Slow motion in FCPX

[Jerry Hofmann]

Select the clip in the timeline window, and then click on the retiming button to select “optical flow” from the video quality submenu there.

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann

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[Daniel Kenyon]

Thanks

Would you still recommend shooting initially at 50fps rather than 25?

[Rafael Amador]

[Daniel Kenyon] “Would you still recommend shooting initially at 50fps rather than 25?”
You’ll ever get in software the Slow-mo you can get in camera.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Daniel Kenyon]

So Rafael, what would your suggestion be? Would you shoot at 50fps and then conform the clip in the timeline or forget conforming and just retime using optical flow?

And if you wouldn’t shoot in 50fps does that mean I could shoot in 1080 rather than 720 (as 50fps can only be captured in 720 mode) and then just retime the footage?

Thanks

Dan

[Josephus Tudtud]

Im not sure what you mean by Highest quality, I have confidence in the optical flow’s ability but i guess the question is what type of shots will produce the best slow motion.

So i ran a quick test. I started with custom project at 24p but put in 60p clips, and slowed them down to 3% speed with optical flow this are the results.

I also applied the same technique to this project

Is it OK how can I make it better…

With the exception of the interior hand held shots, the out door shots were shot with steadicam, I think it has good effect in helping with smoother slow motion, but i also wonder what affects optical flow ability to keep things sharp.

[Bill Davis]

Slow motion is change over time.

The more data relative to time, the generally better your chance of successfully converting that to a different frame rate. So in an apples to apple comparison, you’d want to shoot 60fps rather than 50fps (provided both are progressive or interlaced, not one of each) to take advantage of the additional data in the form of extra frames.

In real life, it can get a lot more complicated. The size, speed and very nature of the object being recorded might cause one temporal rate to work a lot better than another.

A great example is a pan across a picket fence. Depending on your shutter speed relative to the picket spacing, you could get anything from pristine slow mo – to a ghastly ghosted mess if the frequency of the pickets and the frequency of the pan conflict. Does motion blur help or hurt you’re particular use? If you want the impression of smooth speed, a low shutter speed will get you more inter-frame blur which makes a moving object look smoother. OTOH, if you want as much clarity as possible in each frame, a higher shutter speed is better. But of course, higher shutter speeds require more light at a given aperture.

1080 at what resolution and what data rate? How do they map pixels to video lines. Is everything uncompressed? Or did the camera manufacturer do some compression tricks in implementing their particular “1080” over “720”

Like much in video, most things are trade offs. When in doubt – test, test, test.

My 2 cents, anyway. Good luck.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Tony Brittan]

Looks like you’re in the Beta program for Sapphire Edge. I see a bunch of their plug-ins in there 😉

Tony Brittan
Island Shore Productions

[Daniel Kenyon]

Josephus and Bill, thanks for the replies.

The subjects i’m wanting to use the effect on are people, just simply moving / running etc but the example of the fence helps to describe the effect.

My camera is a UK PAL Canon 60D so 50fps is the most I can get out of it, at 1080 it does a max of 25fps.

I’ve noticed a lot of the slomo footage i’ve seen has that invisible-typre blur around the subjects and screen edges, Josephus it occurs on your video also. Can this be reduced by tripod-mounting my camera and adjusting the shutter speed or is it just something that happens?

Oh and Josephus did you just use the speed ramp function to achieve the normal speed-slow-normal speed effect?

Dan

[Matt Campbell]

I think what you’re referring too around the subjects head is the morphing looking stuff. I believe that this is optical flow doing its thing. Its examining the previous and next frames to create the middle frame. This will result in a morphing looking motion.

OS 10.6.3, Mac Pro 2 x 2.66 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 16 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Rafael Amador]

[Daniel Kenyon] “what would your suggestion be? Would you shoot at 50fps and then conform the clip in the timeline or forget conforming and just retime using optical flo”
daniel,
Optical Flow is the solution if you need to add even more Slowmo than the one you get from camera.

Conforming you endup with the original picture pixel-by-pixel.
With Optical-flow you end up with NOTHING of your original picture.
Every pixel is recalculated/re-intepolated.
No discussion in the way to go.

[Daniel Kenyon] “And if you wouldn’t shoot in 50fps does that mean I could shoot in 1080 rather than 720 (as 50fps can only be captured in 720 mode) and then just retime the footage?”
Shoot 1080 only if you really need 1080. If you can go 720, go 720.
Shoot p50 if you really need p50; if you can go with p25, go p25.
So if you can go well 720p25, go that way.
Is the best picture you can get due to the relation data-rate/picture-size.
Is what I normally shoot with my EX-1. I shoot 1080 only if i know will need that size and p50/60 only when I need slowmo.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com