slow motion question

[Mylenium]

hi everyone,
do any of you know how to produce the smoothest slow motion of a frame sequence? because from using the time feature it seems to just go from one frame pause for a few seconds then go to the next frame instead of having some smooth transition between the frames.

any ideas?tks

-Dan

What are you using? Time Remapping? Time Stretch? Is frameblending enabled? Do you have the Timewarp effect at hand?

Mylenium

[explorer-pl]

i've just done a tutorial about it yesterday, but its not online yet. but it will be. soon. make sure you visit www.maltaannon.com in a few days from now. ;)

if you're using interlaced footage then theres a cool trick that allowes you to do a 50% slomotion without interpolating and rendering the frames that are just not there.

import your clip and duplicate it, so that you have two instances on the PROJECT WINDOW (not on the timeline - not yet).

go to Interprete footage > Main. choose seperate fields, UpperFirst (for ntsc - i think...).
do the same for the second clip, but choose LowerFirst

to get a better quality you might want to select Preserve Edges.

now create a new composition.
drag both clips to the timeline.
find the strobe effect and apply it to the upper layer..
change the mode to Makes Layer Transparent.
set Duration to 0,04 for PAL or 0,0333 for NTSC, and set the Peroid to be twice as big as the Duration. this way upper layer is going to be visible every other frame.

now make the composition twice as long. so if your clip and comp is 10 seconds, change it to 20 secs.

apply TimeWarp to both layers, use Method "Whole Frames".

if you're working is 6.5 you have to apply a timeremap.

if your slo motion clip is cutting of in the middle you might need to precompose both layers before applying TimeWarp/TimeRemap and Strobe effect.

[mackdadd]

there's a whole chapter on slow motion in the DV rebel's guide! it's awesome!

[explorer-pl]

i'm glad i could help. make sure to check out the www.maltaannon.com in a few days for this and other tutorials on After Effects and other Adobe products. cheers.

[explorer-pl]

just as i promissed. the tutorial is ready. i have more of them ready, but i'm still working on the website, so its not open now for public, but you can see the tutorial anyway.

heres the link: http://maltaannon.com/index.php
please let me know what you think.

and forgive me for killing the language. i'm not a native english speaker, but i decided to do the tutorials in english, because i belive that this way i can reach a wider audience. besides... even if you can't understand what i'm saying than you can always turn off the volume and follow along visualy :)

[burn]

@explorer-pl - Wow, thats pretty insightful stuff.

@DanotronXX - You could just use the twixtor plugin

http://www.revisionfx.com/products/twixtor/

[explorer-pl]

that is correct. and in AE 7 you dont even have to, because there is a TimeWarp effect. but first of all - Twixor costs extra money, and it involves rendering intermediate frames, so its pretty cpu intensive.

my method shows you how to take advantage of the interlace, because your DVCam really records 50/60 frames (fields if we're being specyfic) depending on if your working in PAL/NTSC.

my tutorial shows how to use that feature, so you dont have to calculate the intermediate frames. they are already there.

it works blazing fast in comparison to Twixor or AE's TimeWarp. and you can ofcourse apply TimeWarp (or Twixor) after slowing things down my way. that you can have 25% of the oryginal speed and it'll still look smooth - just like you've used a high speed camera to record the video.

btw... how's my english? was it hard for you to listen to what im saying (or should i say: what i'm trying to say) ? :)

[SunGlare]

why bother. if you open DV footage -> interpret -> (if NTSC - low first)
in time line stretch 200% and thts it! You got yours 59.94 fps.
if stretch 400% then every frame is doubled.

if you set upper first for NTSC then you mixing up the field order
NTSC low first:
1234
_-_-

NTSC upper first(wrong-jumping back n forw):
2143
-_-_

so I dont really know whats the gain?

[Mylenium]

btw... how's my english? was it hard for you to listen to what im saying (or should i say: what i'm trying to say) ? :)

Quite okay. ;o) But you are overcomplicating things. Simple framedoubling can be achieved much easier. I also studied your other tutorials and while those techniques work, they are far from efficient and often illustrate that you do not know AE's powers as much as would be beneficial for achieving certain tasks.

Mylenium

[explorer-pl]

while those techniques work, they are far from efficient and often illustrate that you do not know AE's powers as much as would be beneficial for achieving certain tasks.

could you be more specific? like what? and what specificly gave you that idea?

[Mylenium]

could you be more specific? like what? and what specificly gave you that idea?

For starters: All AE inputs support basic math. No need to resort to external calculators, so next time type in 1/25 and be done with it. If you don't know that simple trick, then you missed an essential part of the manual.

Another example are your expressions and the general structuring of the project with the bubbles. If you plan to use expressions, then why bother with parenting in the first place?

Secondly, if you plan to clone your assets in the timeline, arrange them in a suitable manner and use the index to increment their identifiers for expressions, use string filtering or calculate your own rule-based identifiers. In your example a simple index + 7 could do wonders if inserted in the right place...

Sorry to be so harsh, but when I have my expressions in place, all I wanna do is hit Ctrl+D a bunch of times and then zap-zap I get a working setup, whether it's just 5 or a 100 bubbles. What you are proposing is no automation at all, it's just a detour towards the inevitable re-parenting. If ever, the only times I want to manually interfere in my stacking order is for reasons of getting the proper rendering order/ layer overlap.

Don't get me wrong, it's nice of you to take the time to provide these tutorials and your voiceover certainly is better than mine, but you should avoid confusing people. You achieve nothing if they end up wondering if the steps you take are really necessary and make sense.

Mylenium

[SunGlare]

What other forums are out there, that are more DV production specific?

Mylene: I did like your 3d tree out of particular. not realistic but faster than any other 3d tree system in max.

[explorer-pl]

as far as the calculating is concerned that i must say that i tried that once or twice, because i used that a lot in combustion. but maybe not all fields in AE support that, because i remember trying it and ending up with no result at all.

but since you say it works i'll just have to check where. thanks for the tip.

as far as bubbles are concerned this was my first tutorial ever, but i've uploaded it after slow motion, because i finished editing it first. and i must admit, that using indexing (witch is btw used in CGSnake) just didn't cross my mind. i was trying to thinkg of something more exciting that text on a background for a tutorial, and i ended up playing with AE. then i came across levitated.net and thought that this looks nice. i admit that i didn't prepere myself very good for this tutorial, and that this could be done in many different ways.

but the thing is, that the basic rules are there. and you could ofcourse achive the same effect using many different approaches and techniques. its simply a matter of choice and of what you need really. maybe it was just to much for me that time when i recorded it. besides... i've seen other people tutorials and they are not prefect also. but i'm not saying that they don't know what their doing, or that they're confusing the audience. its just a different approach. and maybe it didn't appear to them that something could be done a different way... or maybe this is the way they've beed doing it for years and its just like a habit from the 80's :) and they're just used to it.

the thing is that if one is smart and one understands what one is doing than any tutorial, done the easy way or the hard way, is good, because one can then extract what matters the most and turn it to something usefull... but if one is just looking for something like "make look cool button" thet not even the best tutorial in the world could teach him how to use his head

to sum up: thanks for your opinion. i'll try to keep it in mind and tripple check what i plan to record, but i think that you're over reacting... at least a bit. the goal of that tutorial (and all comming up tutorials as well) was not how to create a certain effect, but just to show what things do, and to get you thinking what you can do with them. i'm not some kind of knowing-everything AE guru, but i think i know my ae, and at least that i know it good enough to do tutorials for others.

btw. if you, or any of you guys would like to comment my tutorials, you can always post them on the website. each tutorial has a comment area. i'd like to know your opinion.

thanks again

[Mylenium]

the goal of that tutorial (and all comming up tutorials as well) was not how to create a certain effect, but just to show what things do, and to get you thinking what you can do with them.

Actually that's my problem with your tutorials: They are confusing and do make me feel like peopel could really learn something from them. They may be able to replicate the tutorial 1:1, but you're not giving them enough info to transfer those techniques to other projects. Anyway, didn't mean to be rude. Keep them coming.

Mylenium

[explorer-pl]

that's probably because of the language barrier. i'm thinking in polish, and then i realize that its to difficult for me to translate it 1:1 to english, so i stop recording and i try to think what to say instead....... but i get more and more used to it and i think that in a few tutorials it'll be good. and i'll try to keep them as simple as possible while still providing interesting content and solutions.

Oily Stratum was way to much for me for a first tutorial ever... i know that now. ut hay... its there, and i'm not going to record it again, or remove it from the list.

wish me good luck with the next ones. two more comming soon.
and once agian thanks for your opinion.

cheers

[DanotronXX]

woa heck of some help here at cgtalk!! thanks guys ill try all these methods out. my alternate option was to take an image sequence from after effects and into premiere cause Ive noticed premiere tends to give me very smooth slow motions and at great ease. only prob with that is lose of image quality having to bring it to a new platform. But ill take a look at the tutorials and plugins you guys offered. thanks.

oh and another thing. Im slowing down a frame sequence from autodesk maya, im not importing cam footage but im sure the concepts are the same:)

[DanotronXX]

very interesting tutorial explorer-pl. I was a bit confused on how you used a comma instead of a period on your number punching but i forgot that thats the way they do it in europe:). anyways, I never thought of doing it that way. I think your method of using the pixel motion attribute seems to work better for me however. Does Twixtor really do anything different or more efficient then calculating pixels within frames? I dont know if i should take a look at that option as well seeing how well pixel motion worked for me. well anyways thanks again for your help.

[explorer-pl]

well... i never used Twixor, but i've seen demos, and i've seend people using it. and as far as i'm concerned i think that you can get the same results witn TimeWarp and pixel motion.

as for the tutorial... i'm not saying that you should not use pixel motion. this is a great feature. i just think that i'f you going to slow your footage down to 50% or something close (like 40% or 60%) you can first do it my way, precompose (or even do a good quality proxy out of it) and then applu TimeWarp with pixel motion. then you use less cpu resources and it takes less time to render. besides... i think that using data that is already there (on your camera i mean) is better than calculating it.

of course this might not always work, because you're using fields instead of frames, so you have to make up every second line of the image, but i thought this is a good think to know, that you can do it like this. might becose usefull at some point.

thanks for your opinion.
cheers

[SunGlare]

oh and another thing. Im slowing down a frame sequence from autodesk maya, im not importing cam footage but im sure the concepts are the same:)

nope.
your rendering engine renders 30 frames per 1 sec of animation... and thats it.
there are no mid fields, mid frames. only 30 progressive frames.

method explained by explorer make use of interpolation fields from DV camcorder.
and respectively there are 59.94 NTSC and 50 for pal.

Your motion has to be slowed down with a software plugin.

Or You can re-render Your maya footage at twice the speed..
and then play it half time.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.