Slow Motion
 

Im shooting with a canon xh a1 at all different frame rates and different shutterspeeds. Ive been lately trying to do some slow motion and slowing my footage down using final cut express 4. The results arnt to good and it is never even to close to being smooth motion. My question is if there are better ways to slow footage down by example using motion or other programs or ways to slow it down or if it doesnt matter and its the settings in the camera.

on the program side i like twixtor.
RE:Vision Effects, Inc. : Products: Twixtor

What shutter speed are you using on your original footage John, and is it interlaced or progressive? Remember that good post slo-mo has to interpolate frames between the ones you shot, so don't go shooting at high shutter speeds in the belief that it'll 'make sharper video.'

tom.

ive tried many different shutter speeds and frame rates pretty much all of them and none of them have produced nice slow motion so I was wondering if I should use a different program to slow it down and not just the tool in final cut express

Optical Flow/Motion
 

If you do have Motion, research "Optical Flow". It works well, but takes while to translate your footage. It does it in the background so you can do other things while it's thinking. It can be found on the Properties tab under Timing. It's borrowed from Shake and does a great job.

Shake maybe??
 

you can check the web for some pretty good deals on Shake, since I assume you don't have Motion.

I got my copy over on the "bay" for 270.00 shipped. Just keep an eye out, and make sure you are bidding on shake 4.1, if you are on an intel mac...

My 2 cents.

thanks,

Mike Watkins

I dont have motion. Mike im definitely thinking of getting shake. I only have final cut express will they still work together. Whats an intel mac. Will it work on all everykind of mac, and are the results with shake as good as I here, does it give much better slow motion then the tool in final cut express?

Versus FCE, Shake's toolset is superb- it's a dedicated compositing program! Just prepare yourself, as moving from timelines to nodes can make for a steep learning curve at first. I use 4.1 on an iMac G5- the non-intel model (just until I can scrape together the dough for an 8-core pro)- and have had great success with slow motion effects. Great for wedding videos =)

I will second the Twixtor filter. Great slow motion if you shoot carefully and don't pan too fast. Pretty useless for sports (all kinds of warping on fast moving objects) but great for weddings. Never used Shake, but Motion's slow-mo is also great.

John,
Try shooting 60i 1/120th shutter speed and slow it down 50% in FCE. I don't have the same camer, but have had good results with that frame rate and shutter speed using FCP.