simple time effects

[Kevin Camp]

well, the clip will need to get shorter (play out faster) if you speed it up… if you clip is 10 seconds and you speed it up 200% it will play back in 5 seconds. the same would apply if the clip was sped up just for part of the clip, the effected clip would be shorter than the original. that’s just how it works…

if you needed same clip length, you would need to speed it up, then slow it down… so set the first key frame at the beginning of the clip to 200%, the last keyframe at the end to 50%. the speed should now ramp down, but the clip will be the same length.

you mentioned distortion of the clip, what kind of distortion? is it from the interpolation of new frames, or something else?

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Malcolm Desoto]

Yeah, I understand that that clip length will change do to the speed. However, sometimes, the clip will just go black. It’s as if it shortened it, but I can’t find any glimpse of it all up and down the timeline.

for example, I wanted to ramp a clip up to 200%. If I just typed in 200, it would disappear, I tried ramping it up slowly. I could get up to 116%, but it would disappear after that. I couldn’t see the clip no matter how far I scrolled left or right in the timeline.

Thanks for the ramping tip though. I don’t think I had that quite right. I was starting at 200 and then ramping down to 100.

The distortion is more akin to a warp effect or something. It’ll just do it at the tail end of the clip.

I hope that all isn’t as confusing as hell.

Thanks for the help.

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” –Albert Einstein

[Kevin Camp]

[malcolm man] “If I just typed in 200, it would disappear, I tried ramping it up slowly. I could get up to 116%, but it would disappear after that.”

that shouldn’t happen… what codec is the clip? have you tried clips in another codec? i’m wondering if it may have something to do with the compression. can you try it on a clip that is a lossless mov or uncompressed avi or an image sequence of some sort?

or, you could try using time remapping rather than timewarp (select the footage layer, then choose layer>time>enable time remapping)… time remapping will add a time remapping parameter to your footage layer with 2 keyframes. to make the footage faster, drag the end keyframe towards the beginning of the clip, if you want to ramp from fast motion to slow motion, add a key frame in the middle and drag it towards the beginning (change the interpolation of the keyframe to smooth it, if needed).

working with time remapping is a little tricky, but it has advantages…. if the footage is interlaced and you separate fields, it can use the data from the second field if you slow the footage down. timewarp can’t unless you work in a 59.94 comp, then nest it in a 29.97 comp.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Malcolm Desoto]

Thanks for the advice Kevin.

What Dave? You’re supposed to change it to another codec? I’m working with 1080 30p footage that was exported from Avid as an uncompressed QT. How am I suppossed to change it? Do I do this when I export it from Avid? What codec am I supposed to use?

Did I miss the huge memo on this?

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” –Albert Einstein

[Darby Edelen]

I don’t know why your footage is turning black, it also sounds strange that you can’t find your layer up and down the timeline.

Here’s some general info on Timewarp:

Timewarp should not change the duration of the layer, but it does change the speed at which the footage in the layer plays back. So, for example, if you apply Timewarp and set the speed value to 200% on a layer with a 6 second duration, that layer should still appear to be 6 seconds long in the timeline but the footage will playback in 3 seconds. The last 3 seconds will be stuck at the last frame of the footage.

Alternatively, if the speed is set to 50% then the footage will only be half complete when you reach the end of the layer. To get around this I usually apply Time Remapping to the layer but don’t change the values, then I can stretch the duration of the layer out to fit the new duration of the timewarped footage.

Do you have any more specifics about your footage? How long is it? Where are all the keyframes in the Timewarp effect and what are their values?

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA