Premiere Pro CS5 -- freeze frame

[Bruce Watson]

I've got a clip that I'd like to end in a two second freeze. IOW, it ticks along at the right frame rate (30p) until it gets to the last frame in the clip, then it holds that frame for a couple of seconds (so the viewer gets a good look at it). It would perhaps be a good thing if I could transition into it somehow, like slowing down the frame rate.

I'm sure this can be done in Premiere. I figured out how to make it hold the last frame for the duration of the clip. But that's not what I want.

I suppose I could export the last frame of the clip, then import it and make a separate clip out of it, give it a time limit and let it run that way. But that seems like a kludge.

I'm trying to learn the "correct way" to do this. I can't be the first person to want to do something like this. Yet I can't find anything about this topic in the archives. Anyone give a newbie a clue?

[Ann Bens]

You might want to have a look at Timeremapping.
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 * Vary changes to speed or direction with Time Remapping

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Ann Bens

You might want to have a look at Timeremapping.
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 * Vary changes to speed or direction with Time Remapping

Ah, excellent. That looks like what I was searching for. Part of the learning curve is learning the jargon -- I never would have thought to call it "time remapping". No wonder I didn't turn this up while searching!

Will this let me slow down all the way to a halt / hold / freeze? And how does one usually deal with the associated audio?

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Ann Bens

You might want to have a look at Timeremapping.
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 * Vary changes to speed or direction with Time Remapping

This is interestingly painful.

In the first instruction it says: "In a Timeline panel, click the Clip Effect menu and choose Time Remapping > Speed." When I do that, I get a large pop-up menu -- must have nearly 30 items on it. This isn't mentioned in the instructions (which are for CS5, and I'm running CS5, so I was hoping they would match) for this step so I have no idea what it wants me to do. So I ignore it and go on to the next instruction.

That is: "Ctrl-click (Windows) ... at least one point on the rubber band to set a keyframe." I do this. I get... nada. No speed keyframe is set. Or at least if it is, I can't find it even at highest magnification.

So... I wander up to the Effects Controls panel, open up Time Remapping, then open up Speed. I find a little button to Add/Remove Keyframe, and click it. Now I've got a speed keyframe. It shows up on the timeline as well as in the Effects Controls panel. Cool.

But... I can't really get it to do anything. I pull the two halves apart -- no time remapping takes place. Nothing slows. Nothing speeds up. I click on Speed in the Effects Controls window and get the little gizmo that's supposed to let me vary speed. I can move it, but it has no discernible effect.

Oh, cool. Now I've got it. If you pull the rubber band down (towards the bottom of the screen) on the right side of the key frame (this in the Effects Controls panel), you can pull speed down to a full stop. Then use the razor tool and lop off the end of the video to match the end of the audio. Now I've got a clip that starts to slow down 8 frames from where I want it to stop, then freezes on the frame I want and holds that for two seconds while the audio continues on (it's just crowd noise, no sync issues).

Excellent. The instructions could be better, but the effect works and that's what I was after.

[Harm Millaard]

Export the last frame as a still and import the still, put it on the timeline for the duration you want.

[Tim Kolb]

Or just razor cut the last frame you want to freeze and have it hold on frame (in point or out point depending on which way you need to expand it to get the length). Waaaaaay faster than the whole export a freeze frame thing...

[David Knaggs]

Originally Posted by Tim Kolb

in point or out point depending on which way you need to expand it to get the length

What I'm finding with PPro CS6 so far is that I'm only able to expand the clip by selecting the in point (in the "Frame Hold Options") and then dragging on the out point to expand it. It won't expand if you try to drag the in point to the left.

And when I selected the out point (in the "Frame Hold Options") it still wouldn't allow me to drag the in point to the left! Then when I dragged the out point to the right (as the only option left to expand it) the freeze frame changed (because I'd altered the out point!). So that option was pretty useless, at least in my experience.

I also found that (when I'd selected the in point for the Frame Hold) that I was unable to use a cross dissolve at the beginning. When I tried to put a handle onto the beginning of the clip (to allow for a one-second dissolve) by dragging the in point to the right by 13 frames (in a 25 fps sequence) the freeze frame changed to a different image.

So my workaround (to emulate the "Make Freeze Frame" function in FCP) is:

1/ For simple insertion of a Freeze Frame clip (with no transitions), the fastest way is to razor cut the single frame, do a Frame Hold on the in point (only) and expand by dragging the out point to the right.

2/ When your Freeze Frame clip will require a transition, use the Export Frame function and then import the still frame back into PPro. I was concerned that there might be gamma shifts with different compression methods for the still frame, but I tried it with both PNG and TIFF formats and it matched in really well with the original clip (I couldn't see any difference with either). So this way is satisfactory, although more tedious and time-consuming.

The only other "gotcha" that I've found regarding the "Make Freeze Frame" compatibility for importing FCP sequences into PPro is that PPro simply puts a blank clip (black) into every place where you had a freeze frame. And it totally neglects to mention this in the "FCP Translation Results" report! So, if you're importing an FCP sequence that had freeze frames, you'll just have to "hunt and punch" around the sequence to find them. At least this is what I have found.