Slow Motion with final cut – stagnant frames?? On deadline :-((

[Kevin Monahan]

Are you rendering it at full quality?
How does it look on the NTSC monitor?

Kevin Monahan
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[Walter Biscardi]

Be sure your video processing is set to Best quality in the System Settings.

Apply a touch of Motion Blur to the clip in the Viewer – Motion tab.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
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[Eightfish]

Yes – I believe so, the setting for rendering is Sequence -> Setting yes?

As for an NTSC monitor, I’m only doing playback on my apple monitor – but I don’t think it’s a monitor issue or playback issue.

I forgot to mention – I was told ANIMATION mode was the highest resolution possible, so the file I’m having problems with is the Animation file. I just went back to the original file from the tape (PAL DV format – not Animation format) and when I convert the file to 30% in speed it is OK.

The problem is, I’ve had some of the Animation file cleaned up by a post production person, so i need to use that animation file…

[Eightfish]

Hi Walter – where exactly is that in System Settings? Is it under “sequence” -> “settings”

I have that all maxed out. Check out my other reply to the previous post – I’ve added more information to my problem.

MANY THANKS IN ADVANCE

[Todd Beabout]

You could try running your Animation files through Compressor, changing them to PAL DV and then try that in your sequence.

-Todd Beabout
Vazda Studios

[Ron James]

[eightfish] “if frame blending is turned off, 30% means every frame is repeated about 3 to 4 times, but sometimes, every now and then, that goes to about 6 to 7 frames, creating a rough – stop action like feeling”

Isn’t that just the way FCP does it? You’re just seeing the repeated frames b/c they’re not blended.

What you want is a plugin like Twixtor (if it’s still even called that?) which uses motion differencing to create the slo-mo. It’s light-years better.

G5 Dual 2.7 GHz
2 GB RAM
OS 10.4.6
FCP 5.0.4
QT 7.1.1

[Eightfish]

thanks – I’ll try that, but wouldn’t I loose some quality? I was told to keep in in animation format to keep the video at the highest quality possible.

[Eightfish]

yes, FCP does multiple the frames 3-4 times, but every 60 to 70 frames (in the elongated 30% of original speed file), it will freeze frame for 7 frames (or when frame blending is on, you’ll see 3 frames in a row not change) – this is causing a slight stop action appearance on the rendered file.

[Todd Beabout]

It really depends on what the settings are for your timeline. If the timeline is DV, then everything will be rendered (and “down-converted”) to DV from whatever quality it was. Just so you know, Animation codec is not uncompressed anyways. If your original footage started out as DV, then converting the now Animation codec footage to DV should not have any obvious drawbacks. If you are doing some high-end color correcting then I could see working in an uncompressed timeline. Also, graphics that are rendered out in a DV timeline lose quite alot of quality. But I am supposing that the clips you are trying to slo-mo are not graphical in nature but rather are footage, so the DV conversion should be OK.

You might want to open the Animation codec movie in QuickTime and see what the frame rate, etc is on the footage. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me that you would have better results slowing down a DV clip vs. an Animation codec movie unless the frame rate or some other setting does not match. But since you are on a deadline (and who isn’t!) the DV conversion work-around might just help you. Post back and let us know how it went.

Good luck to you!

-Todd Beabout
Vazda Studios

[Eightfish]

Todd, Thanks – that’s very helpful.
Actually, I think I found the culprit – there was a small setting which kept exporting the file in compressor at 25fps, when all the footge was set at 24fps… I thought I had all the setting aligned, but this one I didn’t.

But now I have another question along these lines for you… I recorded a person doing some matrial arts, and they are moving pretty fast. I used aCanon GL/XM 1 camera in “frame mode” to capture the footage onto tape. I was told by a person in New York to import it and work with in as animation footage because that would give me the best quality, and the most information (and it appears a very large file)… but the footage was shot on miniDV – so is this not true – Am I wasting my time with such a large file? Is FCP interpolating the file (ress-ing it up) to the animation format the way I’m doing it?

The final piece is a museum video installation (fine art) piece which will be on display (beginning Saturday!). For me, I would like to get the highest quality picture I can get out of this.

The slow motion of the movement is causing me a headache as well b/c I’m realizing in a small low quality version of the file, the FCP result is fine, but when I go for a higher quality file, I’m noticing the quality of the frame blending is pretty poor. I’m testing (rendering as I write you) adding a 32 step motion blur at level 50 right now to see if that softens the effect…

Any suggestions about format (animation vs PAL DV, or somethign else), or slow mo techniques based on my final output of a DVD for an installation?

Many many thanks in advance for your reply.