slow motion solutions?
 

I noticed in PPro, the slower you make the video the worse the footage gets. Slowed down 50%, the video looks terrible. How do you slow down the video, and still have sharp looking foootage?

When you are slowing down dv footage that is shot at 29.97 frames a second and then slowing it to 50% there just aren't enough frames to make smooth movement. There is a built in feature in Premiere called 'frame blending' that is supposed to help create good looking slow motion, but frankly it stinks.

There are a couple different techniques that I use...


• Both Shake and After Effects 7 have motion blending tools that will create excellent slow motion. (they make the 'in-between' frames that PPRO can't)

• There are also cheap 3rd party software programs for the PC that will do basically the same things as Shake and AE, but don't have as many bells and whistles. When I edited with PPro I used "GooderVideo SlowMotion " it worked pretty well and it was cheap. But nothing compares to Shakes capabilities (personal opinion)

• Use a camcorder that shoots at 60fps (I use the xl2 and XLH1)


I've heard that the general rule is:
When shooting at 30fps, don't slow it down past 70-80% and at 60fps you're safe until about 50%

Hope that helps!

Thanks. I have an XL2. I understand I should shoot my intended slow motion video in 60i. Correct?

Yes, that is correct. 60i looks great in slow motion, but it looks bad in 'realtime'. (by bad I mean reality tv/news videoish)

If you want to take stuff you've shot in other frame rates give this program a try

http://www.goodervideo.com/products/SM.html

It looks super cheap, but it gives surprisingly decent results (I'm pretty sure they have a demo)