Twixtor in FCP workflow

[Peter Litwinowicz]

[Piotr Janowski] “Although I think that I have a strong hardware setup…MacPro 3.ghz, Ati 1900, 6 gb ram, the rendering process is awfully slow (hdv footage) which makes it almost impossible to use it as a editing decision tool. Of course, if I decide to change a whole clips speed, than there is no problem, I just make a longer coffee break, but what if I would like to make accurate speed adjustments that can be easily reviewed.”

You can always turn the Motion Vector Quality to None, which will then just do frame blending without any motion vector analysis (and allows you to better use Twixtor as an editing decision tool). We do this here all the time. Perhaps that will help you out?

Also, I noticed that we received some bounced back emails from your system when trying to send you your invoice, did you get the registration keys? You can email us at sales(at)revisionfx(dot)com.

Pete Litwinowicz
https://www.revisionfx.com

[Rob De jong]

Hello,
2 Simple Questions

1 can twixtor deal with HDV?
2 what system requirements are advised?

Thanks,
Rob

[Tom Kramer]

Hmh, I don’t want to open up a new thread, so, even if this is gonna be about Fields kit, too, it somehow fits the original questions.

OK, for me, FCP/Twixtor workflow is an even greater mystery. I also went through the (very few) available tutorials, which mostly focus on using Twixtor in AE, which I do neither use nor know.

Still, I am already lost on the most basic question of fields. I consider myself having the same needs as Piotr, i.e. in a full fledged timeline remap only some select clips.
For basic slomos on “easy” material (little movement, relatively stable, uniform backgrounds) I’d rather use Motion’s Optical flow mode, which will give me OK results while rendering in the background, saving time and effort.

When I need to do ramped slomos, I use Twixtor. The trouble is, these clips tend to be on the difficult side of things: Fast movements in multiple direction, moving backgrounds, you name it.

So for better results, I want to use Fields:Kit Deinterlacer to properly deinterlace the footage first, then apply Twixtor. That’s already where the trouble begins.

The original timeline and footage is interlaced DV (PAL).
So, as not to mess to much with my project timeline, I create a second timeline and copy the clip in there, pad it by comping it with another copy of the same clip, and put the deinterlacer on there. As I am looking at at least 50% slomos, I set FieldsKit to 1 Frame per field, already yielding a 50% slomo. Am I correct so far?

So now I have got a progressive clip with a 50% slomo. Good. BUT: should this have happened in a sequence set to lower field, as the original footage and timeline is, or should I have used a no fields sequence?

Setting the sequence to interlaced will rather often give me some quirky in-between frames, a progressive sequence , while giving me crisp images both on the computer screen as on TV control monitor apparently just puts out doubled frames as in-betweens, resulting in a choppy slomo…. (fill method of course being set to anything other than DUPLICATE). So I stick with an interlaced sequence.

(Huhm, odd feeling there…)

So, let’s assume I were happy with what I see, I would now apply Twixtor to that deinterlaced 50% comp (I do not even render it most of the time, cause with my equipment it takes forvever to do so). Or should I have quicktime-exported it first and twixtor the reimported, deinterlaced solid clip, this time in a progressive timeline?

Well, no idea. Anyhow, now I tweak and ramp it with twixtor (takes forever, the whole stuff being less than ideal material to create in-between frames from, but eventually way better results than I could ever get out of Motion).

In the end, I have a deinterlaced, ramped slomo in, well, an interlaced timeline, that I am gonna copy back to my original interlaced timeline.
(Actually, most of the time I export and reimport that thing as quicktime clip, so I do not have to re-render the slo-mo all the time when I do an opacity change, or add a filter or the like later.)
Still, it is a no fields-clip in lower fields timeline!

Reinterlace first? Or let FCP do that, which, apparently, it does, as I can see the slomo un the monitor, and it is not all bad…

So the final result, is, well, sometimes quite good, sometimes rather poor, and I am afraid something is very, VERY wrong with the workflow I came up with.

Stil, as I mentioned, using a progressive timeline results in poor slomos…

I believe that what I want to do with twixtor is nothing extraordinary, so I suppose somebody must have come up with a really smart workflow…. anyone? ….please?

Quite lost and grateful for any explanation on how to correctly use the Fields:Kit/Twixtor package in FCP,

Kramer