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Welcome to Final Cut Pro X in under 5 minutes, I’m Steve from RippleTraining.com. One of
the best ways to achieve great looking Slow Motion is to shoot your footage at a higher
frame rate then your project’s frame rate. Using Final Cut Pro’s automatic retiming
option in combination with optical flow analysis, I’m going to show you my killer recipe for
achieving Hollywood-class slow motion effects.
Here is clip of a Caribbean sea turtle I shot at 60 frames per second using my Canon 5D
Mark 3. I’m playing this clip back from a 24 frames per second timeline. Whenever
you play back a clip whose native frame rate is higher or lower than the project frame
rate, Final Cut Pro will perform frame-sampling in order to accurately match the frame rate
of the project.
In order for this 60 frames per second clip to play back at 24 frames per second, Final
Cut Pro must intelligently ignore certain frames during playback.
Because not every frame is being accounted for during playback, you can use this knowledge
to create some outstanding slow motion effects. With the 60 frames per second clip selected,
I’ll press Control-Option-R to bring up the Custom Speed window, then select the Automatic
option.
Instantly, the clip's speed has been altered to play back at 40% of its native speed as
indicated by the orange timing bar above the clip. This way, all 60 frames will be played
back in this 24 frames per second project.
As I mentioned in my intro, because the clip was shot at a higher frame rate then the project
I’m editing, the resulting slow motion will be much smoother and less susceptible to visual
artifacts then retiming clips with frame rates that match the project frame rate. For you
iPhone 6 shooters, having the option to shoot at 240 frames per second opens up a whole
new world of slow motion possibilities.
Here’s something even cooler. You can apply the automatic speed setting to selected portions
of your clip. I’ll undo that last step, then move the playhead to where I want the
speed change to occur. I’ll press Shift-B to create a speed segment then move the playhead
where I want the speed change to end then press Shift-B again.
Now I’ll select the middle segment by clicking on the timing bar, then choose Automatic Speed
from the Retime menu. Instantly the selected speed segment has the 40% slow-down applied,
and the portions of the clip outside the selection remain at 100% speed. Playing back, I get
a nice speed change from 100% to 40% then back to 100%.
Using the speed transition bars at either end of the segment I can control how smooth
or abrupt I want the entrances and exits of the speed segments to play back. Dragging
away from segment produces smoother speed transitions and dragging toward the segment
produces more abrupt transitions.
Finally, if you want to give your clip an extra bit of slow mo mojo, select the clip,
then from the Retime menu choose video quality, optical flow.
Optical flow is an algorithm that analyzes the clip to determine the directional movement
of pixels in the frame, then invents new frames based on the analysis. Once the clip has been
analyzed and rendered, you’ll be amazed how buttery smooth your slow motion clips
play back in the timeline.
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below as well. Go to RippleTraining.com for fast professional training on Final Cut Pro
X, Motion, and DaVinci Resolve from industry professionals.