How do you get your video to look like this?

[dangs]

I am wondering how do you get a slow motion affect like this in the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQKbolMVLwk Does it have to do with the recording of the camera or does it have to do with video editing? I have tried to slow motion the video using sony vegas but the video looks really choppy and not smooth like the one in the video shown above.

[edDV]

I am wondering how do you get a slow motion affect like this in the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQKbolMVLwk Does it have to do with the recording of the camera or does it have to do with video editing? I have tried to slow motion the video using sony vegas but the video looks really choppy and not smooth like the one in the video shown above.

Can be done several ways, best is to use a high frame rate camera. The pros mostly use high fps film cameras (16mm or 35mm) that can be rented.

1. Film. Most all of the TV nature shows use variable speed film cameras for slo mo shots. Panasonic has some pro "Vari-scan" pro HD camcorders but they have a more limited rate range.

2. Special high frame rate digital cameras. Casio has one that goes up to 1000 fps but you won't get high definition. Search the forum for several threads on these cameras.

3. Special Sony HDV camcorder that will record short progressive bursts at 240 fps to RAM, then processes the images to tape at 1440x1080 29.97 fps for ~10x slow down.

4. Use a 60p camcorder (1280x720p or 1920x1080p) then play back at 30p or 24p for 50/40 % speed. I think this is what the linked video did.

5. Use software like Vegas to interpolate in-between frames from any of the above frame rates. The advantage of Vegas' Velocity envelope is you can apply variable rate splines to motion for interesting track motion effects (even reverse motion). Disadvantage as you have seen is more choppy slo motion with artifacts especially when using 29.97 or 25 fps source.

Simple Vegas Velocity Envelope

[dangs]

Thanks for the ideas man I think I understand now. My video camera shoots at 60i and like you said it runs at 29.97 so it looks really choppy when using the velocity envelope in sony vegas. So I converted the 60i video to 60p through sony vegas and used the velocity envelope and it was smooth. I am probably gonna sell my video camera for a 60p one. Thank you very much.

[edDV]

Thanks for the ideas man I think I understand now. My video camera shoots at 60i and like you said it runs at 29.97 so it looks really choppy when using the velocity envelope in sony vegas. So I converted the 60i video to 60p through sony vegas and used the velocity envelope and it was smooth. I am probably gonna sell my video camera for a 60p one. Thank you very much.

Yes 60i to 60p can best be done with AVIsynth filters. Vegas will deinterlace 60i to 29.97p then interpolate from that.

Turns out Vegas does most things better if you externally convert 60i to 60p. In another thread I compared 1080 60i to 480 60i downscale (bad artifacts) to 1080 60p to 480 60i (excellent).