Best Software Slow Motion?

kgb

kgb

Active member
Hi everyone, I shot my short film in 1080/24pa, so I basically had to give up variable framerates. I've been cutting in Final Cut Pro 5.14. From what I've heard, slow motion (Change Speed) from FCP is not the best option as far as keeping a filmic look. I have quite a few slow motion sequences, and would appreciate any recommendations for alternatives ie. plug-ins that might look decent.

Thanks in advance.
 
Twixtor.
I would have thought you'd have got better and quicker results though shooting 60fps in 720 and then uprezzing to 1080. Depends on the subject, but by the nature of calculating brand new frames you will get artifacts.
 
Twixtor, but be prepared to spend some time learning how it works. The documentation is pretty poor.
 
Compressor. Change the output frame rate in the video encoder settings, and turn on the high quality motion compensated rate conversion option in the frame controls section.
 
If you have time to wait and are working with FCP, check out the impending new version.

Apple implemented something called "optical flow" that is supposed to make slow-motion a whole lot better.

Someone observed a 10x slowdown of a woman walking and it maintained the flowing hair, etc.
 
The optical flow is the same technology incorporated into Shake at present. Its not necessarily as great as its might sound. Twixtor is also optical flow, After effects 7.0 also has optical flow built in as does Boris effects. The interpolation between frames of a complex movement (say a freestyle skier rotating on 3 axis) causes plenty of problems, whilst a woman walking across a 2d plane would cause none. Plain clothes or patterned, how fast is the action to start with? Anyway, I mention it simply to say that it take a lot of practice to get good results, some results might never be what you want and its available now in Shake so no need to wait.
 
My experience with Shakes optical flow is that it's good enough for 'stuff', ie stretching smoke, backgrounds, clouds, static etc., but I'll always dip into Twixtor for anything tricky. I've been retiming for 10 years since using Cinespeed in Cineon. Shakes optical flow is about the standard of Cinespeed back then. Twixtor pisses from a great height on this, but it's the ability to stear and control the 'flow with trackers and roto that sets it apart for me.
 
Is there a decent manual for twixtor? I downloaded the demo and had a go with it but didn't really get into the details because I couldn't really understand the manual. What they need are some bloody good tutorials to demonstrate the potential uses.
 
There are examples within the Twixtor docs that give a decent overview of it's features, enough to understand it's concepts.

The best trainingg for retiming is practice, seeing how things fail and using the many options to solve the problems.

Shoot some stuff, retime it with Twixtor and learn from that. Retiming all types of stuff isn't just a point and click solution, especially on higher-res footage. Same with all retiming software really, especially when it has to stand up to being projected 30'.
 
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