Interpolated Slo-Mo for VT5?

[Tony R]

I do not want anyone to violate their NDA or anything, but it would be very helpful to me if I knew VT5 will have interpolated Slo Motion. I cannot use the slo motion that SE and VT4.6 put out. I do not want to use Vegas because I am keeping my VT and SE machine pretty lean. I only want what I need. While I realize that Vegas is great (especially for audio), I would hate to install a huge program like that just for Slow Motion.

I am not sure how much longer I can wait for VT5. I may request a refund, just as the other user posted he did. I am about to buy another program just for SloMo but if I knew VT5 will have it, I will hold out a bit longer and not spend the extra money unnecessesarily.

It would be great if Newtek could just give us a tease as to what we might be getting, even if we will not be getting it just yet. I just do not know how much longer I can wait. I am going to assume that the Interpolated Slow Motion feature will not be included because SE is an integrated component of VT5 and the latest SE upgrade did not include it.

Please Newtek... I will gladly sign a NDA if you send me an email with the answer to my question.


Tony

[ScorpioProd]

Well, Andrew did post that VT[5] was going to have SpeedEDIT 1.2 in it, and that does not have interpolated slow motion.

I really don't think you have anything to worry about with putting Vegas on a SE or VT system, many of us, including myself, have exactly that.

All you really need to do is ask yourself the same question that you would of any software: Is it at a price where it is worth it to get the features that I need that I currently don't have?

Sony's latest upgrade is now out as of yesterday. No more Vegas 7+DVD Architect 4. Now it is Vegas Pro 8 with DVD Architect 4.5. Free 30-day trial available for download.

SpeedEDIT can do many things fine, but not everything. An additional NLE can fill in the things it can't. The same could be said for just about any pair of NLEs you care to name.

[Tony R]

Thanks for the reply Eugene. I was trying to keep this an SE only machine because I had such terrible luck with using SE earlier this year (it disappeared on me every few minutes at times, with no error message) and I did not know if the instability was caused by SE, or having Vegas, or Encore, or any other application. I do not want to risk the software conflicts. I know that Sound Forge 8 was killing my VT4.6. Audio would disappear in VT. I know that no NLE can do it all but I just wanted to know about the slo-mo in this case. If it will be included, I will hold off purchasing another solution. It is a feature we could use. Wedding guys should be demanding it. How are they possibly making their wedding videos look decent without it? We'll see but I am not holding my breath on this one.

Tony

Tony

[ScorpioProd]

Wedding guys should be demanding it. How are they possibly making their wedding videos look decent without it?

Tony

Well, as I said before, this was a showstopper for some wedding people in my area that I talked to about SpeedEDIT.

[Rich Deustachio]

It's a showstopper for all event videographers as well as many industrial video producers. If there is not a fix for this in one of the next patches I will not upgrade to VT6 when that comes out in what....2020?

[logic28]

...... VT5 will have interpolated Slo Motion. I cannot use the slo motion that SE and VT4.6 put out. I do not want to use Vegas because I am keeping my VT and SE machine pretty lean.


Tony,

I read your thread and purposely suspended my work to download and test Vegas 8 in Slow Motion but I couldn't see a better result than that of VTEdit which I assumed is identical to SE.

I obtained the slow motion in Vegas by " Ctrl drag " to stretch the clip to about 50 % of the initial speed, then exported the clip as AVI and compared it to that obtained on VTEdit. Is there a better way?

The VTEdit 50 % slow motion was much more detailed and clean than that of Vegas.

How did you get to prefer Vegas' slow motion?

I also have mega problems producing video with Newtek when it comes down to slo mo.

Was your comparison based on an SE uncompressed clip vs Vegas?

I'd like to hear more about it.

Maz

[Tony R]

It is Eugene who is touting Vegas for slo mo. In his defense, my last system did have Vegas on it and I had to re-do over 50 clips and they came out great. Way better than SE. I was using DV files imported using firewire from my Sony D8 camera. Same files in SE and Vegas. SE slo mo looked horrible and Vegas looked great. I didnt just change the length in Vegas. There were one or two other settings I messed with that I cannot remember right now. I do not have it installed on any of my machines right now. Maybe Eugene or someone else will know more details.

Tony

[ScorpioProd]

Well, before I ever got Vegas, I used Mirage to do my slow motion instead of VT-EDIT, and it's like night and day. Again, VT-EDIT/SE do NOT interpolate. Mirage does. It's night and day the quality difference.

As for Vegas, a friend of mine had Vegas 7 way before me, and he told me how great the slow motion was, so I tried it. I don't honestly remember which way I did my slow motion in it, but I was totally happy with the quality. There are three different ways to do it in Vegas, and there are also other settings to be aware of, such as the resampling settings and such to get the optimum results from it. I honestly haven't gotten into using slow motion very much yet, based on my old VT-EDIT ways, so I can't give you a step-by-step, but I'll do some testing and let you know.

But again, there is simply no way slow motion without interpolation will look as good as slow motion with interpolation.

[cholo]

Is this interpolated slow motion I keep hearing about the abominable crossfades between frames kind? I personally don't like that kind of slow motion. I prefer the "twixtor" type that morphs between frames, but it only works for some shots. I find slow motion for speededit/VT acceptable as long as I stick to certain speeds: 50%, 40%, 25%, 20%, 12.5%, etc...Otherwise motion cadence goes down the toilet.
Btw... additive frame speed interpolation does work well for timelapse stuff.

[logic28]

Is this interpolated slow motion I keep hearing about the abominable crossfades between frames kind?

I hope not Cholo,

the idea of interpolating should be for the software to create an intermediate frame based on the data provided by the preceding and the following frame.
It should be a totally new frame not a mix of two nor field A from one and field B from another.

[SBowie]

I hope not Cholo,
And yet - it looks surprisingly good. I've use both types. quite a bit There are situations where the 'true new field/frame' method simply does not work, and it can also be quite processor intensive. Cool, but not a panacea.

[Tony R]

checkout this site:

http://www.goodervideo.com/products/SM.html

It apparently fills in the missing frames. Download the short avi file. It looks pretty impresive and it costs nearly nothing.

Tony

[ScorpioProd]

Interpolated means a new frame is created between two existing frames, based on what should happen between those two frames. It is not a crossfade between the two frames, that would be called frame blending.

Frame blending is typically better for slow moving images while interpolated is better for faster motion.

All I know is if you have something big moving near the camera or something moving pretty fast, if you don't have interpolation, you will know it.

[SBowie]

checkout this site: As I said above, I have used this type of software before. It can do a very nice job, but runs into trouble in a a number of (fairly common) situations, producing completely unacceptable results.

[Tony R]

Steve, did you ever use GooderVideo's Slow Motion program? If so, are you saying that it wasnt good? If you havent used their software, can you download it and try it out and let me know if it is satisfactory for the tougher situations you speak about?

It is a free demo download that puts a watermark. It is a very small program and takes a minute to download and install it. I was about to purchase all three of their offerings. The sample clips I used them on looked good but you sound like you know what type of clip would give it trouble.

Tony

[Lightwolf]

Interpolated means a new frame is created between two existing frames, based on what should happen between those two frames. It is not a crossfade between the two frames, that would be called frame blending.

*sigh* Terminology again... Frame Blending is just one way of interpolation, strictly speaking ;)
...and I'd be happy enough to just have that in SE, speed ramps just look horrible without it (I'm not going to mention our age old edit system that handles this very nicely using field based interpolation).
Motion vector interpolation would be nice to have, but that only makes sense in realtime if you at least allow for a non-realtime pre-pass to generate the motion vectors.

Cheers,
Mike

[PSegarra]

What is Interpolated Slow Motion what does it do. I use slow motion all the time, but never heard of Interpolated Slow Motion.

[Lightwolf]

What is Interpolated Slow Motion what does it do. I use slow motion all the time, but never heard of Interpolated Slow Motion.
The simple frame blending type just blends between the two frame, with the strenght of the blend depending on the point in time.
Basically, imagine a 50% slowmo:
Frame 1 = Frame 1 of original clip
Frame 2 = Frame 1 + Frame 2 blended together at 66% / 33%
Frame 3 = Frame 1 + Frame 2 blended together at 33% / 66%
Frame 4 = Frame 2 of original clip
(more or less)
what happens currently:
Frame 1 = Frame 1 of original clip
Frame 2 = Frame 1 of original clip
Frame 3 = Frame 2 of original clip
Frame 4 = Frame 2 of original clip

This is fairly o.k. in this situation (even though a blend is much nicer and can be used for some nice effects as well).
However, once you have an odd speed percentage, the current method will just stutter and look bad (a bit like a bad pull-down).
And that makes it almost impossible to use SE for frame accurate editing in a lot of situations (i.e. you only have x frames of space in your timeline, but need to squeeze in y frames of footage). Plus plenty of other reasons.
Speed changes and dissolves (corss and dips) are pretty much the only effects I use in a timeline - but those need to be solid.

Cheers,
Mike

[ScorpioProd]

True, they are both forms of interpolation in the grander scheme of things... BUT... Frame blending breaks down during FAST motion. It has to by its nature, if you have fast motion and frame blending, all you get is a bigger and bigger BLUR for the "interpolated" frame.

The motion vector interpolation is needed in this case, to generate a CLEAN frame between the existing frames.

I agree that either is better than the current none, but motion vector interpolation is the superior method.

As for "real-time", I had hoped that Newtek was really being straight with us that now that there is a separate SpeedEDIT product, it would no longer have the albatros of live production on its back. I, and I'm sure others, would be TOTALLY happy with NON-real-time if it gave us higher quality slow motion.

[Jim_C]

I, and I'm sure others, would be TOTALLY happy with NON-real-time if it gave us higher quality slow motion.

With the speed of computer we need now to run most of our apps. Waiting on a slo mo or efx render here and there is not much of a big deal anymore.

If we were asked, 'Do you want bad now or better later....' Most of us would take the better later.

[m.d.]

we should have both.....
interpolated and optical flow based(motion vectors)

i'm sure interpolated is easier to code...but we should be able to have both...right now.
Adobe PP cs3 now has it....they liscenced the technology from the Foundry.

an optical flow based slow motion would also open up stabalization, as the engine could be the same....

o-flow slow motion can break down in certain situations....
I slow mo'd a dancer and used twixtor(oflow technology) and the chiffon she was using(which was semi-transparent) would drag pixels with it when it moved....cool effect but not quite what i was going for.
But if you want super slow motion O-Flow is the way to go

[SBowie]

If we were only going to get one or the other (whether initially or long-term), I would definitely not want it to be motion analysis type. It is completely unusable in lots of common settings.

[ScorpioProd]

What does Mirage use? If that is just frame blending, OK, I'll be sold on frame blending. :)

Cause it looks AWESOME! :)

[m.d.]

If we were only going to get one or the other (whether initially or long-term), I would definitely not want it to be motion analysis type. It is completely unusable in lots of common settings.

i agree, frame blending is more useful but Optical flow is better, for say 400% slowdown or something crazy like that.

[Bobt]

I was about to mention that most of the original slo mo's were
blended but what does Mirage use Steve? It seems to do a bang up
job.

Bob

[Bobt]

>an optical flow based slow motion would also open up stabalization, as the
>engine could be the same....

There already is stabilization in the Tool Shed. It works pretty well.

[ScorpioProd]

Hmmh... So the same equations we've had for years in the stabilizer could be used for motion vector interpolated slow motion???

[m.d.]

It's all a moot point anyway, if Newtek hasn't even given us frame blended slow-mo, (i mean wow,dosn't pinnacle studio sold at best buy for 50$ have that?)

[ScorpioProd]

Ironically, when Aussie was a third-party developer for the Flyer, he had a program that did frame blended slow motion for the Flyer almost 10 years ago! Sadly, the program was never released, and then Aussie was assimilated.

[SBowie]

Sorry for tardiness, been away. Yes, Eugene, the interp in Mirage is 'dissolve-based', if you will - no motion analysis. And I agree, it works nicely. Where it can get nasty is if you need to do any frame-by-frame work on the interpolated result - you need to do that before stretching.

The trouble with motion analysis schemes is that they can easily go berserk in variable lighting conditions, producing completely unusable results. (There are some workarounds, but they have their limits too.)

[ScorpioProd]

The trouble with motion analysis schemes is that they can easily go berserk in variable lighting conditions, producing completely unusable results. (There are some workarounds, but they have their limits too.)
As can the motion stabilizer in SpeedEDIT occassionally... ;)

Though in general it is very good. :)

OK, well, then I guess even just frame blended interpolation would be a great start for SE's slow motion... Though it would seem to me that blended should be REALLY easy to implement, so I don't see why they haven't already done it.

Though long term, it would be great to have both types of interpolation.

[SBowie]

You can still by the 'motion analysis' standalone from Dynapel really cheapo, i think Eugene.

[logic28]

It has been some time since the last post, but it is still an interesting subject and there is one important question I have about it.

If Newtek is using neither interpolation (and that is obvious) nor frame blending, what is it using, then?

I know that at certain speeds some frames are repeated but that is certainly not true for all speeds.

So, what happened at 50% slow-mo?

When I scrub a standard 1-second clip after applying 50% slow-mo to it, I see 50 frames in the new 2-second clip.

None of them is a duplication of any other, they are all different.

How is this achieved if not by creating an inter-frame?

I would like to know!

BTW: about stabilization, I don't seem to be able to obtain such great results from it at any small or large amount of smoothing. It iinvariably presents a poorly acceptable fuzzy and blurred shaky pixel movement (at least in some areas of the frame).

Am I doing something REALLY, REALLY wrong?! :bowdown:

Maz

[ScorpioProd]

I don't know exactly what Newtek does, but the quality hasn't gotten better as of SE 1.5.1, and therefore VT[5].

What is interesting is it makes one wonder if it can't do this for slowmotion, what does it do for frame rate changes like from 50i to 60i, for instance.

As for the stabilizer, yes, there will be a blur where the move happens, without interpolation there would have to be.

[kleima]

If you are trying to use stabilization and slo-mo at the same time, you can get really bad looking results. I have not tried this recently but this was a problem I reported sometime back. Set your slow-motion on the clip and render it to another file. Use that file to apply your stabilization to. The result will be much better!

[logic28]

Set your slow-motion on the clip and render it to another file. Use that file to apply your stabilization to.


That is what I do, I render Slo-mo in Vegas then bring the clip back into VT edit, then apply Stabilization. :thumbsup:

Still I personally don't think it's that great, just passable

[kleima]

Well, it was worth a try. I got pretty good result with the stabilization after working with it for awhile. I was using it on HD footage - I don't know if this would make any difference.

[logic28]

Well, it was worth a try. I got pretty good result with the stabilization after working with it for awhile......

Yes, you may be right, it is worth trying.

Maybe with a mild unwanted camera movemet you can get good results and perhaps I was trying to abuse it as opposed to use it!