timeremap with AE and twixtor

[Peter Litwinowicz]

As far as framerate is concerned: more samples are better than fewer. I would suggest shooting in 60p if that’s an option. But you should perform some tests and see if 24p will provide what you need for your situation.

As far as working under the hood is concerned, did you find the manual that is installed with the plugins upon installation? The name of the file is TwixtorUsersManual.htm

There is an example of a properly set up project of Twixtor “working under the hood” in the
“Sample Projects” section with the title “Twixtor 4.5 sample projects” (not the Tutorials section, with the section titled “Twixtor Basics”) here: https://www.revisionfx.com/products/twixtor/support/#After%20Effects,%20Premiere%20Pro,%20Final%20Cut%20Pro,%20and%20Combustion

From the manual:

New to Twixtor 4. For After Effects Only. Handling audio and image sequence time remapping at the same time. “Can I use the host application to time remap both the image sequence and audio, but use Twixtor to perform the image calculations, complete with motion vectors?”

The answer to this question is “yes.” However, if you want to retime both the audio and video at the same time you won’t be able to use Twixtor’s Speed% or Frame Num control to control the remapping. You’ll have to use the controls that are built in to the host application. Time controls include the “Time Remapping” and “Time Stretch” features of After Effects, constant and variable speed controls of Final Cut Pro, and the clip speed and duration settings in Premiere Pro.

Place the material you want to be retimed into a composition (After Effects’ term) or sequence (Premiere Pro and FCP’s terms). Place Twixtor on the material and set the Time Remap Mode to Speed and then set Speed% to 100. Set the rest of Twixtor‘s Track Control and Output Control settings as appropriate. Then nest the composition or sequence (the “Child”) into another comp/sequence (the “Parent”). Then retime the Child comp/sequence from inside the Parent comp/sequence using the host’s retiming capabilities. That’s it!

Note: When working in this way, make sure to turn off frame blending for the host application (if the host application has such a setting).

Note to combustion users: combustion 3 doesn’t allow you to time stretch anything but footage, so this technique of remapping audio and image sequences from within combustion is not available.

Conceptually, the hierarchy of control is the following:

• Parent Sequence/Composition
• Retime the child sequence inside the parent sequence or composition using the host application’s time remapping controls.

• Child Sequence (placed inside Parent)

• Twixtor applied to source material. Time Remap Mode set to Speed, Speed% set to 100.
• Source material to be retimed (which itself can be another composition or sequence)

Let us know if you have any other questions,
Pete Litwinowicz
https://www.revisionfx.com

[Patrick Moore]

Ok, I think I understand. I’m trying to figure out if I can do something like the video on your website, so I don’t need to remap the audio and if I’m right the whole shot was done at normal speed? and then remaped with the audio by creating the fast then slow motion stuff back and forth? The only thing that looks different is the slowed down audio when they are singing, was that done with slower audio, so it would match up when slowed down? I shoot and edit music videos and this looks like a sweet little plugin that I might be purchasing if I can figure everything out. Thanks for your quick response to my questions.
Patrick

[Peter Litwinowicz]

I presume by “The video on the website” you are talking about the “You don’t know me” video?

What the effects guy did was this: had the band perform the song without the audio. He then had the band do sing certain parts really fast and certain parts really slow.

The parts that were sung really fast in “real life” (and on camera) were then time-remapped so that the lips of the band members matched the song. WHen doing that, the video was necessarily slowed down, so the rest of the body movements looked like they were moving in slow mo.

And the parts that were sung really slowly in “real life” (and on camera) were then time-remapped to match the song. So the band’s lip movements had to be sped up in those sections, making the lips match the song, but the body movements look like fast motion.

Make sense?
Pete

[Patrick Moore]

So the whole thing was done in one take no audio to mess them up and it was set up for all the punches and hits by the amount needed between each singing part and then the singing parts were done fast each time they sang so in the end they didn’t have to really be exact with it because of the edit?

[Pierre Jasmin]

Actually I presume they use the frame mode in source mode to slide the frames to where audio and mounth start open when he signs match. For example you could use a marker to mark wherever the start signing cue is and then put a Twixtor Frames param Keyframe there and then you play with the curves from there. As long as it starts signing at the right place (you have lip-synch at that point, probably no one will notice)

Pierre

[Patrick Moore]

Thanks Pete, I got it to work with timeremaping like you said, didn’t realize how easy that was. now just need to see if thats the best route to go for what I’m doing.