Doing decent 'slo-mo'

zooey wrote on 12/2/2004, 10:03 AM

Learning as I go with Vegas 5 and want to add a bit of slow motion to a project. I have worked out the whole velocity line thing, but really, when rendered, it ain't all that hot. A bit blurry and generally tough on the eyes. Is there any way of smoothing it out a bit?

Thanks a lot,

James

Comments

farss wrote on 12/2/2004, 12:20 PM

Vegas does about as good a job as can be done once you've shot the footage. Remember video is normally shot with 1/60 or 1/50 shutter, that introduces motion blur which you cannot get rid of.
So if you're shooting footage that you intend to SloMo use a faster shutter speed, I'd also go for a lot of light to get better DOF.
Even then much beyond 1/3 speed is pushing it, there simply ins't enough data recorded to get it to look good.
That's why the pros either use film where you can ramp the camera fps or the Varicam. Even with these traditionaly they wouldn't push things much beyond say 20% as they're aiming for for high qulaity SloMo. What they then do is use very high speed camera, these were usually film cameras that eat film a great rate (read COST).
Bob.

zooey wrote on 12/2/2004, 12:59 PM

Thanks a lot for that. The things you learn! Also, going to the other extreme and wanting to speed things up, would it be a case of using an even slower shutter speed?

Orcatek wrote on 12/2/2004, 1:02 PM

For me I found on my cosumer camera that if I set it to sport mode I get better slow-mo.

musman wrote on 12/2/2004, 2:40 PM

I wouldn't think so. Lower shutters have a distinct look. Like crime reenactments and dramtic interviews. Speeding up stuff with a low shutter in my experience takes away a bit of the look of the slow shutter, but doesn't help for a normal sped up scene.
Made a silent film a la Charlie Chaplin a year ago and kept it at 1/60. Depends on the look you're going for. I wanted that choppy sped up look, so I undercranked (slowed it down) in Vegas then sped it up.
Experiment a bit with some footage you have now and see what looks best to you.

epirb wrote on 12/2/2004, 3:49 PM

the Veggie toolkit at peachrock has a good sliceing tool for speeding up video.