Twixtor Test Video (Canon 7d) - 1000fps

Steve Shilson

Steve Shilson

Member

Shot with: Canon 7d - 720p, 60fps
Edited with: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 + Twixtor plug-in

I wanted to test out the Twixtor plug-in for Premiere so I shot this test footage of myself doing flips and such in my backyard to try it out. I've read a lot about the quirks of this plug-in from other people on here, and decided to test it in tricky detailed situations as well to see where it would and wouldn't hold up. I know there are things that aren't perfect with the use of twixtor in this video for those of you that are looking for artifacts and such, but I was pleasantly surprised with the leaf footage which was shot assuming that twixtor would slaughter the footage. Some of it was unusable, but I had better luck than I had anticipated. As you've all probably heard before, the less detail the better. (I should have maybe thought about that before wearing that winter coat of crazy colours) haha.

*everything was shot with shutter speeds between 1/1000 & 1/2000 and slowed down to either 3% or 5%*

Through a bit of trial and error, the workflow that I got the best results out of in Premiere consisted of the following:

- import 720p 60fps footage into a 720p 60fps sequence **extend the length of the sequence to what it would be with your footage slowed down**
- make another sequence with the same settings
- nest the first sequence into the second sequence
- add the twixtor plug-in to the nested footage
- slow down to whichever speeds you like, check 'smart blend'
- render it out and see if twixtor has made magic with your footage

I'm going to be doing some more twixtor tests with other footage I have shot over the past week, so I'm sure I'll be learning more. If anybody has any questions, feel free to ask.

Cheers!
 
For merrely a test, that is pretty darn fun, interesting and well made. Love the choice of music. Good job. I would be very proud of that.
 
Thanks so much for the feedback guys, very much appreciated. I was actually in New York City this past week and I was shooting a lot of footage of my friend walking around times square. I shot some night stuff with shutter speeds as slow as 50 and even that stuff is turning out pretty awesome when I run it through twixtor. I'm currently putting together a music video for a band with the footage, so I'll post it once I get it done. Thanks again!
 
Its ok, sometimes 1000fps effect is boring in some shots ,its too slow and nothing interesting is happening ,i dont like this softness on lef and right side,it looks like problem with lens even if i know its fx.Shot with leaves looked ok maybe would look better with even higher shutter.
 
Yeah I hear where you're coming from! Some of these shots I really didn't expect to keep peoples attention with excitement. . . I'll admit that I was over using it, but it was after all a twixtor test. Just having some slow mo fun! haha. Thanks for the feeback!
 
Really nice final result. I thought the shot was the leaves was definitely the best, and though as Ryan says it probably is the one with the most errors I think that because there's so much detail in the shot it's actually very hard to find a fault with it as a viewer - I certainly didn't see any problems the first time around.

The ramped shot of the backflip could have been cooler starting at 50% speed and then slowing down to like 5% or whatever it goes down to just as he gets to about 45 degrees or so. But that's just my opinion!
 
What parameters did you use? I was never able to get something halfway decent out of Twixtor.
Always got nasty artifacts and wrapping effects.

Thanks, Frank
 
Granville said:
What are the differences b/t Twixtor & Twixtor Pro?
Click to expand...

click click click

Twixtor Pro Features


  • [*] Object separation.    Support for foreground and background separation using a specified matte. Twixtor then tracks each layer separately for improved results. This feature uses proprietary filling and tracking techniques when working on the background layer even when it is obscured by the foreground! Support for up to 3 foreground layers.
  • Track Point Guidance. Up to 12 user-defined points can be specified to help guide Twixtor's motion estimation. By using the tracking points you can explicitly tell Twixtor where a pixel moves from one frame to the next in order to guide Twixtor's calculation of motion vectors. You can set the position of each point at each frame by hand, but more importantly, In After Effects and combustion these points can be positioned from frame-to-frame using the host application's point-tracking features.
  • Spline Guidance. When Twixtor exhibits tracking problems, you can guide Twixtor by simply creating and animating shapes to show Twixtor where objects are actually moving. Interactive feature registration is directed through the host program's drawing and roto tools (splines and polylines), not through a grid of mesh points! As such, there is no new interface to learn! This feature only available within After Effects 5.0 (and later) and combustion 3.0 (and later).
  • Motion Vector Import. Give Twixtor motion vectors generated elsewhere (like from a 3D system) to time remap footage, including adding motion-interpolated fields to otherwise progressive material. Only supported in apps that work in 16bpc or higher.
  • Motion Vectors Export. You can now output the motion vectors that Twixtor generates internally. This powerful feature comes with visual debugging modes to more intuitively assess and tune the quality of the motion estimation. The motion vectors can then be used elsewhere in the pipeline (including the Twixtor
 
Very nice test, I very much enjoyed it. Yeah, I could see artifacts, but really, I was expecting a lot worse. Have you ever tried Optical Flow in Apple Motion? Just curious how the two worked compared to each other. I've been using optical flow for going from 24fps to 60fps 1080p on my 7D and it has done a pretty good job. But, that's NOTHING like how far you pushed that. I would easily use that kind of footage in a music video.
 
This is truly amazing when you really think about it. This little plug in just invented 94% of the footage at 1000fps. Literally frames that did not exist. Super cool stuff.

I tried to use twixtor for a slow-mo glass bottle breaking. 60fps at wicked high shutter speeds, but the twixtor'd footage was unusable. We realized that our issue came from the fact that we had to whip the bottle ridiculously hard at the ground to break it. So the only reference frames twixtor had to start with was already blurred beyond recongnition.

Seems the trick for twixtor is to give it something clean to start with, and it can interpolate stuff pretty well. Motion blur and excessive detail will pretty much kill it.
 
Fun video to watch, nice test. Got me thinking about the shutter speed. I imagine since you're going to slow down the footage you don't have to stick to the 180 degree rule.

Did you find that twixtor worked better with a faster shutter speed?
 
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