Need some help with slow motion and FX1

[Bryan McCullough]

I've got a shoot on Wed. of some golf footage. It's for a commercial and the storyboard isn't 100% sketched out yet but our golfer is only going to be in town this week so we've got to shoot right away.

As such I'm going to try and get as much material as I can because I don't know exactly what will be needed in the end.

I'd like to shoot some stuff that can be used in slow motion like the club swing, walking up to the ball, etc.

I've not done any slow motion with the FX1 yet som I'm looking for some guidence on the best settings. I remember someone here had some sweet slow motion footage from an FX1 in a music video, I'm going to try and find that info.

Any thoughts would be great, I need all the help I can get.

Thanks!

[Steven White]

I just did a quick test...

To do slow-motion you should shoot in 60i. The main setting I would be concerned with for slow motion footage is the shutter speed. With 1/60 the footage will look very oddly smooth, as the motion blur will be continuous from frame to frame. If you don't want the motion rendition in slo-mo to look blurry, you should consider using shutter speeds 1/125 or faster.

I think 1/125 is optimal for 50% viewing purposes... If your purpose is to "stop the club" you'll want to shoot faster, but 1/125 to 1/250 should give you very clean rendition of the person's motion.

-Steve

[Eric James]

Hey Bryan,
That "sweet slow motion" was done by spliting the fields into frames, giving you 60p. So when you play it back at 30fps you get 50% slow-mo. He then conformed the footage to 24p meaning a total of 60% slow down. This was all done inside of after effects. I agree it's very "sweet"!

I was also very curious about this and wrote a script inside shake that does this which produces even better results.

I have also done it using final cut pro:
1) Go get "Fields and Frames" from http://www.nattress.com/
or if you are low on cash he offers G 50% for free:
http://www.nattress.com/free.htm

2) You can now just use the clip at 50%, and your done.
OR
Export the clip and open in cinema tools. Conform the clip to 24p.

3) Now you can use the clip in a 24p sequence or re-interlace it using a 3:2 pulldown(DVFilm, Cinema Tools, or After Effects).

4) Once you have it back at 60i you can use it in an 60i sequence you want.

Thanks,
Eric James
http://www.expertmagic.com/

[Khoi Pham]

For golf swing I suggest you shoot at the highest possible shutter speed, in the 2000th of the seconds, this will give you the clearest slomo of the golf swing.
If you are shooting is 60i, then 50%, 25% 12.5% speed is your smoothest slomo speed.