slomoooo

Color

Color

Active member
ive seen some amazing slomo's in action sports and ive seen tutorials on how to do this (which involves conformng 60i video to 24p for ultimate smoothness) in after effects as well as versions of final cut that have a 24p timeline, and i only have final cut express and after effects. i tried it on after effects and it came out very choppy using this

http://www.rarevision.com/articles/slow_motion.php#

so i gave up on that, but am wondering if there's any way of doing this in final cut express version 2.0.3? or can someone tell me what i did wrong in that tutorial? because i think i followed it exactly, and it still came out shitty

thanks
ben
 
After Effects should do a better job the final cut. Are you sure you did all the pulldown/deinterlace stuff exactly as they instructed? I've alway found one little setting wrong in the conversion and it all turns to cr@p.

Do you own Compressor? It has some more advanced motion adaptive controls then final cut (then again shouldn't be any better the AE). Shake does a great job as well (again though only if the settings are right)
 
That article is out dated, and there's some stuff that's not acturate. Good article, but not the best.

First, you can NOT get the really clean slow motion you see from film with that trick. It's a nice trick, but shooting native over and under cranked footage is the cleanest, and can't be faked too well.

So, you can get what you get faking it, but you won't get as clean of a slow motion shot if you have to do some trick in post, just not gonna work.

One problem with that article is that he starts claiming 24p is the one and only thing that makes film look like film. Wrong. It's lighting, apeture, etc. It all combines to give the look. But what he really skips over is the problems that crop up when converting interlaced footage to progressive. Yes, it can be done, and pretty well, but it's still not going to be as clear as footage shot with a native progressive CCD.

Using the DVX100, which I assume you're using, shoot with the fastest shutter speed you can, without making the image too dark. Shoot in 24pA mode. Then which ever post trick you use, you'll at least get the cleanest slow motion the DVX100 and your NLE will be able to produce.

I'd do a search on Ken Stone's FCP site for a slo-mo tutorial. I know there's a good one there. I like the one you linked to, but there's some things he missed, and he makes come claims about quality beyond what I think he should. Just my opinion...
 
I shoot the shutter at 1/300, import into AE on a 29.97 timelen. Then conform the video clip to 24 fps with lower field dominence. Then, drop it into the timeline and do a time stretch of 200%. When you export it, make sure all frame blending and motion bluring is off. It always comes out super smooth when I do that.
 
I've looked over the article and it looks to me like the author nailed it—his technique will indeed produce excellent results if you follow the steps exactly. It's almost identical to the section on slow motion in my book.

There will be issues, like BenB says—mostly with any high-frequency horizontal details in the shot, which culd "twitter" a bit—but the motion should be silky smooth.

The key points to observe are: shoot at 60i, use a 1/120 shutter, and process the footage in After EFfects, not in your NLE. AE has a pretty good deinterlacer and that's the key to pulling this off, since you're building a full frame from one field.

Believe it or not, we made slow-mo shots in Sin City from 1080 60i footage using exactly this technique!

-Stu
 
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well, to get it into .mov format for AE i was exporting from iMovie and de-interlacing. should i have left interlaced? was this my mistake?
 
Color said:
well, to get it into .mov format for AE i was exporting from iMovie and de-interlacing. should i have left interlaced? was this my mistake?
Click to expand...

Yep! You need the full 60i goodness in AE for this technique to work.

-Stu
 
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