how to get superslomotion in hollywood movies?
 

HI

HOw to they do that? Superslomotion in which you can see evry detail and the camera doesn't shake or anything. YOu can see that effect on MTV as well. Can you do this with a standard xl/gl2 cam? or do you need a special 35 mm cam to do this?

Thanks

Jose:

The industry standard film camera for high speed filming, the Arri 435, shoots at a top speed of 150 fps (a little better than 1/6th of real time when viewed at 24 fps). There are specialized systems such as Photosonics cameras which are brought in when ultra high speeds such as 2000 fps are needed.

There are no DV level video cameras that can deliver true slow motion. You can fake this using software when editing.

Wait a sec, I thought they were able to do this effect with a bunch of PD150's for Neo's falling back scene in the first Matrix movie. Well, that may be different because they used like what? 20 or 50 PD150's in a large circle around Keanu Reeves? Well, sorry if this isn't a helpful example. If it makes ya feel any better, I've seen this effect done with lower cameras, like a VX2000, for some fan movies on the net, the slow motion wasn't anything like something out of Lord of the Rings or The Matrix, but it was television show believable.

I think you are talking about two different things - slow motion and 'bullet time' as they call it in the Matrix.

Standard slomo is done by basically overcranking a film camera.

Bullet time is usually done (at least in the Matrix) by using an array of stills cameras with their shutters fired in a precisely defined order, eg an arc of cameras around a subject fired all at once can give you the subject frozen in time and a dolly shot.

I have heard of no-budget films using an array of identical disposable cameras to do this. Sounds good but firing the shutters is a problem and also they must be heavily colour corrected and the sequences usually look a bit clumsy.

Personally I think the overuse of this effect has turned bullet time into a cheesy effect that is both very expensive and difficult to carry out.

The Matrix effect (variously known as Bullet Time or Slice of Life, depending on who's setup was in use) was initially done with an array of still (photo) cameras. Later versions used film cameras at the beginning or end or other points in between.

Today's image processing techniques allow more and better than the frame blending/repetition we used to use for slow motion. Today one can get impressive results based on motion compensated field interpollation and morphing algorithms. These concepts really calculate the missing "in- between" frame contents. Dynapel has a consumer version (Slow motion) using these techniques

nest thign for me is to buy 150 PD150's. Well, I wasn't refearing to that effect. Thanks for the answer. I guess you can't do that superslomotion britney spears kind of clip. I was watching a xl2 vid 3 days ago and it had slomotion in it and it was like pretty real to me. I have to check out how fast the GL2 shoots max. The same for the xl version.

I haven't seen the Britney video.. but using conventional camcorders, I would think you can get better slow mo (this is purely my guess) from a 29.97 FPS camera as you get more frames and when you stretch it in post, you can retain a little more detail.

This is the reason on big budget hollywood films, they use super high speed cameras that can crank out several times the amount of frames/sec in comparison to conventional cameras because it can capture the movement more accurately to hundreds of a second and retaining much of the quality. An analogy would be if your camera can shoot twice as many FPS as a regular camera, your footage if stretched would have twice as many pictures/frames you can use. Otherwise, the editor will have to fill in the frames by duplicating frames or perhaps using some algorithm to generate the difference but it won't looks smooth.

I've heard that some people shoot it in 60i and then basically cut the resolution in half as they use each even or odd half/frame to make a half height DV progressive image then uprezzed back to DV. Done with a high shutter speed, proper lighting etc the effect can look fairly decent. Nothing close to what a film camera can do obviously or a super fast CCD but for those with the industry standard DV cam it's at least a place to start. I'll have to look for the site where I saw it done.




Jacob

I haven't seen the clip you're talking about either.

I've done what Jacob says though - it works pretty well shooting with a higher shutter speed and interlace mode.

You can do it pretty easily with avisynth, just make sure you bob deinterlace to get rid of the jitter that comes from the two fields being vertically one scanline displaced.

Check this out. It is software called slowmotion from http://www.dynapel.com/index.shtml
look under products/video effects/slomotion

One site(great site about deinterlacing etc) ' http://www.100fps.com 'has used this software to create digital superslomotion.
you can download it here:http://www.100fps.com/slowsnake.avi


dynapels site says:

With a simple user-interface, SlowMotion lets anyone instantly create professional-quality slow-motion video on the PC!

By using advanced motion-compensated interpolation and morphing algorithms to generate the new "intra" frames, DynaPel SlowMotion produces a smooth, natural slow motion that has to be seen to be believed. This is a quantum leap over today's techniques of repeating or blending frames; SlowMotion clearly is the new standard.

Get a free trial version today!


More information:

Description
Screenshot
System requirements
(Demo Video-check back soon)
Demoversion
Purchase SlowMotion
Difference: DynaPel SlowMotion and MotionPerfect

I'm not sure how people get good results from the Dynapel software. I have tried it on several different types of footage and without exception it has always intruduced weird distortions into the picture.

I have the XL2. I shot some stuff in 60i mode and then slowed it down to 6 fps in Avid and it looks super smooth. I think I had it at like 15% of the original speed. If you plan on having the shot be slow motion, shoot in 60i, because you get more frames so you can have a smoother shot.

That's what I did and it looks fantastic. Shutter speed settings can also have an effect on this.

Shooting 60i at 1/120th, and playing back at 50% speed, delivers glass-smooth slow motion, but with an overall softer image.

Nothing like shooting film at 150fps though!

Barry

Have you seen how this can blend with 24p? Is it something that can be meshed together?

Oh yea. I'm working on 24p project right now. As long as you use the same "cine" settings it'll be the same.

Think of this like film. Usually film is shot at 24fps. When you slowmo it you change the frame rate, say 150fps. It's not the same think but it looks right because everything else (lighting, colors, blacks, highlights) look the same.

Same with video. You're changing the motion of the video by "creating" more frames in post. So it's not 24p because you're adding more frames. But if everything else is the same (those things mentioned above) it'll fit.

but watch out to NOT use fast moving objects!!! it works if you have for instance a person with yellow shirt and blue jeans and a colourfull background. If the movie has like 1000000 ants walking bye, then it is time to save 100000 dollars to rent a special camera who can do what you heart wants you to do.

BUt everything is posible in pc world! Evrything.

By the way, The dynapel software is really unstable and gives me error most of the time. Good idea but you need to be a expert to use that program the good way. A little bit more programming spend on it and I would love it. BUt now..grrr... error after error.

Examples are on the new DVD. It blends very nicely, but the 60i slowmo stuff is noticeably softer in resolution. Everything else is the same though. The motion is very smooth.

For DV, you can also use Twixter plugin for After Effects which will do the same thing as Dynapel.

I admit I didn't read the entire thread but, here goes...

If you have a camera that will do 60p, you could effectivly slow down 60p footage to be 24p and that would give you about 60% reduction in speed (time) in that footage.

This may be the slo-mo from the XL2 the other poster was mentioning. You would naturally apply a "speed" or "%" effect in the timeline like in Premiere or Avid. To hit 24p exactly (math is not my strong suit) I think you would need to set the speed at .4 or 40% ?

I think that's correct.

Sean McHenry

There is no con-/pro-sumer camera that has 60p. All those camera's
have 60i (interlaced!). And in my opinion this would be better to
use indeed to go to 30p slowmotion (perhaps even 24p with the
right tools).

Rob is correct. I have our demo XL2 on my desk and it is sadly only 60i, not 60p. Sort of a shame really. Would have been a nice feature.

Sean

Doh.. How about that AJ-HDC27F Panasonic camera for $65 grand? It does deliver 60p. Oh, and it's even HD. :D

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : There is no con-/pro-sumer camera that has 60p. All those camera's
have 60i (interlaced!). And in my opinion this would be better to
use indeed to go to 30p slowmotion (perhaps even 24p with the
right tools). -->>>

How about the JVC HD-1/HD-10? It has a SD 60p mode. Those frames could be transcoded from MPEG-2 to DV using Vegas or the other freeware tools out there, giving you a TRUE 60fps (50%) slo-mo. If you combined this with a software tool like twixtor, I'd bet you could even get a decent 25% slo-mo without loosing too much quality. Has anybody tried this? I would have thought the JVC cam would be very popular for sports footage because of this very feature.

It would certainly be quite interesting if it does this indeed, however
I haven't heard of anyone here yet who has done that. Would be
neat to hear from someone who tried it!

There's also this After FX plug-in called RealViz Retimer. Uses the morphing technology but honestly - what Premiere Pro generates when decreasing the speed of a clip looks better than that of Retimer :). Maybe I've been using the plug-in demo wrong, let me try ..

Anyone remember those slo mo scenes in the Six Million Dollar Man?

If that footage with Britney and a snake (I wish it'd bite her) is considered super slow mo, then what do you call the slow-mo in the beginning of Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels. That's like super mega giga slow mo, or something :). I wonder what framerate Guy Ritchie's camera was shooting at

Has anybody had a good experience with this dynapel software?

Its only $26.00 so it sounds very tempting plus the two test shots looked very nice.

Is this going to give me a better looking slowmo than just premiere pro 1.5?

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'.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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

Very Interesting how it handled the coin drop.

BTW the second 'walk' video is not working.

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

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 :).