Smooth Slow motion - How ?

[Carrington Benz]

Hi,

How can I can I get slow motion to look as good as the slow mo in movies.
If I slow down a clip to 30 % - the motion looks horrible & cheap with or without frame blending - it looks nothing like on r'n'b /hip hop videos - where you see everything so clearly gliding seemlessly in perfect slow mo.
I know that all the big budget stuff is made on FILM but I have read alot of articles recently on fcp being used on big budget stuff like "cold mountain" etc - so how do they all achieve a good quality slow motion clip ?

[magicdavek]

Check out the replies on the other thread in this same section called "What's the best method for 24P slowmo?"

http://www.dvxuser.com/cgi-bin/DVX/YaBB.cgi?board=FCP;action=display;num=1072491835

[Barry_Green]

so how do they all achieve a good quality slow motion clip ?

*

Film slow-mo is done when shooting, not in post. *They shoot at high frame rates, and when playing back at normal frame rates, the motion is slower.

[DVX100Shooter]

If you rent or buy the S.W.A.T. DVD and listen to the director commentary, he talks about how they used film cameras with a higher frame rate when played normal speed look slow. There is a shot from the ground up to a Helicopter and the blades of the helicopter are spinning real slow while the action below is all fast paced.

[DVX100Shooter]

You mentioned Music Videos...I recently shot a project that had an assortment of models walking around. I edited my project in FCP added some hip hop music and there were a couple of shots that I slowed down to give it that crystal clear slo mo like you would see in a Rap Video. Like I said on that other thread on here. I shot on 24P then I for that CLIP I went in and reduced the speed to 50%. I could have gone lower but 50% was good for the look I wanted.

[Carrington Benz]

Guys - thanks for all this info ;)

So - I take it the DVX - can't film at higher frame rates :(

I'll check out "twixtor" & "joe's" etc but I wonder if I can film at 50i & load the clips into a 25p timeline - maybe that would get better results than the plugins, like Barry Green metioned on this forum.
I have a DVX100 E pal so - does "PAL" make it any easier or harder ?

Cheers

[Zoomforce]

yeah its too bad the PAL version of the camera doesnt offer a faster progressive scan (30P) like the NTSC version does. The NTSC you can capture at 30P and put it into a 24p timeline and get a 20% slowdown, and keep the progressive frames.

[Barry_Green]

So - I take it the DVX - can't film at higher frame rates :(



There's only a couple of video cameras in the world that can -- that's the $65,000 Panasonic Varicam (60P) and the JVC HD1/HD10 (60P at low-resolution with flat colors and no latitude, but at least it contributes a lot of chroma noise)! (this doesn't count specialty video cameras with high frame rates, of course those exist but are well beyond the scope of regular users).

Not even the $25,000 SDX900 can film at higher frame rates.

The only higher frame rate anyone gets is 50i or 60i.


I wonder if I can film at 50i *& load the clips into a 25p timeline - maybe that would get better results than the plugins

That is exactly what you want to be doing, and it will deliver very nice, glassy-smooth slow-motion. You'll lose a little bit of vertical sharpness, but the increase in motion resolution is well worth it. You'll want to set your playback speed to 50%, and you may want to experiment with your NLE's de-interlacing settings to find the one that works best for your footage.