TimeLapses/SlowMos

B

bansheeproductions

Well-known member
I have a question...
I'm relatively new to Vegas, but have been using Premiere for a long time. I drag the timelapse clip into the designated place I want it and then I use the ctrl click and drag to speed it up, but it only goes to a certain point, and it's not fast enough for a timelapse.
On the other side of things, when I try and slowmo something it will go to a certain place, but I can't set it to slow 40% for example.

HELP PLEASE!

Pat
 
Select the event you want to slow down/speed up.

On menu line -- Go to: INSERT-VIDEO ENVELOPES-EVENT VELOCITY


On the event you'll now notice a green line running through the middle. Right click ADD POINT where you want to start slowing down/speeding up...and then add another point where you want to stop slowing down/speeding up.

Now right click on the first point and select "Set To..." This will allow you to set the speed to whatever you want.

Alternately, you can just drag the green line up or down to go faster/slower. It's a good way to ball park your speed on the timeline, but much easier to fine tune using the "Set To..." method.

Hope this helps.
 
Remember that the velocity envelope is relative to the speed of the clip. By this, I mean that the envelope will multiply the playback rate of the clip, if you right-click on the clip and set the playback speed.

So, if you set the playback speed to 4.000 and the velocity envelope to 300%, you end up with 12x speed.
 
I sort of get it, but it seems complicated. I did the green line thing, and I tried to make it AS SLOW AS POSSIBLE and it went backwards....? Also, shouldn't it make the length of the clip different when you move the green bar, becuase if your bar is raised so the video plays really fast, then why would the clip be the same size?
 
The greenline - watch the percentage indicator as you drag it up and down. It goes from -100% (Full speed reverse) to +300% (three times normal forward speed). For slow mo, you want something between 0 and 100 percent. Again, moving the green line around will get you in the ballpark and may get you what you actually want, but to really fine tune it you'll want to use the "Set To" command.

Length of the clip -- Length of the clip is always dictated by the space you're actually taking up on the timeline. So, if you've got it set on slow mo, say +50% or half speed, and your clip is taking up 10 seconds on timeline, it will only play for ten seconds, but only half of the actual clip. IF you want more of the clip to play, just pull more of it out on the time line. If you want the whole clip, in this case, where it's running at half speed, you'd want your normally ten second clip to take up 20 seconds on the timeline. It will look like it's looping (a little notch will appear on top of the clip), but if it's going slow enough on slow mo, in actual play back it will just play through once.

Conversely, if you speed up a 10 second clip to, say 200 percent (twice as fast) and leave it taking up 10 seconds on the timeline, it will play back twice. (Or, if you've cut the clip down from the orginal capture it will just keep going to the natural end of the clip. Again, you'll know if it's looping if you see the notched bit on the top of the clip. Play around with it. You'll see.)

Now, what David's talking about is a whole other way to control speed. It can be used in conjunction with velocity envelopes, as he mentioned, or on its own. (Never knew about this David, thx!) To use it, right click on the clip, select properties and then adjust the playback rate section. This is straight from Vegas Help:

Enter a value in the box to set the rate of playback. For example, a setting of 1 will play at normal speed, while 0.5 will play at half speed.
Each video event in your project has a specific duration that is not changed by adjusting the playback rate. If you decrease the speed of a ten-second video event by 50%, only five seconds of video will be shown. On the other hand, if the speed is increased 200%, the ten seconds of video will play in only five seconds. The remaining five seconds of the event will be filled either with a freeze of the last frame or with ten additional seconds of video content from the media file (if the source media is longer than the event.)

David, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the advantage to using this method is that it gives you a much wider range of playback speed (and is a little easier), while velocity envelopes allows you to change the speed as the clip plays though...for example, going from slow mo to fast, or gradually increasing the speed or whatever, the options limited only to the number of points you put on the clip.
 
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