Why is my footage slow motion already..?

[Dave Divehall]

Hello,

Sorry but this is probably going to sound quite Naive, but i just recieved some footage for a tvc i am cutting. I was originally told that it was shot at 60fps. But the native red footage i have recieved is all at 24fps and is already in slow motion.

I thought the usual process was to shoot at a higher frame rate (eg 60fps), then be put through a FRC somehow, like Cinema Tools, back to a slower frame rate (24fps)... to get the slow motion effect. But this seems to have been shot at 24fps? Most of the footage they want at real time, only a couple of shots they want in slow motion.

So what am i missing here? why is it already slow motion, and what should my workflow be? i am cutting it in FCP. I obviously want to try and avoid asking the director all this, so any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

[David Battistella]

Timebase was most likely 23.98 or 24 and the Frame rate was 60FPS.

If you understand film slow motion you understand RED slow motion. When you shoot 60 on RED in a 23.98 timebase then you are shooting slow motion.

It plays back 60fps at 24fps, no interpretation needed.

David


It's either that or the person operating the camera did not fully understand how to shoot speed on a RED. it ain't like and HVX 200.

It's like a film camera. Everything plays back at 24 whether you shoot 60, 48, 32, 24, etc.

David

 

[Dave Divehall]

Timebase was most likely 23.98 or 24 and the Frame rate was 60FPS.

If you understand film slow motion you understand RED slow motion. When you shoot 60 on RED in a 23.98 timebase then you are shooting slow motion.

It plays back 60fps at 24fps, no interpretation needed.

David


It's either that or the person operating the camera did not fully understand how to shoot speed on a RED. it ain't like and HVX 200.

It's like a film camera. Everything plays back at 24 whether you shoot 60, 48, 32, 24, etc.

David

Oh ok, thanks David.

So what should i do to make it real time? put it into Cinema Tools and change it back to 60fps?

 

[Ryan S]

Oh ok, thanks David.

So what should i do to make it real time? put it into Cinema Tools and change it back to 60fps?

Probably your best bet. You can speed it up in FCP as well, but I like to use Cinema Tools.

 

[Dave Divehall]

Probably your best bet. You can speed it up in FCP as well, but I like to use Cinema Tools.

Thanks Ryan.

Kind of annoying, as they only want two shots in slow motion. And there's a lot of footage... it's going to take ages to conform all these shots back to 60fps! :smash:

 

[Dave Divehall]

Wait.. cinema tools won't let me conform to 60fps. Can anyone help me with what i should do here please?

 

[andrewhake]

Ask them why the hell they shot at 60fps unless they wanted it all to be slowed down?

 

[Dave Divehall]

I will when i get a chance. But for now i am trying to figure out the best way to get it to play in real time. Any suggestions? maybe just use FCP's speed tool?

 

[Antony M]

In Premiere or AE, I would set the clip speed % to be 100 * 60 / 24.
And then use keyframes to set it back to 100% for those bits that you want in slomo.

I expect FCP is similar.

 

[David Battistella]

Your best bet to get it to play real time is to remove frames.

The real problem here is that who ever shot the stuff did not completely understand slow motion in the RED.

In RED it's like film. You shoot 60 frames in a 24 frame base.

You have to remove frames. One way to do this is to put it in an FCP sequence and change the speed. It will never look "natural" because the RED captures true film style motion.

Also, at 60fps all of the material is 2K, correct?

David

 

[Nick Shaw]

In a 24p FCP sequence you would need to set the speed to 60/24*100%=250%.

This may work for your needs, although the motion cadence will be slightly odd. Depending on the speed of movement in the shots it may or may not be noticeable. In any case, this will work for editorial, but for finishing you way want to try an optical flow re-time for some shots.

If they knew when they were shooting which shots the wanted in slow-mo, then frankly they shot it wrong. As others have said, RED should be shot like film, ie shoot at 24p for shots you want to play at 24p, and over-crank (vari-speed) when you want slow-mo.

 

[Dave Divehall]

Ok thanks guys.

Yes David,. it's all 2k.

When i change the speed to 250%, some of it looks natural, and some looks really sped up.

If i were to explain why not to shoot in slow motion, when they want most clips to be real time, with redcam, what would i say? As they told me they shot it this way to give the option of having slow motion, and because it's easier to go from slow to real time than it is from real time to slow...

 

[ericyoung]

If they wanted the option to do slow motion on ALL the footage, then that was a legitimate decision. As Nick says, speed it up for edit, then use a optical flow re-time like Twixtor for the final output for a more natural real time.