A slomo study

[Paolo Ciccone]

Hi.
We talked often on how to use some of the built-in modes of the HD100 to create slomo effects. We have HD-SD60 and HD-SD50 for this. The advantage of the latter is that it encodes 576 lines, 20% more than HD-SD60. The dis-advantage is that it can cause flicker if used indoor in countries with 60Hz current (USA for example). If you are outdoor then you're just fine.
I decided to try it out and I prepared a short video for your consideration. I shot this in my frontyard yesterday, just using the waterhose. The video is shot at 50p and then slowed down to 24fps and sometimes slowed down more in the NLE. I used a 1/120 shutter speed. I resized the video to 1280x720, this creates some scaling artifacts but it's not too bad.

Beware that the files are pretty big. The 720p version is at http://www.paolociccone.com/videos/Water-Slomo-720p.mov (199MB) and the 360p is at http://www.paolociccone.com/videos/Water-Slomo-360p.mov (77MB).
I suggest that you right-click on the link and select "Save link as..." or watherver your browser uses (get Firefox for crying out loud ;)) so that you can download it to your hard disk. Don't try to play it in your browser, it will take probably 15-30 minutes for each download.

Let me know what you think.

[John Mitchell]

I got a "couldn't open file "xxx.xx" because a bad public movie atom was found in the movie". WTF?
As usual Quicktime error messages look like the programmer was on something at the time.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by John Mitchell

I got a "couldn't open file "xxx.xx" because a bad public movie atom was found in the movie". WTF?
As usual Quicktime error messages look like the programmer was on something at the time.

Forgot to mention that you need QT 7.x, the videos are encoded in H.264

[John Mitchell]

I didn't realise we'd got down to atomic level with codecs - sweet.

[Stephen Knapp]

Originally Posted by Paolo Ciccone

Forgot to mention that you need QT 7.x, the videos are encoded in H.264

I'm running Quicktime 6.5 on my PC, and I got the "bad atom" message. but when I try to update it to 7.0 I get the message that Quicktime is up to date and "no updates are needed."

What do i do now?

BTW on my system the large file was a 7 minute download and the small one 2.5 minutes, at average transfer rates of 575 Mbps and 525 Mbps respectively. Relatively painless downloads, but I'd still like to see the flics.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Stephen Knapp

I'm running Quicktime 6.5 on my PC, and I got the "bad atom" message. but when I try to update it to 7.0 I get the message that Quicktime is up to date and "no updates are needed."

You could do a couple of things: download the latest iTunes+QT7.1.1 or, if you have it already, uninstall QT 6.x and then try installing 7.x again.
Glad to hear that the download was easy, you must have a pretty good connection.

[Giuseppe Pugliese]

hey looks cool, I personally like the way 50p is slowed down to 24p without any additional slowing down in the NLE. every time its slowed down that extra bit in an NLE it usually gets Skippy rather than smooth (the whole point of shooting at a higher frame rate to start with)

I loved watching the water drops drip off the plant, that looked great... I was wondering if you have done any tests with people running/jumping? thats the kinda stuff that you can really see the real world use for.

By the way, i like the soundtrack behind the video, its rock'n! haha.

[Jemore Santos]

Paolo I never knew watering the garden was that intense!

.H264 ey? thanks for the clip.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Jemore Santos

Paolo I never knew watering the garden was that intense!

gotta use what you have available :)

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Giuseppe Pugliese

I loved watching the water drops drip off the plant, that looked great... I was wondering if you have done any tests with people running/jumping? thats the kinda stuff that you can really see the real world use for.

By the way, i like the soundtrack behind the video, its rock'n! haha.

Thanks!
Good point about filming people. I wanted to try a "tough" scene for this camera since water poses the two challenges of a fast falling object and one that is harder to film, give then semi-transparent nature of it.
People will be next but it seems to me that quality-wise 576p is perfectly usable, what you think?

[Stephen Knapp]

Originally Posted by Paolo Ciccone

Thanks!
Good point about filming people. I wanted to try a "tough" scene for this camera since water poses the two challenges of a fast falling object and one that is harder to film, give then semi-transparent nature of it.
People will be next but it seems to me that quality-wise 576p is perfectly usable, what you think?

Thanks for the tip on Quicktime.

What you did in such a short time with such a simple subject is nothing short of remarkable, especially to a newbie like me. I'm not just impressed, I'm bowled over.

I have one question. In the first use of the backlit image of the flowers closeup there is a blue-green aura in the lower left part of the screen. Is that a lighting effect that was in the original shot - like a lens flare or something? Or did you put it there? The fact that it made the final cut says you intended to keep it - but what is it?

[Paolo Ciccone]

Thank you Stephen.

Originally Posted by Stephen Knapp

I have one question. In the first use of the backlit image of the flowers closeup there is a blue-green aura in the lower left part of the screen. Is that a lighting effect that was in the original shot - like a lens flare or something?

Good spotting!
Yes, I shot that part pretty much facing the sun and I used a Shneider 1/2 diffusion filter. That little segment is kinda of an effect shot, there is actually very little done in post, the light shining straight into the camera through the water does the trick. That spot is probably caused by the light hitting one of the "dots" impressed in the diffusion filter. As with lens flare, sometimes a little bit is perfectly OK. I actually saw that in the LCD when I framed the shot. In the context of that shot it looked right to me.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Giuseppe Pugliese

By the way, i like the soundtrack behind the video, its rock'n! haha.

Yes, I like that piece a lot. It's "Hyper Dominan Fembot" from the SonicFire library.

[Manny Rodriguez]

Paolo how can I achieve this in FCP5, in other words the workflow....

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Manny Rodriguez

Paolo how can I achieve this in FCP5, in other words the workflow....

Hey Manny.
I captured the clip with HDVxDV, exported to AIC, used Cinea Tools to "Batch conform" to 23.976, dropped the clip in the timeline. That's it. You can resize it to 1280x720 inside FCP.