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Which casmeras are best for slow motion?

Deathwish posted 2007 Jul 13 17:06

My last two camcorders have been sony Digital8s. I am not happy with the quality of slow motion when I slow down the speed in Premiere Pro. I film high spped events like skiiing, greyhounds running (40+ mph), and other sports. What characteristic do I look for in a new cam so I can tell if it will record high speed subjects well? Is there a max fps or is it standard for DV? Are the High def cams better at this?

edDV posted 2007 Jul 13 17:30

Not really. Standard 480i DV camcorders resolve half vertical resolution fields to 1/59.94 sec. Much more expensive fully progressive camcorders get full resolution at 1/59.94 sec. In the film world they "overcrank" or speed the film framerate (e.g Warren Miller). There are specialized scientific video cams that do this but nothing in the consumer mainstream.

jagabo posted 2007 Jul 13 19:07

Advanced software slow motion: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic303037.html#1533994 See the sample linked to in this post: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic303037.html#1534640

racer-x posted 2007 Jul 14 06:36

jagabo has some great links. I too use Avisynth with mvtools extensively in SD and HD sources. The quality can be quite good, considering the source used. If your footage is shot in good lighting, then it may be beneficial to shoot in Manual Mode and select a shutter speed of 1/120 - 1/250. That will give sharper frames to revel more detail.

ofbarea posted 2007 Jul 29 19:43

For 50% slow motion you may do bob deinterlace (http://www.100fps.com/), resize to 720x480 and reduce the frame rate by half. This is a simple task with VirtualDub and Avisynth.

Deathwish posted 2007 Aug 01 09:58

ofbarea : For 50% slow motion you may do bob deinterlace (http://www.100fps.com/), resize to 720x480 and reduce the frame rate by half. This is a simple task with VirtualDub and Avisynth. This method will produce much better results than just changing the settings in premiere, correct?

jagabo posted 2007 Aug 01 10:18

For some material AVISynth's LeakKernelBob() will give better results than a simple Bob. Clearer and less vertical bounce.

SCDVD posted 2007 Aug 01 10:59

There was a TV documentary recently, on Discovery I believe, that showed slow motion videos of sharks attacking seals. Although they didn't elaborate on it too much, they described the camera rig they used for the slow motion shots. The video was captured at a very high frame rate. The camera didn't record the shots in the camera itself. It just fed the video stream to a specialized computer which did the actual capture. It wasn't firewire or any "standard" computer interface; it was a custom made setup that was very high speed to handle the data rate needed. I got the impression that for the really high frame rates needed for super-slow motion, there isn't much off-the-shelf equipment to choose from. It's more of a craft it yourself proposition.

jagabo posted 2007 Aug 01 11:05

500,000 fps 1024 x 1024 at 5,400 fps http://www.mctcameras.com/sa-1.html Lots of other choices: http://www.mctcameras.com/hscameras.html Fat wallet required.

SCDVD posted 2007 Aug 01 11:16

jagabo : 500,000 fps 1024 x 1024 at 5,400 fps http://www.mctcameras.com/sa-1.html Lots of other choices: http://www.mctcameras.com/hscameras.html Fat wallet required. This was the type of camera they used for the shark documentary. I notice that MCT Cameras has a PCI card that can be used to feed the video stream into a computer. This is what they were doing in the shark documentary. The problem is that for longer footage, there isn't enough memory in the camera to record longer shots at very high frame rates. It's one thing to record a very brief video of a bullet for example but it's a whole different problem to record a longer video using an ultrahigh frame rate at decent resolution. It takes a mother-huge amount of storage.

pijetro posted 2007 Aug 01 11:28

Two words: Panasonic Varicam.. I personally thought the shark scene was the work of an HVX200..I mean, who goes through the trouble of setting up such expensive equipment on a seesaw boat??? National Geographic baby, that's who!!! Seriously though: As far as Premiere Pro goes, you need to play with the "Field options" choices for best playback...Sometimes i need to check "remove flicker', or "Frame blend speed changes"...Most of the times, i uncheck all options, and let Premiere Pro do the slo-mo..Although, it's not the best..One way or the other, you need to monitor it "Real time" through an external Firewire device for best outcome! Many people would rather use After Effects, or FCP for that matter... Faster shutter speed gets you sharper picture, but it's difficult to manage interlaced footage, no matter HOW you slice it..

edDV posted 2007 Aug 01 11:46

The Panasonic Varicam cameras (AJ-HDC27H and AG-HVX-200) can be run up to 60fps or 2.5x speed @24p http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/app_hd.asp http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDeta ... =AG-HVX200 The HVX-200 in DVCProHD 720p mode handles: 12, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 30, 32, 36, 48, 60 fps. Both can be rented.

Deathwish posted 2007 Aug 01 14:15

edDV : Both can be rented. That's great because the $27,000.00 price for the AJ-HPX2000 and the $45,000.00 for the AJ-HDC27H is a little out of my budget this week. :wink: Still good to know how much a 60fps camera runs. Does anyone know a cheap place to rent one of these in nyc?

Deathwish posted 2007 Aug 01 14:27

I may have been way off with those prices. I found the AG-HVX200 for $ 5295.00 at http://www.birnsandsawyer.com/cgibin/BIRstore.cgi Still out of touch but getting closer

edDV posted 2007 Aug 01 14:48

http://ezhdv.com/video_production_rental/video_production_rental.html more http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla ... gle+Search

FlyingBoat posted 2007 Aug 02 11:52

I have the Sanyo HD1. It records at 60fps in SD and 30fps in HD. I am trying to figure out how to get it to do slow motion in Media Center so I can analyze tennis swings.

CogoSWSDS posted 2007 Aug 02 23:04

@Deathwish: I just did a slowmo for a clip of an exploding tomato (stuck a firecracker in it) with AVISynth and it turned out pretty well. For anyone who's interested, here's my script: : #trim the relevant portion of the video c5=avisource("c:\vidcap\tape2\dv.07-07-04_18-50.00.avi").trim(3952,3991) #separate the fields and resize them to 720x480.  I now have a clip of 59.94fps video. c5a=c5.separatefields().bicubicresize(720,480) #change the frame rate to 29.97 fps, slow the audio down,and resample it back to dvd std. rate #this slows down by 50%. c5b=assumefps(c5a,30000,1001).assumesamplerate(24000).resampleaudio(48000) #now we get funky...Slow it down by another 1/3 by: #1. assuming a lower fps (actually 1/3 speed) #2. slowing the audio down to 1/3 speed as well #3. converting to yuy2 so that convertfps can do its magic #4. converting to 29.97fps (convertfps adds or deletes frames) #5. converting back to rgb24 source to put in with the rest of my video. c5c=assumefps(c5b,10000,1001).assumesamplerate(16000).converttoyuy2().convertfps(30000,1001).converttorgb24() Hope this makes sense to you all in case you need to slowmo something in the future. All in all it didn't look bad at all, and because I did a separatefields then changed the frame rate to 29.97fps, I slowed the video down by 6x but without 6x as many frames (the separatefields + resize looked pretty good for slowing down the 1st 50%!) CogoSWSDS

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