Slow Motion in Resolve - I must be missing something

[mirekti]

 

I have some footage in 24fps and 60fps, and my timeline is set to 24 fps. 
When I add media and drop it on the timeline both play at 100% speed. I was under impression my 60fps footage would be in slow motion i.e. Resolve will automatically make 60fps slow motion and 24fps would play at regular speed as the latter matches timeline settings.

What would be the proper way to have my 60fps footage play at 24fps timeline in slow motion? At the moment it plays in 24fps at regular speed (I assume Resolve automatically drops extra frames)?

[mkabi]

Slow down the 60p footage to 25% (you will have to figure this out on your own as I don't use Resolve)

Of course, you can slow down the 24p too... but it becomes choppy and not as smooth as the 60p.

 

[BenEricson]

3 hours ago, mirekti said:

 

I have some footage in 24fps and 60fps, and my timeline is set to 24 fps. 
When I add media and drop it on the timeline both play at 100% speed. I was under impression my 60fps footage would be in slow motion i.e. Resolve will automatically make 60fps slow motion and 24fps would play at regular speed as the latter matches timeline settings.

What would be the proper way to have my 60fps footage play at 24fps timeline in slow motion? At the moment it plays in 24fps at regular speed (I assume Resolve automatically drops extra frames)?

You need to conform to 24p. Don’t slow it down with slow motions tools, conform the media. I don’t use revolve but in premiere you right click on the clip in the media window. I am sure it is done similarly. 

[kye]

I just change the playback speed of the clips in the timeline.  Right-click on the clips you want slowed down and it's called something like Clip Speed, set it to whatever percentage you want (ignore the fps box in that pop-up - it's wrong and makes no sense) and choose if you want to ripple the sequence or not, and it's done.

I don't know how other people do it, but I think this is one of the great features of Resolve.  You can ingest footage of any resolution and frame rate into your timeline, you can change the speed of any clip to any arbitrary speed, and then you can export a file in any other resolution and frame rate and Resolve will handle the whole thing seamlessly.

If you're doing any speed changes where you aren't doing a 1:1 of input frames to output frames, you can enable a feature called Optical Flow (in the main page of the project settings, down the bottom) and it enables the Twixtor style of frame interpolating for any sequences in the project that aren't 1:1.  I did some tests comparing 4K25p and 1080p50 both at 50% speed in a 1080 timeline (ie, the 4K with the Twixtor effect vs the 1080 just conformed to 25p) and for situations where there isn't a lot of complex motion the 4K looked slightly better or you couldn't tell the difference.  

The work I do is just for myself and friends and family and isn't critical, but I just do whatever speeds I like and if I want a shot to go a certain duration but I want the shot to start on a certain action and end on another one then I just choose whatever percentage makes that happen.  As long as you're not pushing things too far then the effect is normally totally fine.

[mirekti]

25 minutes ago, BenEricson said:

Don’t slow it down with slow motions tools

 

I found it under Clip Attributes. I simply changed it to 24p and it is playing in slow motion now. Thanks.

[newfoundmass]

I'm finding Resolve to be frustrating. I feel overwhelmed. But I'm trying to finally rid myself of Premiere and Adobe's shitty subscription model once and for all. 

What are the best resources to learn Resolve? 

[scotchtape]

Google, reddit, youtube, etc.  I just started 2 days ago. Nodes is ok for color but I'm hating it for fusion right now.

Take a small old project and remake it in Resolve if you want to learn all the basics.

https://www.reddit.com/user/jayaretv

https://www.reddit.com/r/colorists/comments/31k26f/where_to_begin_with_becoming_a_colourist/

https://taoofcolor.com/

https://www.learncolorgrading.com/

 

[kaylee]

5 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

I'm finding Resolve to be frustrating. I feel overwhelmed. But I'm trying to finally rid myself of Premiere and Adobe's shitty subscription model once and for all. 

What are the best resources to learn Resolve? 

i hear ya!

for me, in general, i want to get a feeling for the basics for something like this, then go explore all the zillions of ways to do things

my suggestion is, just make a simple lil project, such as regrading existing footage like @scotchtape said (great way to see how much better resolve does with color), and when youre grading just use serial nodes.

all the node options are complex, but i made a short without knowing anything about any of them... and i did a lot of coloring in post. buncha stuff. and everyone loves the color. its colorful lol

point is, it was a GREAT learning experience, and NOW im ready to get into the more challenging aspects of the program

[kye]

5 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

I'm finding Resolve to be frustrating. I feel overwhelmed. But I'm trying to finally rid myself of Premiere and Adobe's shitty subscription model once and for all. 

What are the best resources to learn Resolve? 

I hear you - it's like flying the space shuttle.

I think there are two paths you can take.  One is to do as @kaylee suggests and do a small project and search google and YT for the answers for every function.  If you learn best by doing then that's a good approach, but I think it's frustrating and you kind of miss out on the big picture about how Resolve works and how it's designed to be used.  My understanding is that the overall workflow is different to other packages.

The second one is to watch a thorough walk-through of the user interface so you can see how it's organised and what is available.  One of the key differences with Resolve is that there is so much stuff in there that is simply absent from PP / FCPX (especially in the Colour tab) and so if you only learn what tools you think you need you'll miss lots of the things that Resolve has that you didn't know existed.  If you're going to do this then find the longest and most thorough walk-through possible and just watch that.  There's nothing worse than watching a walk-through that isn't thorough and then having to watch another one where they repeat everything you just learned!

A couple of points:

• Unlike almost every other piece of software on earth, the Resolve Manual is absolutely excellent and will answer most of your questions, so look there before asking the internet about something
• The second place to look is the BM forums where someone might have asked the question before.  If you google then other sites pop up but mostly the people who actually know things are at the BM forums.
• Use YT for learning what buttons do what and what features are available, but don't try and learn colour grading / fusion / audio mixing or mastering from YT folks - they are mostly amateur hacks who use the wrong tool in the wrong way at the wrong time.  If you go down this route then you will spend a lot of time unlearning their techniques later on.
• If you want to hear from people who actually know about colour grading, then liftgammagain.com forums are the best (free) place I've found.  There are regular posters there who are polite and helpful who have been grading for decades and really know their stuff.
• You can also ask here..  

Good luck - it's a long process but a worthwhile one IMHO.  Put on some music and attack it in bursts with good breaks

[kaylee]

^^^

[Mark Romero 2]

When doing slow motion in Resolve, you are going to want to go in to your project settings (the gear in the lower left) and look for the retming settings. make sure it is set to optical flow and I would select the better quality.

Then when exporting, make sure that you are exporting at a high enough bitrate that you won't get artifacting.

I often shoot 4K footage at 30p and slow it down to a 24p timeline for just a minor slow motion effect." It looked fine on the timeline, but when I was rendering  it to youtube, I had the bitrate too low and it made it look quite weird.

Goat's eye has some tutorials that are very thorough and easy to understand, although they are a little dated since they were created for resolve 12 and 12.5. However, still very relevant.

I would suggest looking at Avery Peck's tutorial on using LOG footage with Resolve color Management if you regularly work with LOG footage (or RAW footage for that matter). The new Resolve Color Management in Resolve 15 has some fairly sophisticated tools in it so you aren't just just dropping random lLUTs on to your footage and hoping for the best.

[newfoundmass]

I've tried using clip settings to make my 60p footage playback at 24 fps, which works, but is it really better than using the re time option? Is Resolve smart enough to know that my clip has more frames it can use instead of having to create new ones for slow motion when using the re time tool? 

[kye]

6 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

I've tried using clip settings to make my 60p footage playback at 24 fps, which works, but is it really better than using the re time option? Is Resolve smart enough to know that my clip has more frames it can use instead of having to create new ones for slow motion when using the re time tool? 

Yes, Resolve is that smart.

If you set the re-time controls to exactly the right number (24/60 = 40% speed) then it will give the same result.

Do a test for yourself.  Pull in two clips - slow one of them using Clip Attributes and slow the other one on the timeline with a 40% speed adjustment, then step through them one frame at a time and see for yourself what Resolve does.

One thing to note - when you have a HFR clip in the timeline and you open up the Clip Speed dialog it shows one box for Percentage and another for Frames Per Second.  The FPS box shows the timeline speed (24fps in your case) and when you say 40% it will update this box to show 9.6FPS.  It's wrong so basically just ignore it.

Incidentally, if you want to have clips conformed to exactly the frames that were shot, I recommend using the Change Clip Speed dialog box instead of the other controls.  I remapped the Command-R shortcut to it as well.  Entering exact values in there is the easiest way to get the exact value.

[mirekti]

On 11/24/2018 at 8:36 PM, kye said:

and when you say 40% it will update this box to show 9.6FPS.  It's wrong so basically just ignore it.

I don’t think this is wrong. My uderstanding is a follows:

1. Footage taken an 60fps

2. Timeline 24 fps

In the clip attributes it will show 60fps and drop frames will be checked. That means it will play 60fps footage on 24fps timeline in normal speed and it would drop extra frames (36 of them). If you then go to speed setings and set it to let’s say 50%, it will play it at 12fps as it had already dropped 36fps initially, am I wrong?

The problem I am having with clip attributes is that  when I cut a part of the clip and choose to play it at 24fps (original 60fps) the whole clip gets slowed down, not only a part of it that was cut out.

How should I slow down only a portion of the clip?

[kye]

47 minutes ago, mirekti said:

I don’t think this is wrong. My uderstanding is a follows:

1. Footage taken an 60fps

2. Timeline 24 fps

In the clip attributes it will show 60fps and drop frames will be checked. That means it will play 60fps footage on 24fps timeline in normal speed and it would drop extra frames (36 of them). If you then go to speed setings and set it to let’s say 50%, it will play it at 12fps as it had already dropped 36fps initially, am I wrong?

The problem I am having with clip attributes is that  when I cut a part of the clip and choose to play it at 24fps (original 60fps) the whole clip gets slowed down, not only a part of it that was cut out.

How should I slow down only a portion of the clip?

If you put a 60fps clip on a 24fps timeline and set it to 40% speed it will play it back at 24p, using all the frames in the original clip. The fps in the dialogue box is wrong.

If you leave the clip attributes as default and change the speed on the timeline you can have the same clip appear multiple times on the timeline at different speeds.

[Orangenz]

On 11/24/2018 at 5:51 PM, kye said:

 

• Use YT for learning what buttons do what and what features are available, but don't try and learn colour grading / fusion / audio mixing or mastering from YT folks - they are mostly amateur hacks who use the wrong tool in the wrong way at the wrong time.  If you go down this route then you will spend a lot of time unlearning their techniques later on.

You don't like Casey Faris? I've found his work quite helpful so far.

[kye]

10 hours ago, Orangenz said:

You don't like Casey Faris? I've found his work quite helpful so far.

I kind of don't know what to think about Casey Faris.  On one hand he uses the simple controls like the pros tend to, he seems to be able to do difficult things pretty quickly and efficiently (like matching cameras), and in comparison to most other YT grading people who sell LUT packs he looks level-headed and like he knows what he's doing.  There's a YT colourist who bragged in one of their videos that they don't plan their grading videos, they just hit record and then make up the grade as they go along.

However, if you compare him to Juan Melara then there's an enormous gap between Juan and every other YT colourist I'm aware of.  Juan doesn't even seem to use Resolve in the same way that everyone else does - it's kind of like he's from another planet.  His videos are absolute tours of force, and it's obvious that he has enormous depth of technical knowledge about colour spaces, colour conversion theory, etc.

These are good examples of the level of knowledge that Juan has:

Whenever Juans videos are discussed on the LGG forums the pros there admire him but aren't amazed, so from their reaction I have concluded that Juan is very knowledgable but not beyond the norm for professional colourists.

I think film-making on YT is kind of becoming it's own universe and people like Casey stand out.  However in the traditional world of film-making there are colourists who are part of professional guilds, work as part of the feature film industry, go to industry conferences, and some of them teach - either in person or behind paywalls and we've never even heard of them.  The YT world and that professional world don't really have much contact with each other, so if it wasn't for people like Juan Melara we almost wouldn't know that there are people who put the rest of us to shame.

In a sense, Casey is doing just fine, and if he can make footage look good and match different cameras together then that's all that's needed.  There's no right or wrong way to do art, after all.  However, once you become aware of the skill level that is out there in the industry then it's a bit hard to look at the YT colourists who sell LUTs and wonder if they're professional colourists or if they're really just LUT salespeople who only need to know enough more than their customers to appear knowledgeable enough to make good LUTs.  

When there are people like Juan who know so much more than the colourists who take log / non-rec709 footage and just adjust it with the LGG wheels or contrast controls it makes you wonder what else they're telling you that's flat our wrong, let alone just unhelpful advice.  I watched many hours of YT colourists to get familiar with Resolve, and after studying Juans videos and reading lots of LGG threads, I realised that much of the techniques I'd learned from YT were just bad advice, and I needed to unlearn them and learn good replacement techniques.

[scotchtape]

+1000000

So much BS to wade through. Meanwhile it seems like social media is enabling an idiocracy of sorts, where everyone is a so called expert just because they are good at social.

Makes it so hard if you actually want to learn this!

For different clip timings, you can also make a subclip from the longer clip and then change that "new" clip's attributes. 

[Kisaha]

On 11/29/2018 at 4:14 PM, kye said:

I think film-making on YT is kind of becoming it's own universe and people like Casey stand out.  However in the traditional world of film-making there are colourists who are part of professional guilds, work as part of the feature film industry, go to industry conferences, and some of them teach - either in person or behind paywalls and we've never even heard of them.  The YT world and that professional world don't really have much contact with each other, so if it wasn't for people like Juan Melara we almost wouldn't know that there are people who put the rest of us to shame.

In a sense, Casey is doing just fine, and if he can make footage look good and match different cameras together then that's all that's needed.  There's no right or wrong way to do art, after all.  However, once you become aware of the skill level that is out there in the industry then it's a bit hard to look at the YT colourists who sell LUTs and wonder if they're professional colourists or if they're really just LUT salespeople who only need to know enough more than their customers to appear knowledgeable enough to make good LUTs.  

When there are people like Juan who know so much more than the colourists who take log / non-rec709 footage and just adjust it with the LGG wheels or contrast controls it makes you wonder what else they're telling you that's flat our wrong, let alone just unhelpful advice.  I watched many hours of YT colourists to get familiar with Resolve, and after studying Juans videos and reading lots of LGG threads, I realised that much of the techniques I'd learned from YT were just bad advice, and I needed to unlearn them and learn good replacement techniques.

I am amazed that you are coming to this conclusion so late, especially after mentioning this "other world" in some of my earlier posts to you (half a year or so ago!).

There are unlimited professional productions every day in the whole world, and not even 1% of those people are following, or participate in youtube.

Also, when you work on a production, usually have a particular role. It is great to do a lot of things - and I do - but on a regular production (be it a tv show, a film, a corporate, an advertisement), you have to do the thing that you are best, and/or more experienced at. Budgets and timelines are very strict and specific, and there is no time for "education" or even a tiny little mistake.

Recently, I have worked with some people that gained "fame" from youtube (and/or wedding videos), and the experience was really bad. They were good enough for their respected trade (youtuber, wedding video), but couldn't handle/understand a normal shooting day with different professionals and specialties. Their advantages? They are coming cheap to the production companies, because they do everything for a couple of thousands of euros (direct, camera, editing, color grading, e.t.c) so a job that usually costs around  8-10.000euros, is coming down to 3-4.000, so the client can get it for 6-8.000, and the production company has a larger profit, and a happier client.

In your next quest for knowledge, follow the money, and try to understand how big production companies are gaining, what they do gaining, while most people work for peanuts (well, that is capitalism I guess, but the media business is one of the most profitable in the world, with not a lot of expanses, you do not need raw material to build something, you create money out of thin air!).

[kye]

7 hours ago, Kisaha said:

I am amazed that you are coming to this conclusion so late, especially after mentioning this "other world" in some of my earlier posts to you (half a year or so ago!).

There are unlimited professional productions every day in the whole world, and not even 1% of those people are following, or participate in youtube.

Also, when you work on a production, usually have a particular role. It is great to do a lot of things - and I do - but on a regular production (be it a tv show, a film, a corporate, an advertisement), you have to do the thing that you are best, and/or more experienced at. Budgets and timelines are very strict and specific, and there is no time for "education" or even a tiny little mistake.

It's kind of a funny thing because I get mixed feedback about how much the different world's are aware of each other. I can push the point here with people who don't seem to have worked in the industry and not get anywhere, or also have strange feedback from people here who don't seem to understand that you can get cinematic footage without using a grey-card to manually WB or set manual exposure with histograms or false colour, and even if my gopro could do that it wouldn't be practical to do that for every shot when I'm swimming in a lake underneath a waterfall!

The guys over at LGG assured me that they were aware of how compromised the real-world shooting conditions are for one-person operations or low-budget productions, especially if there's travel or uncontrolled situations involved, so I think it's an awareness thing and that will range from person to person.

Personally, my journey with film started about 20 years ago when I got involved in film through my sister who went to film school and I helped her co-produce a few short films, as well as helping on set and in post with my home recording studio I had for making my own music. I did a producers course, we got a couple of film grants and did the local festival circuit for a few years before she moved away and I let it go.

It was only a year or so ago that I swapped over from photos to video for family and travel adventures and I started editing video myself and started learning the specific skills that I didn't have. A few people have been confused by me talking about how a film set is run when on the other hand I look like an amateur moving from photos to video. We all have our own combination of experience and skills.

At least we don't have the constant barrage of new people coming in and asking the same questions (that are answered really clearly in the manual) over and over again like they do on the BM Resolve forums!