how to get superslomotion in hollywood movies?

Dmitry Kichenko · December 22nd, 2004, 12:21 AM

well.. Buy it and try it :). I'm going to do a few tests with Retimer tonight and I'll throw some clips in here.
I don't know about that package, but in Retimer it really helps drawing animated masks. That way you help to isolate all other movement in the frame so the plugin focuses only on the subject, therefore creating better 'in-betweens'.

Douglas Robbins · December 22nd, 2004, 12:54 AM

Josh,

I could use some hand holding on this one. I'm trying to get my 60i footage into my 24p timeline in order to turn it into slo mo. This is what's happening.

I'm shooting 24p. I'm capturing to FCP on a 24p timeline (2:3:3:2 pulldown). Now what do I do with 60i footage? I can't jam it into the 24p timeline, can I? It would be 29.97 fps when the timeline is 23.97 fps.

Please walk me through the steps.

Thanks much.

Douglas

Dmitry Kichenko · December 22nd, 2004, 01:24 AM

Wait a sec.. You're saying you're shooting at 24p. Well, your footage is 24p then, not 60i. You should be able to throw it on the 24p timeline just fine.
I think you missed something in the explanation of the problem.

Douglas Robbins · December 22nd, 2004, 02:37 AM

Okay, maybe there is some confusion here. Maybe I caused it. Here's the thing.

Normally I shoot in 24p. So I capture to the 24p timeline. But in special circumstances when I want to get a good slo mo effect, it sounds like I ought to shoot in 60i instead. Okay I can do that. So now I have a problem. Most of my footage is in 24p. My timeline is in 24p. But just a few clips are in 60i (these are the clips I'm going to slo mo anyway).

So here's the question: is it even possible to bring in those 60i clips into the 24p timeline for the purpose of turning them into slo mo segments?

Rob Lohman · December 22nd, 2004, 06:57 AM

That depends on your editing program I'd say. But if I where you
I would try to convert the 60i to 24p first OUTSIDE your normal
timeline/program.

Your NLE might not be the best program to do this slowmotion
in. But if that's all you've got to work with you need to find out
what your options are to interpret your footage as 24p. If you
just plunk your 60i footage into a 24p timeline (or output a 24p
movie from a 60i timeline) your NLE will just keep the same movie
length, toss some frames and de-interlace. This is NOT what you
want (since you want slowmotion).

So you somehow need to tell it to re-sample the footage as 24p.
There might be different ways to do this with different end results
(quality wise). Expirement and make sure you have a 24p final
output file (I would use uncompressed AVI @ 24 fps if you can,
otherwise output at DV AVI with a 2:3:3:2 pulldown inserted)
and *THEN* load that into your regular 24p timeline/project.

Dmitry Kichenko · December 22nd, 2004, 12:47 PM

He said in the 1st post that he's editing with Final Cut Pro.
I don't have a mac, sorry :).

Dmitry Kichenko · December 22nd, 2004, 12:50 PM

I've played around with Retimer and it seems like a really nice plug-in. To get good results your camera should be steady and the less motion blur you have, the better. It's best to shoot at 24p so you don't have to go through deinterlacing.
Now, the good part is you can have extreme slowmo's if your footage is good (meaning sharp and no motion blur).
I had some footage shot on a relatively crappy consumer camera and I just deinterlaced it and tried to put through the Retimer. Here's what I got.
1. Coin - REALLY bad footage. Wasn't shot by me, I was the editor for the film, so the lighting and the rest.. Ah, forget it. Anyway, there's little movement in the frame and here is how Retimer handled it (slowed down by a factor of 5). Doubt you should take this into consideration because.. Just look at all the artifacts on the lockers and everywhere. Pretty sure that with artifactless footage you can have small objects slowed down quite nicesely with a small search area set up in the preferences (if there's little motion blur)
2. Walk - Now here's a better piece, slowed down by a factor of 10! Looks really neat, I think :). Sorry for the big filesize, compressed with regular QT MPEG-4 codec @ 100%.

All in all, with a good camera, you can have extreme slowmos, really insane ones. The price of the package is on the level of other Realviz products... $950 for the HD version, $400 for the SD one. I've got an older educational SD version

Brandon Greenlee · December 22nd, 2004, 01:00 PM

Very Interesting how it handled the coin drop.

BTW the second 'walk' video is not working.

Dmitry Kichenko · December 22nd, 2004, 01:02 PM

My bad, wrong filename. Works now!
And if coin is interesting - check the 2nd one :).
To sum up, you need this for good results: 24p or 30p framerate, really small shutter speed along with aperture as needed to keep the scene bright. With those settings you can slow down jumps and rapid movements, which is going to look very cool when slowed down by a factor of 10.
By the way, if someone has some good footage, upload it to my machine and I'll try to throw it in the plugin.

Upload to: ftp://at24p.ath.cx
Login: dvinfo
Pass: slowmo

Dmitry Kichenko · December 22nd, 2004, 01:54 PM

I've compressed the walking 10x slowed down video with 3ivx codec @ 100%, and now it's 3.9 mb.
Download here.
By the way, you can get a demo of Retimer for any OS here.
There're also a number of tutorials on the Digital Anarchy website.
-------
The RT Motion plugin that comes with Retimer let's you fix the movement map, so you can get rid of those artifacts. Real neat :).

Dmitry Kichenko · December 22nd, 2004, 06:07 PM

After registering at ArtBeats.Com, you get a free clip of fire burning.
I've used Retimer to speed it up/slow down, and here's the result:
Fire Clip (2.2 mb, 3ivx).
The movement is joggling a bit, I guess due to lots of movement in the frame.
-------------------------------
Here's an insane one - I played with points, and it now has a slow mo made up out of only 2 (!) frames. Slowed down by a factor of 42 :).

Douglas Robbins · December 22nd, 2004, 09:15 PM

Dmitry,

Those clips look awesome. Thanks for the link to the demo page. Now I can check out ReTimer before I buy. But from the samples I've seen so far, ReTimer looks like it rules. It's a little pricy, but cheaper than a high speed film camera.

Thanks again.

Douglas

Dmitry Kichenko · December 22nd, 2004, 09:21 PM

Sure. I've updated the last fire clip a couple of times. Redownload it and see if it's what you saw when you downloaded it the first time.

Make sure to try demo out as there're lots of factors which can lead to a bad looking slowmo. A good camera will solve more than half of possible problems. Other than that just be careful with camera movements and backgrounds you choose. The biggest problems I've encountered so far was either rapid camera movement or motion blur.

Josh Caldwell · December 22nd, 2004, 10:35 PM

Douglas,

That's an interesting question. The project I was working on was in the standard 2:3 24p mode so I didn't have any trouble mixing the footage.

But...I'm just brainstorming on the spot here...is bring your 60i footage into another "project" that can handle the 60i mode, not 24p advanced. Do your slow motion effect, slow it down, so you have the clip right, say its 5 second long.

Then, take third party software like people are talking about on this thread and then convert the slow motion footage to 24p. I've never done it, so I don't know how it looks, but, maybe that's worth trying. I could be wrong...anyone else have a suggestion?

Dmitry Kichenko · December 23rd, 2004, 03:42 PM

I liked the super slowed down fire so much, I've just added sound to this little clip.Here's the final.
The sound of the fire slowed down was synthesized and edited with a number of effects. You should be able to fully appreciate the sound with a good sub-woofer.
I sure do like extreme slow-mos, hehe.

December 22nd, 2004, 06:57 AM	#35
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	That depends on your editing program I'd say. But if I where you I would try to convert the 60i to 24p first OUTSIDE your normal timeline/program. Your NLE might not be the best program to do this slowmotion in. But if that's all you've got to work with you need to find out what your options are to interpret your footage as 24p. If you just plunk your 60i footage into a 24p timeline (or output a 24p movie from a 60i timeline) your NLE will just keep the same movie length, toss some frames and de-interlace. This is NOT what you want (since you want slowmotion). So you somehow need to tell it to re-sample the footage as 24p. There might be different ways to do this with different end results (quality wise). Expirement and make sure you have a 24p final output file (I would use uncompressed AVI @ 24 fps if you can, otherwise output at DV AVI with a 2:3:3:2 pulldown inserted) and THEN load that into your regular 24p timeline/project. __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

December 22nd, 2004, 12:21 AM	#31
Dmitry Kichenko Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 74	well.. Buy it and try it :). I'm going to do a few tests with Retimer tonight and I'll throw some clips in here. I don't know about that package, but in Retimer it really helps drawing animated masks. That way you help to isolate all other movement in the frame so the plugin focuses only on the subject, therefore creating better 'in-betweens'.

December 22nd, 2004, 12:54 AM	#32
Douglas Robbins Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: san bruno, ca Posts: 60	Josh, I could use some hand holding on this one. I'm trying to get my 60i footage into my 24p timeline in order to turn it into slo mo. This is what's happening. I'm shooting 24p. I'm capturing to FCP on a 24p timeline (2:3:3:2 pulldown). Now what do I do with 60i footage? I can't jam it into the 24p timeline, can I? It would be 29.97 fps when the timeline is 23.97 fps. Please walk me through the steps. Thanks much. Douglas

December 22nd, 2004, 01:24 AM	#33
Dmitry Kichenko Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 74	Wait a sec.. You're saying you're shooting at 24p. Well, your footage is 24p then, not 60i. You should be able to throw it on the 24p timeline just fine. I think you missed something in the explanation of the problem.

December 22nd, 2004, 02:37 AM	#34
Douglas Robbins Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: san bruno, ca Posts: 60	Okay, maybe there is some confusion here. Maybe I caused it. Here's the thing. Normally I shoot in 24p. So I capture to the 24p timeline. But in special circumstances when I want to get a good slo mo effect, it sounds like I ought to shoot in 60i instead. Okay I can do that. So now I have a problem. Most of my footage is in 24p. My timeline is in 24p. But just a few clips are in 60i (these are the clips I'm going to slo mo anyway). So here's the question: is it even possible to bring in those 60i clips into the 24p timeline for the purpose of turning them into slo mo segments?

December 22nd, 2004, 12:47 PM	#36
Dmitry Kichenko Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 74	He said in the 1st post that he's editing with Final Cut Pro. I don't have a mac, sorry :).

December 22nd, 2004, 12:50 PM	#37
Dmitry Kichenko Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 74	I've played around with Retimer and it seems like a really nice plug-in. To get good results your camera should be steady and the less motion blur you have, the better. It's best to shoot at 24p so you don't have to go through deinterlacing. Now, the good part is you can have extreme slowmo's if your footage is good (meaning sharp and no motion blur). I had some footage shot on a relatively crappy consumer camera and I just deinterlaced it and tried to put through the Retimer. Here's what I got. 1. Coin - REALLY bad footage. Wasn't shot by me, I was the editor for the film, so the lighting and the rest.. Ah, forget it. Anyway, there's little movement in the frame and here is how Retimer handled it (slowed down by a factor of 5). Doubt you should take this into consideration because.. Just look at all the artifacts on the lockers and everywhere. Pretty sure that with artifactless footage you can have small objects slowed down quite nicesely with a small search area set up in the preferences (if there's little motion blur) 2. Walk - Now here's a better piece, slowed down by a factor of 10! Looks really neat, I think :). Sorry for the big filesize, compressed with regular QT MPEG-4 codec @ 100%. All in all, with a good camera, you can have extreme slowmos, really insane ones. The price of the package is on the level of other Realviz products... $950 for the HD version, $400 for the SD one. I've got an older educational SD version

December 22nd, 2004, 01:00 PM	#38
Brandon Greenlee Major Player Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: North Alabama Posts: 242	Very Interesting how it handled the coin drop. BTW the second 'walk' video is not working.

December 22nd, 2004, 01:02 PM	#39
Dmitry Kichenko Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 74	My bad, wrong filename. Works now! And if coin is interesting - check the 2nd one :). To sum up, you need this for good results: 24p or 30p framerate, really small shutter speed along with aperture as needed to keep the scene bright. With those settings you can slow down jumps and rapid movements, which is going to look very cool when slowed down by a factor of 10. By the way, if someone has some good footage, upload it to my machine and I'll try to throw it in the plugin. Upload to: ftp://at24p.ath.cx Login: dvinfo Pass: slowmo

December 22nd, 2004, 01:54 PM	#40
Dmitry Kichenko Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 74	I've compressed the walking 10x slowed down video with 3ivx codec @ 100%, and now it's 3.9 mb. Download here. By the way, you can get a demo of Retimer for any OS here. There're also a number of tutorials on the Digital Anarchy website. ------- The RT Motion plugin that comes with Retimer let's you fix the movement map, so you can get rid of those artifacts. Real neat :).

December 22nd, 2004, 06:07 PM	#41
Dmitry Kichenko Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 74	After registering at ArtBeats.Com, you get a free clip of fire burning. I've used Retimer to speed it up/slow down, and here's the result: Fire Clip (2.2 mb, 3ivx). The movement is joggling a bit, I guess due to lots of movement in the frame. ------------------------------- Here's an insane one - I played with points, and it now has a slow mo made up out of only 2 (!) frames. Slowed down by a factor of 42 :).

December 22nd, 2004, 09:15 PM	#42
Douglas Robbins Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: san bruno, ca Posts: 60	Dmitry, Those clips look awesome. Thanks for the link to the demo page. Now I can check out ReTimer before I buy. But from the samples I've seen so far, ReTimer looks like it rules. It's a little pricy, but cheaper than a high speed film camera. Thanks again. Douglas

December 22nd, 2004, 09:21 PM	#43
Dmitry Kichenko Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 74	Sure. I've updated the last fire clip a couple of times. Redownload it and see if it's what you saw when you downloaded it the first time. Make sure to try demo out as there're lots of factors which can lead to a bad looking slowmo. A good camera will solve more than half of possible problems. Other than that just be careful with camera movements and backgrounds you choose. The biggest problems I've encountered so far was either rapid camera movement or motion blur.

December 22nd, 2004, 10:35 PM	#44
Josh Caldwell Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 183	Douglas, That's an interesting question. The project I was working on was in the standard 2:3 24p mode so I didn't have any trouble mixing the footage. But...I'm just brainstorming on the spot here...is bring your 60i footage into another "project" that can handle the 60i mode, not 24p advanced. Do your slow motion effect, slow it down, so you have the clip right, say its 5 second long. Then, take third party software like people are talking about on this thread and then convert the slow motion footage to 24p. I've never done it, so I don't know how it looks, but, maybe that's worth trying. I could be wrong...anyone else have a suggestion?

December 23rd, 2004, 03:42 PM	#45
Dmitry Kichenko Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 74	I liked the super slowed down fire so much, I've just added sound to this little clip.Here's the final. The sound of the fire slowed down was synthesized and edited with a number of effects. You should be able to fully appreciate the sound with a good sub-woofer. I sure do like extreme slow-mos, hehe.