[Scott Turner]

I ended up exporting as 24 fps, squashing the audio a bit (including your suggestion to mono), and I was able to cut it way down while still maintaining 640×480. I decided that 448×332 was just a little too small.

Thanks a bunch!

[Scott Turner]

It may be clumsy, but using the optical retiming in compressor is a good way to slow down footage using more than FCP’s frame blending.

Tomas– pick a clip that you want to slow down, and export it from FCP using compressor. When you do this, make sure that your export settings are the same as the footage you’re editing (for example, if you’re editing in DV, export using the advanced format conversion–standard definition–dv)

Then, double click on the setting that you’re going to apply to the footage (if you’re not familiar with compressor, make sure you apply a setting before you double-click on it and modify it in the inspector. if you don’t do this, and you’re new to compressor, you can get screwed up and modify something that is not actually being applied to your footage, if that makes sense). Then go to frame controls (third button in the inspector) and choose “on” from the drop-down menu.

Ignore the resizing control, but go down to retiming control. Say you want to set your clip to half-speed…change the “Set duration to:” to 50% of source. Then change the “rate conversion” drop down menu to at least “better.” Best will take forever, but it may give you even higher quality. But you must at least do better, or you might as well work in final cut (which does the “good” method)

If your computer is not too fast, or even if it is and you pick a long clip, this conversion can take a LONG time. But the results look great! And if you know how, save your custom settings so that you can use them later (for example, you have a pre-set for making DV footage half speed. Then you can apply and presto…beautiful footage!)

Maybe Daniel knows something I don’t about this (probably), but I’ve had good success doing this.