Twixtor
 

How does twixtor work? I'd like to drop a clip to 50%. Is there something I'm not seeing that is degrading the footage? How is shooting 60 and dropping to 24p better than this?

I'm not clear if you already purchased Twixtor or not but you if you haven't you might check out optical flow retiming in Apple Motion if you have that. Can give great results.

[QUOTE=Greg Fiske;1604884]How does twixtor work?

You put your right hand on the red dot and your left foot on the blue dot.

Because all 60 frames are still there and your software doesn't have to make up additional frames to try and make a smooth slow-mo, which is what twixtor tries to do. Hope that makes sense.

For twixtor to achieve best results with minimal artifacts, you need to shoot at a high shutter speed with pretty much no motion blur, have the camera steady so the background doesn't move, among perhaps some other factors. If you've seen the popular 1000fps 7D bike video on vimeo and read the comments, it tells you a lot of info there. But those conditions aren't likely to happen in a wedding situation, so shooting 60p and conforming is the easiest way to go.

Wow, thanks for the tip. That 1000 fps video is great. Fun to play with this stuff. With the wedding stuff, even at 50% twixtor holds up without artifacts. Pretty impressed.

Twixtor works by analysing the sequences of frames to map the motion and changes in a clip, then uses the data to "predict" or "guess" where an object or pixel would've been at a certain point and to create a new frames based on those predictions.

Shooting at 60p and reconforming to 24p gives great results because you still have original, unchanged frames, but in order to have that advantage it needs to be slowed down to exactly 40% (i think thats the number - i shoot 25/50p so not too sure about 60/24p conversion) otherwise some form of frame belnding/duplicating will take place which will result in artefacting or stuttery footage.

Twixtor is a powerful tool when used correctly (such as in that BMX clip) but is far less useful in other circumstances. I've tried using it with surfing footage, for example, and it is almost useless - the motion of the water surface is too unpredicatable so twixtor cannont accurately guess how the wave is moving. Also you are usually shooting at very long focal lengths and panning quickly as the surfer races along the wave so you end up with more movement than can possibly be predicted with good results.

Can anyone comment on whether Twixtor Pro is worth the extra money ( +$260 for After Effects version)?

Is Twixtor necessary for this effect? Can't you just shoot with a high shutter and interpret the footage in premiere and/or use time remapping in AE?

Pardon me for adding a question on top of a question, but as a new user to Premiere/AE (switched from FCP), is there a major quality difference between using Premiere's slow motion vs. AE's remapping? In the past I had used Motion to remap, which gave far better results than FCP's slow motion. However, with Premiere CS5, I have been pleased so far with its slow motion. Saves an export/import every time you want to do it at least!

When used under the right circumstances, Twixtor is unbeatable for this job, especially since in Premiere CS5, Adobe removed the similar Time Warp effect. The difference of programs like Twixtor is that it actually creates in-between frames with morphing techniques, so if you combine this with the right shots and shutter, you take some incredible results.