From Crumplepop: 1000fps by shooting 60p and using Apple Motion’s Optical Flow

Crumplepop have put up this excellent little tutorial which shown you how to get the equivalent of 1000fps by using Apple’s Motion and the Optical Flow in it. They were inspired by Oton Bačar’s superb BMX videos which he used the plug in TWIXTOR on, you can see those at the bottom of this post. I don’t normally post other people’s tutorials directly but this was too useful not to share with as many people as possible. Do check out Crumplepop’s website for some superb plug ins including “shrink ray” for tilt shift effect in FCP.

This is from Crumplepop

We were inspired by Oton Bačar’s incredible bmx videos on Vimeo to experiment with retiming 60fps video shot on the Canon 60d. Specifically, we were interested in whether an obscure feature of Apple Motion called “Optical Flow” could achieve results that were comparable with Twixtor.

After a lot of experimentation, we came up with a workflow that yields pretty solid results. As is the case with Twixtor, Apple Motion handles some shots beautifully while other shots get turned to ripply mush. Which is better, Motion Optical Flow or Twixtor? It seems to be more or less a draw, with Apple Motion having the distinct advantage that it comes bundled with Apple Final Cut Studio and is therefore free if you already use FCS. Either way, you’ll need to pick and choose the best bits with the smoothest motion and the least mush.

For our test, we used a Canon 60d with a Tokina 11-16mm f2.8, 59.94fps 1280×720, shutter at 1/1600. It’s important to mount the camera on a tripod, turn off AWB, and pick a scene with a relatively simple background (like…snow).

The basic workflow is to 1) Shoot at 59.94fps 2) Bring the footage into Motion and retime to 15%, 3) Export from Motion and conform it to 23.98fps using Cinema Tools. Then bring into FCP and edit.

Here is a tutorial that shows the nuts and bolts:



Tutorial – Canon 60d 1000fps using Apple Motion instead of Twixtor from CrumplePop on Vimeo.

Tutorial describing how to use the Optical Flow feature in Motion to create high-quality slow motion. We used 59.94fps video shot on a Canon 60d.

Canon 60D 1000fps using Apple Motion instead of Twixtor from CrumplePop on Vimeo.

This is a test of the Optical Flow feature in Motion that lets you retime footage to obtain high-quality slo-mo. Canon 60D with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @59.94fps retimed to 1000fps using Apple Motion. Graded with Magic Bullet Mojo and FCP. Titles created with CrumplePop Revealer. Tutorial video with the complete workflow is here on Vimeo and at crumplepop.com/blog.

Music: Erik Satie – Gymnopédie No.1 played by Jed at CrumplePop

7D 2000 fps from Oton Bačar on Vimeo.

Second and final slow motion test…It was filmed months ago. Editing is rough because I don’t have time to work on details.

Edited with Twixtor in After Effects.
Rain was made with Trapcode Particular 2 in AE
Lens used: Canon EFS 18-135 mm
Shutter speed: unknown

Music: “Seagull”
Composer: Niklas Aman, STIM
Publisher: Brusbox Music STIM

Check out Niklas’ awesome music:
www.niklasaman.com/​music

Red Giant Trapcode Plugins:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/trapcode-suite/

35 comments

  1. Looks like the shutter wasn’t high enough, maybe try 1/2500? Also looks like Twixtor in AE still could be better, I am going to test this with shutter at 1/2500 and see what happens. I would love for Motion to be able to be as good as Twixtor as the workflow for people using FCP is awesome. Thoughts anyone?

  2. Hey that´s looking absolute amazing, i wonder if there is an equivalent plugin or technique to get the same results with Adobe CS5 Suite with Premiere Pro or AE ? i can remape time to 15% there but i think its all about the frameblending – optical flow thing …

  3. Haha, I’m sure I am not the ONLY one trying to figure out how you can take 60 frames and turn it into 1000…2000. Do those programs generate frames? I suppose I’ll make some coffee and read these tutorials…

  4. Thank you for posting it Phil 🙂
    Since I saw the BMX video before, I tried to do it for my film “True Face” – with a coffee cup (full of coffee) exploding on the roof. But it didn’t work well since shutter @1/1600 loses a lot of images that can’t be recreated with twixtor (or you get a crappy result)..

    Basically it works fine when action isn’t too fast, with human beings etc…

    That’s my experience ; maybe someone else succeded where I failed and I’d be glad to learn how they did.

    bye

  5. Hey Philip,

    Have you ever used twixtor? Do you Know if there is any performace diference btween twixtor as a plug in for final cut and as a plug in for AE? I`ve beem told that Twixtor works better in AE. Do you know if that is true?

    Also, if you have used twixtor (or any other time remaping efect at all) have you ever shot 30FPS instead of 60FPS? Do you think you could get good results with 30 over 60 ?

    Thank you very much,

    My Best wishes

  6. The results on these videos look pretty poor which is a shame as this would be a good workaround. It could just be the subject matter of the film which may suffer equally from morphing irrespective of what technique is used. Has anyone tried comparing this Apple Motion method for slowmo to Twixtor?

  7. This is nice. I tried to follow the tutorial but it crashed the first time because it created such a large (70gb) file and then the second time (when I changed the disk in preferences) it seemed to work but hit me with an unexpected error at the end.

    I wonder if the memory in my Mac Pro needs to be added to.. If anyone has any tips that would help me do this successfully, they would be appreciated.

  8. Nice. In case anyone wasn’t aware of this, you can actually get some pretty good similar results from the built-in ‘pixel motion’ frame-blending/making technology in After Effects. I don’t have Twixtor so I can’t compare the two but the excellent Andrew Kramer at Videocopilot did a good tutorial on the process of making speed ramps using pixel motion back in 2007 –

    http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/speed_variation/

    It can be subject to the same issues of warping, so results can vary, but good fun nonetheless.

  9. Eh….the shutter speed is not THE key to it. I’d say the masking feature of Twixtor is a huge part of what makes the second vid look so good. The CrumplePop vid is good but honestly, I can achieve the same look from using After Effects’ Pixel Motion. The tread on the bike tires looks really strange in the CP video to me.

    If you’re an AE user try using Pixel Motion and rendering in increments. For example, shoot at 60fps then slow it by 50%, render it, slow it again. Worked well for me with a recent project.

  10. Rats! i missed the planet5d bloomcast, will have to check the stenographers notes. Regarding this Motion trick, i attempted this today yet was confounded by Motion crashing everytime i tried to send the file to it or even just use the program stand-alone, any thoughts or advice on this Philip or fellas? Dyin to try the super slo mo! have a nice day-

  11. well, i finally tried it with a person juggling, i guess the action cant even be that fast because the final image was doing a weird warping thing on the fast movements, felt like an acid trip, ill remember this method for some crazy effect though!
    back when we used to have the first 24p panasonic camera, with no variable frame rates, i used to shoot at 1/500 or 1/250 and slow it down in post just on fcp time lines with percentages and it worked quite well. this was a while back so i wonder if anyone has any formulas they worked out for a shutter speed and percentage slow down combo…even with this 1600th of a shutter, it worked at 15 percent and nothing else, these are my next tests as well to see what is the best way to get atleast 60fps 1080p, which this new 3d or 2d camera will have!
    http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921666294297&mid=&rid=&clid=&cid=&lid=&XID=E:49601:HANDYCAM2#specifications

    but its acvhd???? and supposedly 1080p 60p isnt supported in avchd…or is the answer that its not supported yet???

  12. Just FYI to all, I had much better results testing this in 60p, applying the retime/optical flow and THEN conforming to 24p, versus conforming 60 > 24 and then retiming, at least when shooting 1/125. I didn’t test other shutter speeds.

    RP

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