Looking for some help on creating good slow motion

Jay Rodriguez

Jay Rodriguez

Coffee Member
Ok, I'm totally lost on this topic and need some help on getting some good slow motion shots with the A1.

I shot some test footage at 60i, shutter speed at 100. I'm using Final Cut and do not have any special plugins, hell, I didn't even realise that I had cinema tools until I just now checked, lol.

I've visited this link but I really need some specifics.

Anyone care to help me out?

Jay
 
Jay Rodriguez said:
Ok, I'm totally lost on this topic and need some help on getting some good slow motion shots with the A1.

I shot some test footage at 60i, shutter speed at 100. I'm using Final Cut and do not have any special plugins, hell, I didn't even realise that I had cinema tools until I just now checked, lol.

I've visited this link but I really need some specifics.

Anyone care to help me out?

Jay
Click to expand...


Hey Jay, what type of information do you need? I learned a lot from that thread and my slow motion looks amazing now. Although there are some drawbacks and limitations, if your project can acommodate for it, it's worth it.

Essentially what's going on in the process is that you're recording using the highest framerate on the camera (60i. the more fps the better) and adjust the shutter speed according to what you're filming to compensate for motion blur. Sometimes this means higher shutter speeds than the recommended 1/120.

Interlacing is of course bad for slow motion because you notice it a lot when slowing video down, so we use compressor (comes with fcp) to turn the 60i to a progressive frame rate.

Once that's done, conforming the 60p, to a 24p frame rate in cinema tools means that the video will now play the 60 progressive fps at 24fps which means when played back, it will now play at 40% of the original.

All in all, you're altering the original 60i footage to playback as a 24fps video at 40% of it's normal speed.
 
How's it going dude, thanks for chiming in. I understand the process, it makes sense to me. I just don't know how to do it, lol.

How exactly did you to turn the 60i footage to a progressive frame rate in Compressor?

How did you conform the 60p, to a 24p frame rate in cinema tools?
 
Jay heres the simple way I do it on A1 footage. Theres no need to go to an uncompressed codec for a start as you dont gain anything in doing so.

Heres mine from a previous thread:

First, shot 1080/60i with 1/120th shutter speed.
Second, clip capture as standard.
Third, bring in to a 29.97 timeline.
Fourth, export in compressor a 59.97 progressive frames per second. Changing all frame controls to best settings.
Fifth, import into a 24fps timeline and set speed to 40% and done.


N.B. on FORTH - I exported to DVCPROHD 59.97 progressive
 
Jay Rodriguez said:
How's it going dude, thanks for chiming in. I understand the process, it makes sense to me. I just don't know how to do it, lol.

How exactly did you to turn the 60i footage to a progressive frame rate in Compressor?

How did you conform the 60p, to a 24p frame rate in cinema tools?
Click to expand...

I see. Well Noel's method seems to work and is easier so try that.

When you've exported your clip from the fcp timeline to compressor, create a custom preset, and choose quicktime.

Then find the DVCPROHD codec and change the frame rate to 59.94.

Find the frame controls section and change all the settings to "best" and "output fields" to progressive.

When choosing the size of the frame, also change the pixel aspect ratio to square.

That's all you should need to do in compressor to get the progressive frame rate.

If you use Noel's way you won't have to use cinema tools.

Hope it works!
 
Noel's way is definitely workable, but I would suggest ProRes instead of DVCPRO HD because it's simply a better intermediate codec and square pixel too.

Just to clarify something--my whole recipe was based on trying to get good looking slowmo that would intercut well with 1080 24F material in a 1080p timeline. If you're talking about conversion to 720 or smaller frame sizes, usually any compression artifacts are masked to some degree so going to formats like DVCPRO HD 720 can work, but it all depends on what format you want to master to. If you want to stay as high res as possible (1080p) it's crucial to choose the right codecs for conversion.
 
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Elton,

Do you use Cinema Tools after exporting from Compressor, or do you just drop the new 60p clip into your timeline and slow to 40%? The reason I ask is that I have seen some of your slo-mo clips and they looked really smooth, pretty much as good as 60p from an HVX.

I still need to do some 60i to 60p conversion tests to see which method is the best for me.

Also, do you recommend rendering the 60p file from Compressor to a 720p or 1080p size?
 
If you have your footage as 60p you DO NOT need to convert to 24p in cinema tools. Just drop it into the 24p timeline and reduce speed to 40%.
 
Noel Evans said:
If you have your footage as 60p you DO NOT need to convert to 24p in cinema tools. Just drop it into the 24p timeline and reduce speed to 40%.
Click to expand...

The problem with changing the speed in FCP is that it adds another pass of compression to the final output at some point. You may be able to play it back in realtime, but it will need to render the final clip at some point. That's why I think it's better to conform the frame rate in CT.
 
Nektonic said:
Elton,

Do you use Cinema Tools after exporting from Compressor, or do you just drop the new 60p clip into your timeline and slow to 40%? The reason I ask is that I have seen some of your slo-mo clips and they looked really smooth, pretty much as good as 60p from an HVX.
Click to expand...

After exporting in Compressor. I like having properly processed clips that don't need to be rendered in FCP.

Also, do you recommend rendering the 60p file from Compressor to a 720p or 1080p size?
Click to expand...

To intercut with 1080 24F, my own method was to render to a 1600 x 900 custom frame size at 59.94p. For some reason it looked better to downsize from 1080 slightly, then rescale to 1080 via QT player or FCP. If you're happy with 720, then just render at that frame size, but you'll probably need to either upscale that clip back to 1080 in order to intercut with 1080 24F.
 
Elton said:
The problem with changing the speed in FCP is that it adds another pass of compression to the final output at some point. You may be able to play it back in realtime, but it will need to render the final clip at some point. That's why I think it's better to conform the frame rate in CT.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I just never bothered as anything I ever shot in the A1 only went to SD DVD.
 
Hey Elton, I was doing some testing last night with intermixing the original 60i source material and the converted 24p slow motion footage on a 29.97 time line and it actually looked pretty good. The slow motion suffered only one duplicated frame after every 4 unique frames, but it's hardly noticeable and well worth it for the ability to mix the same normal speed clip with the same slow motion clip.

Have you or anyone else tried this? Is there a better way to be able to mix the two different speeds (different fps) together? I just want the clip to be able to play at normal speed and then suddenly slow down.
 
I know this is probably a dumb question but I thought you couldn't mix clip with different editing timebases in the same Final Cut timeline, ie. 60i footage (@ 29.97) with 24f timeline (@23.976)

Ok, I guess that technically wasn't a question. Does something happen in Noel Evan's method that negates this?
 
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