

My main question would be this: If you can shoot 1080 60p, doesn’t your camera also have a 24p option? Then you wouldn’t need Twixtor at all.

I like selling Twixtor :-), but if you can control the shoot, then you should plan for film at the get-go.

Or do you need to deliver in multiple media?

Pete

[Kevin Kerwin]

Yes, there is a 24p option on the camera – it is HD, but isn’t twixtor the best way to manipulate the motion (speeding up slowing down quite a bit) rather than time re-mapping in FCP or After Effects? Most video/HD cams now have 24p options. I had read where you want to give twixtor as many fields/frames as possible to work with…?

[Pierre Jasmin]

If you are going out to film, and plan to maintain your output 10 bit per channel I would advise the FxPlug version for FCP

And yes the more input frames per second you have, the easier it is for Twixtor, particularly for extreme slowmos.

Note FCP does not support frame rate conversion per se (input at some FPS and output at some other FPS) so you will have to do your slow-mo offline in you like and use a trick like an intermediate pass with QuickTime PRO to convert to still frames.

Pierre

[Peter Litwinowicz]

I think I misunderstood your problem.

I though you were just trying to go to film. And shooting 60p to get 24p is not the best way.

However, if you need to retime in the middle of that process, then I would suggest you shoot 60p. And shoot with a decently high shutter speed as well (Twixtor does much better if objects aren’t motion blurred). You can always add motion blur with ReelSmart Motion Blur as a post process if your images are too sharp after Twixtor-izing.

Also note; if you need to change frame rates we only support frame rate changes in After Effects and combusion. Note you can perform a frame rate change with FCP and Twixtor, but it involves writing out each frame one-by-one with QT Player and then reading them back into QT PLayer with a different frame rate. This involves quite a bit of time and disk space.

You should try out the demo of Twixtor, and do a comparison test with Twixtor using 60p and 24p shoots. But as you suggested, as a general rule: more frames and less motion blur will give better results.

Pete

[Kevin Kerwin]

Thank you for all the prompt and detailed responses, Peter and Pierre. I appreciate it. So, from what I can gather – I should use the AE plug-in as it’s more seamless? The FCP plug-in only re-maps the motion, as I understand it and not the frame rates? And I will definitely do a test. And yes, we will be doing a film out but shooting on HD. Thanks again for the help.

[Pierre Jasmin]

no,

If you plan to do the Twixtor work in FCP and maintain a 10 bpc process then I would use the FxPlug version of our plugin as the AE version only works in 8bpc in FCP

What Pete is saying, is if you have After Effects or Combustion for example, then you could consider doing Twixtor work in them as they support an input of 60P and output of 24P which would save you an intermediate step.

Pierre

[Kevin Kerwin]

Thanks again for all your help. We are actually shooting in 8 bit, as the EX1 only goes 8 bit to the SS memory. There is a version which works on both FCP and AE, correct? I am just looking on the site and trying to determine what to get for our editor, who runs both AE and FCP.

Also, there was some discussion as to whether it would benefit Twixtor to overcrank the footage and shoot 720 24p 60 fps and use this as our “native” or “default” footage, if that makes sense. The whole point is elaborating on these “found moments” in this room as we move through it, which obviously this technique is great for…

Thanks for the input,
Kevin

[Pierre Jasmin]

The AE compatible version of the plugin is what you want then.

There is a value for Twixtor to shoot 60 FPS (results will be at worst better), with caveat that it makes the workflow more difficult inside of FCP (AE deals with that change of frame rate 60 to 24P properly).

Pierre

[Kevin Kerwin]

Hi, thanks. Do you mean the “AE compatible version?” or the “Full version for AE”? And what is the difference between these and the FX Plugin version? And if, at some point, we were going to shoot in 10 bit and wanted to use Twixtor shouldn’t we go with the FX Plugin – or does that not work with AE? Sorry…trying to figure this out on the twixtor web site. Thanks for the help.

[Pierre Jasmin]

FxPlug is Final Cut native plugin format now, it only works in Final Cut (Motion also supports FxPlug but Twixtor does not work well in Motion right now). The FxPlug will support more bits per channel then 8 in Final Cut.

AE compatible plugins (the “The Full version”) work in After Effects, Premiere, Combustion and a few other apps. In Final Cut Pro AE compatible plugins are only supported at 8 bpc. No such limit in After Effects, the application. The same AE compatible plugin can work in all these apps.

Sorry for that option, it’s Apple decision to only support AE plugins at 8 bits per channel. Note for an extra $99.95 you can get both.

https://revisionfx.com/products/twixtor/pricing/#Final%20Cut%20Pro%20(Apple)

Pierre