How to get best cleanest slo mo?

[Paul Cronin]

I have had to reschedule my visit to Fastec Imaging to the week of the 25th.

[Kent Beeson]

Wondered if I rent a NANO for my EX1R ($100 a day), will that NANO be much cleaner and/or yield better results with my attempt at getting good slow mo? I hope to shoot at 720 24p, 60fps...then use MOTION's optical flow to get a few shots down to 10% speed...will the NANO make this easier, smoother, what?

Should I shoot at 1000 or 2000 shutter speed?

[Paul Cronin]

Kent I think the Nano is great but going to 10% I don't think will work well. I tried 720p 30p/60p at 50% and was not happy with the results. But who know you could have better luck. Interested to see your results.

Still have not hooked up with Fastec. I have to keep following up and maybe we will get it done this month since I am on the road again.

[Kent Beeson]

I think I'll try the NANO especially as a lot of the BG will be black on stage, so need better blacks with out much blockiness...question is, using my EX1R, should I use 100MB or so, long gop or choose 180-200MB iframe and what's the differnece especially when it comes to editing the footage in FCP 7? Can my MAC PRO 3.0, 7200rpm internal hard drives edit this stuff anyway?

Lastly. how to record slo mo on the NANO? Do I just choose 1280x720 24p at 60 fps on the EX1R menu?
Does the NANO then record at that setting but at 100MB or whatever I choose? Or do I do all the settings on the Nano? In fact can the NANO record slomo at 1920x1080p? 60fps?

THANKS

[Walter Brokx]

Originally Posted by Kent Beeson

...... In fact can the NANO record slomo at 1920x1080p? 60fps?

THANKS

No: you can't record something that's not coming out of the camera.
The EX1R/EX1/EX3 can't go beyond 30fps at 1920x1080p/i
At 720p 60fps is the maximum framerate.

Btw, you are discussing your slomo plan for over a month now... Why don't you just do a test (or 2) with 60fps footage and slow it down to 10% before arranging everything for your final project?
Let a red ball bounce before a black background, let someone jump around in your frame.
And try to make it look good at 10%
This way you'll find all the bottlenecks in a trial and error way, which will probably be a faster way than asking around while almost nobody has ever tried to get a good slowmo by slowing footage down to 10%.

It's time for some action! ;-)

(Just a thought...)

[Kent Beeson]

Thanks for thoughts - have tried a few tests, some good results - shutter 500, 720 24p 60fps, slowed down to 4% with Motion's Optical Flow...got a nice film I'm making with some of this material, will post when it's done.

Here's a sample (not color corrected or anything, just straight)...you can see the point at which the artifacts stop and it becomes smooth - one has to do research as to careful planning of subject, BG, lights, etc to get this kind of thing to look 1000fps (-ish). Not as good as Phantom, but not bad.

TEST on Vimeo

[Paul Cronin]

Kent thanks for keeping us up to date. Looks like you are getting some where with your test. Keep it going.

[Chad Johnson]

Damn Kent that's not bad! Sure her feet are odd, but even that's kind of cool. Did that 14 sec take a long time to render?

[Kent Beeson]

Not long at all - 1 minute - and actually the real clip was 20 seconds long, shot at 60fps which made it twice as long, then slowed down to 4%! which made the clip very long in MOTION timeline, but then I just made that clip in/out points of what I wanted and rendered with Optical Flow chosen - took about a minute to render to Pro Res 422

I've got a few more great shots but will post later (when I finish the film I'm making - couple of weeks maybe).

[Chad Johnson]

Cool. So you just put in the original XDCAM footage to Motion? You didn't bump it up to ProRez or anything first? Just checking. I want to try. I had not even heard of optical flow in Motion.

[Jason Bodnar]

Kent, Very nicely done... I am suprised at the feet showing issue and not the Hair...which is what I expected to show the first signs of an issue. However this looks really good for 60fps down to 4% much better results than I would have expected... So what was your workflow on this, everything done in Apple's Motion?

[Walter Brokx]

I'm surprised in a positive way!
Only the feet behave like I expected the complete image would do. (Is this sentence making sense? ;-) )
I guess it's the combination of moving and bending that makes the optical flow loose track.
A next step would be find the slowest speed where the feet move smooth as well.

Thanks for sharing!
I see the artifacts that explain your questions about the nanoflash.

[Kent Beeson]

Finally got to edit this thing...turned out OK, not Phantom camera beauty but for the SONY EX1R, OK - used MOTION's Optical Flow at 4% and careful pre-planning re: the plain white BG (last half of the video). Vimeo really compresses the thing, lots of noise that's not in the original (I hate that, don't you?), BUT I should have used slower shutter like 48, 60 or 120, too much noise (not enough light) at the 250 and 500 shutter I used, oh well, this was an experiment and admittedly, the music is what really makes it all come together. Be sure to click on the HD button.

Decorus (Graceful) Dancers - SONY EX1R - SlowMo on Vimeo

[Olof Ekbergh]

Very nice. It is very encouraging to see what can be done with perseverance.

Congratulations!

[Kent Beeson]

It's forums like these and Vimeo researching that helps us all be better videographers/editors...thanks for everyone's help and suggestions.