im on a super tight budget, and right now the GL2 seems like the best buy. i was wondering if anyone has experimented with slow mo. i will be filming music videos, and for certain shots i want to slow down the bands performance but i dont want it to be choppy.....not sure if that makes sense, but if you ever seen the following music videos:
Radiohead - Street Spirit
The Stills - Still in Love
Papa Roach - Between Angels and Insects

...thats what im going for. would the GL2 give me that type of performance, or would i have to get a more expensive camera?

Don't expect the camera to give you slo-mo, it will have to be done at your editing stage.
What software are you going to use to edit your video?

Robin

im still new, so right now im using....windows movie maker. i know, lame program. but i will be moving up to final cut pro pretty soon.

Movie Maker 2 is a very good little programme - and it's free!!!
It's also got a slow motion effect built in, so I suggest that you play around with it...

Robin

Slow motion akin to Street Spirit is impossible to acheive with a Canon GL2 or Even a Canon XL2. Infact, no consumer or Prosumer DV cam can acheive true slow-mo.

we are stuck shooting either 60i, 30p, or 24p... slowmotion requires us to capture at a high frame rate and play back at a normal frame rate. I.E. film at 48 fps and play at 24 fps = things happen twice as slowley as real life.

Street spirit was shot on 35mm film, and the slow motion at speeds between 60fps and 96 fps.

If you take 60i footage (not frame movie mode), and look at it in an NTSC timeline, it is still only 30 frames per second (29.97). DV encoding technology doesn;t allow for more. 60i simply means you have 60 FEILDS per second, or Half Frames.

If you take your 60i and slow it down 50%, you will have viddeo that takes twice as long to play out, but it will be choppy and not look like slow motion. Instead, it will look like video that has been slowed down! maybe because it is! :P

Unfortunatly, unless you are buying a viper cam, or some other comparible high-end/professional/experimental digital camera that records directly onto a hard drive array, the only way to capture true slowmotion is on a variable speed film camera (Bell&Howell makes a small,cheap 16mm cam that can record down to 64fps)

thanks a lot! great info there. do you know any places in Toronto that i could rent cameras and other equipment from?

Give Vistek a try. They are way out on Queen Street East. Just got my XL2 from them. Big rental department.

The best way is simply to capture more frames per second, but if you can not do that, the second best way is to use Twixtor (http://www.revisionfx.com/rstwixtor.htm)

Dude, slow-mo is EASY. Any simple editing program can do it flawlessly for you. 'Choppiness' is avoided in the shooting stage. You just gotta be smooth wiht the camera. Forget about those 'steady cams'. Pieces of crap as far as I'm concerned. Especially for the money. I use this:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=206346&is=REG

With a little work, you'll be taking footage like this:

www.theweddingspotlight.com

Check that stuff out... all my work with a GL2 and the simple Varizoom, with a FCP slow-mo effect. Your windows slow-mo should give you the same result with good camera work.

In all honesty, and no offence to what was said above, Slow Mo in post looks fake.

Ify ou have seen "Street Spirit" you will know what I mean. The scene where Tom Yorke is Smashing the glass and it is slowley falling, you cant do that on a mini dv camera. There just isnt enough information in the frames. Glass would fall at a certain velcoity, accelerating at each frame. If the shot is framed 20 feet away, the glass will be on screen for no more than 8 frames.

In the video, the shot lasts 8 seconds.

To derive 8 seconds from 8 frames is going to be super-bad looking, beacuse it is one frame a second as oppsed to 30.

I have done a lot of film slow-mo work and tried it digital. You can slowdown in after fx and premiere, I know this, but it just doesnt look good after 80%

so am i better off filming in 35mm?

In all honesty, and no offence to what was said above, Slow Mo in post looks fake.

Ify ou have seen "Street Spirit" you will know what I mean. The scene where Tom Yorke is Smashing the glass and it is slowley falling, you cant do that on a mini dv camera. There just isnt enough information in the frames. Glass would fall at a certain velcoity, accelerating at each frame. If the shot is framed 20 feet away, the glass will be on screen for no more than 8 frames.

In the video, the shot lasts 8 seconds.

To derive 8 seconds from 8 frames is going to be super-bad looking, beacuse it is one frame a second as oppsed to 30.

I have done a lot of film slow-mo work and tried it digital. You can slowdown in after fx and premiere, I know this, but it just doesnt look good after 80%

Yes, if you're filming an Indiana Jones movie with lots of glass bouncing off of the sidewalk or you're trying to capture the sweat beads coming off of someone's head after getting sucker-punched, that's the way to go.

Again, if you're just looking for some elegant, simple slow-mo effects from real-time DV footage, look no further than your editing software. Feel free to check out those samples:

www.theweddingspotlight.com

Matt is right. I use my GL2 footage to speeds as low as 20% with nice results. Good enough for weddings and small projects.

Ted

Yes, if you're filming an Indiana Jones movie with lots of glass bouncing off of the sidewalk or you're trying to capture the sweat beads coming off of someone's head after getting sucker-punched, that's the way to go.

Again, if you're just looking for some elegant, simple slow-mo effects from real-time DV footage, look no further than your editing software. Feel free to check out those samples:

www.theweddingspotlight.com
heh, ive seen the slow shots youve done. im trying to get the smoothest slow mo i can. and the videos ive seen on your site are not that. no offense, your stuff is good. just watch these two videos, or at least the first minute to understand what im trying to achieve here. excellent videos imo.


Radiohead - Street Spirit
http://artists.emidigitalmedia.com/metafiles/radiohead_streetspirit_h_f.wvx

Interpol - Slow Hands
http://mfile.akamai.com/14590/rm/ondemandrm.chumtv.com/video/artists/i/interpol/slow_hands_full.rm

Matt, trust me. I know you can do slow mo in FCP, but it is jerky. I have shot three 2 hour features on DV, and 1 on super 16mm. the slow-mo difference is Astounding.

The footage Steve posted looks jerky cause it's super compressed, but if yo uwatch these videos at full res you se ehow good 16mm slow mo is. it's just science... more frames = more information. 60i can only give you 60i of information, no matter how good the interpolation is.

For true slow mo, film is the cheapest way to go.

Don't shoot 35mm, it is a waste of money.

If you really need true slow-mo, shoot a simple 16mm cam, one roll of film (100ft) will cover you about 3 minutes shooting 24fps, 1 minute of superb slowmo.

Click steves first link (street spirit) and watch for 3:48. the glass is a perfect example, you cant do that in dv.

Matt, trust me. I know you can do slow mo in FCP, but it is jerky. I have shot three 2 hour features on DV, and 1 on super 16mm. the slow-mo difference is Astounding.

The footage Steve posted looks jerky cause it's super compressed, but if yo uwatch these videos at full res you se ehow good 16mm slow mo is. it's just science... more frames = more information. 60i can only give you 60i of information, no matter how good the interpolation is.

For true slow mo, film is the cheapest way to go.

Don't shoot 35mm, it is a waste of money.

If you really need true slow-mo, shoot a simple 16mm cam, one roll of film (100ft) will cover you about 3 minutes shooting 24fps, 1 minute of superb slowmo.

Click steves first link (street spirit) and watch for 3:48. the glass is a perfect example, you cant do that in dv.

I've done over 400 weddings using my method. Did you look at my footage? Look jerky to you? I make 2 hour feature films every week, two or three of them. Granted, they're wedding videos, but very cinematic and it pays me well over 6 figures a year... I think I know what I'm doing.

I understand completely what you're talking about and agree with you, BUT, we're NOT TALKING ABOUT MAKING A SUPER SLOW MOTION ACTION MOVIE HERE!! Refer to the 'Indiana Jones' post I made above.

Oh... my last post was in reference to the FCP slow-mo being 'jerky' by Mr. Nayman. It may sound a little brutal becuase I just woke up and I'm always grumpy in the morning:)

Steve, good luck on your project. Hopefully you find a cost effective way to achieve what you're looking for! As a side note, not that it is better than the 16mm, but most professional DV cams have a 'frame' mode, which captures pristine images frame by frame in video which may help achieve what you're trying to do at a satisfactory level. Just an idea to try out if you already have a high-end DV cam.

I don't want this to turn into a personal flame war, but there is a difference between cinematic film making, and wedding videos.

I agree that if there isn't a lot motion, like couples eating wedding cake or kissing, then slwoing footage down to 80 or 70 percent looks fine.

I believe steve has seomthing closer to the Radiohead video in mind. If it has a lot of slow-mo and has to look really good, then you can't argue that film will look better.

Besides, 16mm is higher resolution than DV and better contrast ratio.

Granted this is a DV forum and I own an XL2, GL2 and DVX, so I love DV, but when I shot slow-mo for my DV features, I shot on 16 and digitzed it.

what im trying to achieve here is using a dolly to slide the camera from right to left and capture the band playing. one shot, left to right and done. im not sure if that makes sense, or if you understand. but i want it to show this in slow motin, like in the Street Spirit video. it will only take up about 20 seconds real time, and then about a minute for other performance footage that i will splice into the final project. im going to try to get a 16mm for the day since i cant afford to purchase one. thanks for the tips guys.

I too searched high and low for the fabled minidv slow-mo effect and after many fruitless weeks of people telling me to slow it down in premiere (Slide showsville!) I have come across a little software magic...

Everyone's right, you can't get awesome slow motion from a DV camera, however you can get great slo-mo with a good plugin. I thought I would post my own comments on a nifty piece of software I have tried called realviz retimer. Very similar to Twixtor with astounding results.
It uses a combination of interpolation, frame blending and pixel by pixel matching much like the Wachowski's used to get their bullet time rigs to work so smooth. If you've seen the behind the scenes featurette on the Matrix DVD, you'll remember the green screen shot of Neo doing his famous bend over backwards trick. This is essentially 60 or so STILL cameras placed around him in an arc. This on its own results in a slide show like effect in play back as it jumps from one still to the next. In comes the interpolation software! It literally computer generates all the frames in between to give smooth slo-mo. I gave this example because what happens when you slow down dv footage the normal way? It starts to look like a bunch of still frames, which is why this plugin is so effective!

There is a very good demo video called bike-flip on realviz's site that shows exactly what this plugin can do with dv footage. Watch it and tell me it doesn't look like its shot with a 100fps camera!

http://www.realviz.com/gallery/spec.php?id=113&&offset=5&&product=rt

Of course budget wise, this is a VERY expensive plugin, but so is a high speed camera. Try out the trial version.

wow! i thought Twixtor was the only good program out there, this one looks so much better. thanks for letting me know!

Isn't it also possible to create good slow motion (half the speed) by shooting interlaced and doing some simple post production effects in most editing programs (eg, Abobe Premiere)??

Because you're getting interlaced footage then technically you're getting 60 frames per second (NTSC) 50 frames per second (PAL).

By creating two identical tracks with the same footage, reducing the speed to 50% and de-interlacing both (the first, Upper and the second Lower), then by switching between the two video tracks every second frame then you get result of smooth slow motion.

I havn't tried this in Adobe Premiere yet (I have done so in Ulead Media Studio), however its quite possible to achieve this same effect, I'll do some tests and see if its possible.

I was just about to mention what Cameron has just suggested. In my opinion this is the best way to get a decent slow motion. Well half speed anyway. Your program should be set to interpolate the fields. In Vegas I set the playback rate to 50% and make sure that smart resample or whatever it's called is turned on.

There's also a couple of affordable programs here for creating nice looking slow motion: http://www.goodervideo.com/

By creating two identical tracks with the same footage, reducing the speed to 50% and de-interlacing both (the first, Upper and the second Lower), then by switching between the two video tracks every second frame then you get result of smooth slow motion.


This sounds interesting. What technique do you use to switch between tracks every second frame?

Eric

This was shot with the Canon GL1, cant be much different than with GL2.

Look here: http://whiterabbit.ryan-w.com/

The results are amazing.

The results are amazing.
Yes they are!

But a general question for all, what are the best camera (GL2) settings to use if you plan to use slow-motion in post?

I bought twixtor...I am talking about the new twixtor pro 4.5 and it is a beautifull program. It will cost you 400 dollars/euros, but I must admit..there is no other program to create slowdowns/slo-motions and other funny modern stuff such as the switch between extyreme speed-ups and suddenly amazing slow-downs. Just download the tutorial and you will see what you can get(you can do similar stuff seen on that clip from that long blond girl from destiny's child and that rapper J something). FOr 400 dollars it is the second best option and it rocks.

YOu only need clear shots (not too much moving around/keep it simple). Lots of contrast between the actor and the background. Result>> profesional slo-motions.

Isn't it also possible to create good slow motion (half the speed) by shooting interlaced and doing some simple post production effects in most editing programs (eg, Abobe Premiere)??

Because you're getting interlaced footage then technically you're getting 60 frames per second (NTSC) 50 frames per second (PAL).

By creating two identical tracks with the same footage, reducing the speed to 50% and de-interlacing both (the first, Upper and the second Lower), then by switching between the two video tracks every second frame then you get result of smooth slow motion.

I havn't tried this in Adobe Premiere yet (I have done so in Ulead Media Studio), however its quite possible to achieve this same effect, I'll do some tests and see if its possible.

hello cameron, have you tried this yet with premiere? please tell us te story of how you have done it. thanks.

I havn't actually tested this myself, but i found a little tutorial whilst searching the net.

http://www.pvnb.org/Tip_slomo.htm

If someone tries this, let me know how it goes, otherwise I'll further investigate what i suggested earlier.

I'm interested in this too. I use Vegas and don't see an easy way to do this.

This sounds interesting. What technique do you use to switch between tracks every second frame?

Eric

Hello

What good plug-ins are available for vegas or stand alone that can give very good slow motion?

Thanks

MotionPerfect by Dynapel.

Go to my site, and watch the "One Headlight" music video. I used MotionPerfect for a good 80% of that film.

Be sure to film at high shutter speeds to avoid motion blur, which can be icky when slow-motioning(sp?). I filmed on a sunny day at 1/15000 which is the highest shutter speed the GL2 goes at--but you need a lot of light for that to work.

www.dynapel.com

MotionPerfect by Dynapel.

Go to my site, and watch the "One Headlight" music video. I used MotionPerfect for a good 80% of that film.

Be sure to film at high shutter speeds to avoid motion blur, which can be icky when slow-motioning(sp?). I filmed on a sunny day at 1/15000 which is the highest shutter speed the GL2 goes at--but you need a lot of light for that to work.

www.dynapel.com

was this a plugin you used? what program?

I have just recently had time to have a play around with doing slow motion in premiere. Make sure your footage is interlaced. Also, this is for Premiere Pro 1.5.

I should warn you its a very time consuming process, however the results are pretty much perfect, no flickering or ghosting.




Create a new sequence.

Select your video clip and place it on the "Video 2" track. Reduce the speed to 50%, and deinterlace it. Make sure, "Frame Blending" is not selected. We'll call this "Clip A".

Copy this clip onto the "Video 1" track. We'll call this "Clip B".

You should now have two identical clips.

Now, right click on "Clip B" and select "Field Options". Select "Reverse Field Dominance". Click "Ok".

Before you continue on, if you intend to keep the Audio from these clips, you must "Split" it from the Video. You can delete one of these Audio tracks, as they will both be the same. You can now "Lock" this audio track.

You should now have Two Video Clips on Video Tracks 1 and 2, and One Audio Clip on either Audio Track 1 or 2 (this track should be locked).

Now here's the time consuming part. You need to make a Trim on every single frame. The easiest way would be to use the keyboard shortcuts for "Avid", so you will need to change your settings to this.

Select "Edit", "Keyboard Customization" then use the drop down menu to select "Avid Express".

Now, go back to your Time line, and Scrub to the begining of the Sequence.

Press the "Right" Arrow Key, then press the "H" Letter Key.
Press the "Right" Arrow Key, then press the "H" Letter Key.
Press the "Right" Arrow Key, then press the "H" Letter Key.

Continue this process until you have reached the end of the clip.

Now that you have "Trims" on every frame you can now go through and delete alternate frames on "Video Track 2".

Delete the very first frame and delete every second frame from there, all the way to the end of the clip.

Once completed, you should now be able to play the sequence back and you will have smooth slow motion.

You can now drop this Sequence into another Sequence where the slow motion clip is required. Also if you want to slow it down even more, you can adjust the speed on the Sequence, however reducing the speed too much will cause slight jerkiness.

EDIT:
I have also just tested slowing down the sequence by 50% and applying the Twixtor plug in (with some tweaking), the result is very smooth slow motion, 200% slower than the original clip.



I hope this works for you all.

Let me know how it goes.

Thanks Cameron for this very well written piece. I would just like some clarifications on the "time consuming" part. Do I have to apply the trim on clip A (vid track 2) or clip B (vid track 1) ?

Also, I will scrub to the very first frame of the clip then press left then h?

I thought it would go like right then h then right then H...sorry for my ignorance just for clarification thanks again.

Haha you're right I do mean "Right". I'll fix that.

You should be making trims to the clip on VIDEO TRACK 2. As this is the track that you will be deleting frames from.

However when using the keyboard shortcuts, the trims are made to both tracks. This doesn't matter.

As long as we're resurrecting an old topic, isn't it now the case that you can shoot "real" slow motion footage using the Panasonic HVX200 in various combinations of recording and playback frame rates?

Yes, but for those who don't want to fork out $6000 for a new camera (just for the slow motion capabilities), I'm sure this is the obvious answer.

Okay, so I decided to use Cameron's technique for a 5 second clip.

It was shot with the GL2 (obviously) using 60i and output to 24 fps. IMO it looks really nice and smooth.

I used PPro 1.5 and here's the Quicktime file:

http://www.geocities.com/headlesspuppy/stuff/gl2_slomo_24p.zip

i am so in love with slow motion. saving up for the pana hvx200 ...anyway ...did this quickly and easily with the xl2 ..60i ....took the footage into vegas ...slowed the playback rate to .250 and selected "smart resample" .....no saying it's great slowmotion ..but it's easy ..and decent


www.elpez.com/slowmo2.wmv

John, that was a very nice slow-mo clip. What were your camera settings, like shutter?

Here's Barry's Green advice for shooting/NLE settings:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=33916&highlight=glass-smooth


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

I think he did mention using "smart resample" in another post that I can't find at the moment.

unfortunately i dont remember the shutter speed. The only setting i know for sure was 60i ...and i had the camera in auto mode

John,

the quality of that is first rate! I just wish I could get results like that using Premiere Pro.

I believe Canopus have a small program for speed control available for free download. I tried this once, but i could not get it to recognise non-canopus files. This one has the advantage of being able to vary speed over the clip.

alan. I know i tried this with premiere back in the day ..and it seemed to work just as good. Maybe it's just a settings issue? ...it's crucial that you use 60i ....other than that..i'm not sure what i had selected ...no special plug-ins or anything ..just stardard premiere 1.5 i believe

Thanks John.

Maybe I had better give it another try - I have not tried it with Pro 1.5, I was still on 6.5 when I could not get it to work.

Do you mean by 60i that you had to use de-interlaced footage? As far as I recall, I did not de-interlace. I am in PAL land, so it would be 25fps for me, and thus 50i?

I have had a look on the Canopus site and it does not seem to be there any longer - I shall have to search my archived downloads. I believe you had to have a Canopus codec installed too, and there was another utility to enable you to view and use the finished file, I think?

Buy or rent the Panasonic HVX-200
Variable frame rates can be down-converted to mini-DV INSIDE the camera

I have tested a German software called MotionPerfect by Dynapel. Check out goodervideo.com for some samples and a trial version... you may like it. It actually adds intermediary frames to your video.

This is in DV: http://motivitypictures.com/hvx200/motivity_snow_day.html Edit: Oops, not sure if my post is still relevant or not, didn't realize it was a 4pg thread. :)

-Sam

I've not only tested the 60i de/re-interlaced to 60p, but have written an applescript to help do it automatically. It requires 2 image sequences to be exported, first is odd fields, second, evens. The script then takes them and shuffles them like a deck of playing cards by renaming the files. These can be imported back into the NLE and played back happily:

http://www.yafiunderground.com/Video/slomo.mov

script available upon request...recommended settings, 60i, shutter at 1/60 or 1/120 (faster for smaller timeslices - jerkier, but clearer pix).