Adding motion blur to slow motion shots in Premiere Pro with ReelSmart Motion blur from RE:Vision Effects

 

ReelSmart Motion Blur

So another plug-in that you don’t need until you do, and when you do it is great to know it is there.

Now the main use for this plug-in is for work with 3D imagery. If instead of rendering Motion blur in a 3D image, you have the 3D artist render you a motion vectors pass, then with this plug-in you can add motion blur after the fact and have full control over it, which is a huge thing, and absolutely necessary, but that is only scratching the surface of what this can do.

This plug in can automatically track every pixel in an image and add realistic motion blur, and you can control the amount. Blur can also be removed. This doesn’t sound like much but it really is. Especially if you are given say footage that is high speed which then has very little motion blur, and you are running at normal speed. The footage just won’t look right because of the lack of motion blur, and adding in motion blur can make the footage look normal and correct.

Now once again there are 2 versions, the normal for $109.95 and the pro for $269.95, the pro lets you do object separation using matts, track points, alphas and simple splines and the aforementioned 3D motion Vector Input.

Once installed it shows up in your Re:Vision Plug-ins folder
If you have a good GPU turn on GPU to speed things up and you can control the amount of blur by using the blur amount control. This Goes up to 10, or can down to -2 to remove motion blur.

I have made a quick little video using the same footage of my Shar Pei Boba Fetch as the last video on Re:Vision Effects Twixtor. This time I show the 59.94 footage playing at normal speed in a 23.976 timeline and then adding in more motion blur, we have it at the default .50 at 1.0 and at 2.0.

Once again not the ideal footage or a demo, but some of my own footage, so I can use it, and you can certainly see the effects.

The best way to slow down your video, Twixtor from Re:Vision Effects

 

Twixtor

While Premiere has the ability to slow down your footage, and it has a newer higher quality version called Optical Flow (called Pixel Motion in After Effects). It is certainly better than plain frame blending, but it is not the highest quality slow motion you can get. For the highest quality post slow motion the answer has always been the expensive but worth it TWIXTOR from Re:Vision Effects.

Clip speed in Premiere Pro is in the Clip Menu.

This brings up the Speed Panel, and for best results select Optical Flow from the drop down menu.

Twixtor comes in 2 versions, Standard and Pro and is available for a variety of platforms. The version I use is the After Effects/Premiere Pro version. The standard version is $329.95 and the Pro version is $595.00, both fairly expensive, but as I have said quite worth it.

The Pro version gives you the ability to really tweak what the auto track does, lets you use matte’s and alphas to enhance your tracks, as well as splines, and the ability to work with motion vectors from a 3D system. If you have a really important shot to slow down the Pro version is certainly worth the extra money, though you may get away with the normal version. And they have video based tutorials for their effects on their sites, and they are really worth going into to learn the ins and outs.

Twixtor shows up in your Video Effects RE:Vision Plugs-Ins (RSMB is ReelSmart Motion Blur which I plan on talking about in a later post).

The first thing to realize when working with twixtor is it works based on the whole clip as it can see it, so to specify the in points you need to Nest (in Premiere or Pre-Compose in After Effects) and in the sequence the sequence needs to be longer to work on the extent of the clip, so you might want to double or triple your clip in that nest/pre-comp.

This is the clip in the sequence with playhead parked on first frame

First frame of clip I want to slow.
Twixtor Effect Added

Speed Changed to 20%

First frame becomes first frame of clip.

So nest your clip in timeline

If you want clip longer as slow, you need to lengthen it, so double clip next to open. Since I want 20% speed, I duplicate clip 5 times.

Put twixtor on Nest in original sequence.

Here are the settings I am using. I always use GPU as I have a decent one and that speeds things up, but it is much slower within Premiere than within After Effects. Different settings will give you different results, so play around for sure. I ususally got for Motion Weighted and Smart Blend, and add a little Motion blur Compensation though it really slows things down. I have also set my Image Prep to Delinearize.
I did a video to demonstrate, it is UHD and shot 59.94 but is in a 23.976 Sequence, I have shown the footage as if 23.967, then slowed down, then slowed down to 20% using Premiere Pro’s time interpolation with Frame Sampling then Frame Blending, then optical flow and with Twixtor. This isn’t ideal footage, but Twixtor still looks the best. Of course this is recompressed by YouTube, but you should get the idea.

PremierePro.Net by Jarle Leirpoll is an awesome resource

 

I was watching a Maxon series on Red Giant Universe, and one of the presenters was Jarle Leirpoll, who I hadn’t heard about. I quickly went and checkout out his web site Premiere Pro.net and it is an awesome resource.

He wrote a book on Advanced Premiere Pro Editing Techniques called The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro.

And he has a Free PDF book on making MOGRTs or Motion Graphics Templates in After Effects for use in Premiere Pro. 

Certainly a resource to check out.

Sofi Marshall’s Ultimate Real Time Remote Editing Workflow and how I am considering adapting it to my workflow

 

Sofi Marshall, Editor, Writer and Workflow Expert has an awesome post on the Ultimate Real Time Remote Editing Worklflow. You can check out her IMDB page to see her experience, which is extensive.

Now I talked a bit about this in my recent post on Work from Home thanks to the Covid-19 Pandemic. And I have been thinking about getting a workflow working because I would like to be able to work from home as much as possible.

And I too loved iChat theater in Final Cut Pro 7. It was amazing technology that worked really well when the entire Internet was so much slower.

As for the Workflow, obviously the BlackMagic Web Presenter has been updated to the Web Presenter HD to include the front panel, but there is another option as well that is either the ATEM Mini or the ATEM Mini Pro which are switchers and include picture in picture abilities.

Now the Mini Pro includes the ability to stream directly to YouTube, FaceBook or Twitch (or I guess you program some others like Vimeo but it isn’t easy, nor is that going to be all that secure) but the Mini for $295 seems like a viable alternative as it has the USB port to act as a web cam and it has multiple sources possible, so if you have a camera with an HDMI port and I have an old GoPro Hero 2 which has mini USB out and a usb for power.

Personally since I have an BlackMagic Ultrastudio 4k, I would hook this up to the ATEM Mini as my main source, and the GoPro as my personal camera, and then I would hook up the ATEM Mini to my Windows Surface and run Zoom on there to save resources on my editing Mac.

The one issue is the single HDMI out on my Ultrastudio 4k, so to get it to my monitor, I would have to take the HDMi out of the switcher which will likely put it on more of a delay from what I am editing, but this would only be necessary when live streaming.

And because of the Ultrastudio I would not be streaming any of my desktop, but the direct output from my editing system, though I would still uncheck disable video output when I background, so the output signal remains as a source.

Now with using my Windows Tablet as the zoom machine, I will have to use it as the audio monitor as well (though that precludes all the setup with Rouge Amoeba’s LOOPBACK which makes things easier) though not sure how great it will sound through the headphone port and have to check audio levels using the ATEM Software Control (which should work fine on Windows).

Best would be to cut off audio to the gopro and use a good mic through the switcher’s microphone ports, but that is of course an extra expense.

And honestly I should probably run the audio out headphone port into my Emotiva-XDA-1 and it’s connected heaphone amp, just so I can control the volume better.

Of course I have to hook it up and try it to see how it works, and if it didn’t I could do it all from my iMac, but that shouldn’t be necessary.

 

EDIT: Awesome, so Sofi Marshall has done a small update to the post to add the ATEM Mini as an option. Basically it works the same, with the ability to do picture in picture form multiple sources, but it has one downside. The ATEM Mini can only accept 1080 inputs, while the web presenter can accept 4K inputs, and the ATEM Mini is a bit larger as well. Good to know.

EDIT: OK so maybe the Web Presenter is the better solution. It has SDI, and I have SDI to spare on my Ultrastudio 4k, and it accepts up to 2160 60p video  and exports up to 1080 60p. The ATEM mini and Mini pro accept up to 1080 60p video, so it wouldn’t accept a UHD sequence direct from Premiere, but I would also lose the ability to have a camera on me via the switcher. Hmmm.

 

 

In Premiere Pro and AVID as well, the most important thing to remember it to save all the time

 

Now some people will go without saying that saving is important in editing, and yes there is an auto-save.


And you do want your auto-save set as it will save your ass some time because of a random crash, but more important is to get yourself saving as much as possible.

It has become such second nature to me that I just hit command-S all the time, in fact when moving to Final Cut Pro X, I kept dinging the computer as there is no save, it is just supposed to save every time you make a change, but I am so ingrained to save that I kept trying to do it anyway (and it isn’t like final cuts lack of a save has always worked for me, as I have crashed and lost quite a bit of work in Final Cut Pro X as well).
And sometimes saves can take a while, especially fi the project is huge, but it is always worth saving as much as possible because otherwise you will crash and lose something, and you never want to do that.

So remember to save all the time and often, don’t let it fall to the auto save.

I was accepted to the Adobe Speech to Text Beta for Premiere Pro, can’t wait to give it a real run through!

 So I applied to the Adobe Speech To Text Beta for Early Access, and was accepted, woohoo!

I didn’t realize it is locked to your account and will work in both Premiere Pro 15.0 and Beta based on my Adobe ID, I thought it would only run in the beta, so this is great news.

I am currently cutting commercial and direct response shots, and with testimonial this feature will be invaluable!

I will be reporting on it as I try it out. I have been very excited about this feature for some time.

Some really cool online editing tools at EditiingTools.io

EditingTools.io is a very cool web site with some very useful tools online. You might not need them right now, but when you do it is going to be great to remember they are there.

EditingTools.io is a collection of generators, scripts, converters and machine learning applications made over the last years for various projects & productions. 

They accept donations to keep their free tools online.

There are some very useful tools for converting or combining AVID Log Exchange files or ALE files.

XML to Splitscreen XML to perfectly do split screens.

A very useful Marker Converter to convert timeline markers from Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Frame.io, SubRip Subtitle, CSV, PDF and more.

A subtitle tool & converter.

A tool to generate an Editor’s Codebook from ALE files.

A Music Cut Sheet creator from XML files (woohoo, awesome if you have to make them).

A Edit Shot List / VFX Shot List from XML.

And so much more. These are great tools to know about in case you need them.

A Keyboard based launcher for Adobe Premiere Pro, I have written about it before, but you should check out Knights of the Editing Tables awesome Excalibur

 

So this one I have written about before, but that was before I really started using it. Now I am a big fan of keyboard based launchers and have used LaunchBar from ObDev on my mac for many years and FXConsole from VideoCopilot in after effects since it’s release (and will be writing about both in the future here) but this time it is Excalibur from Knights of the Editing Table for Adobe Premiere Pro.

This once again is a keyboard launcher for Premiere Pro, you hit a keyboard shortcut, I use option-spacebar and then you can add effects, presets or transitions from the keyboard. It works and it works great.

And the most amazing thing is being able to add transitions and then set the length all from the keyboard! WOOHOOOO!! This is from a feature I have long missed from Final Cut Pro 7 where I could different length shortcuts for Dissolve and quickly put them on. Now I can do it without leaving the keyboard!

Here I have the transition selected.

Here I have typed cross then I hit right arrow and typed 8 for 8 frames and enter.

The Cross Dissolve was added, and when I double click on it it is 8 Frames, AMAZING!

Personally this is 100% worth the $75 and I might even buy a second license to bring to work with me, that I can uninstall and bring to new locations once the Pandemic is over.

Knights of the Editing Table Excalibur has been updated to version 1.1.0 with Undo support now added

 

Knights of the Editing Tables awesome Excalibur a keyboard based launcher for Premiere Pro has been updated to version 1.1.0, and it is a free update to registered users. 

The most exciting feature is having added Undo which works with both Excalibur commands (which sometimes didn’t show up in the Premiere Pro history) and normal Premiere Pro commands.

And support for Control surfaces like Stream Deck and Loupedeck which will certainly allow for some new control abilities. I know many settings for the Stream Deck in After Effects use VideoCopilots FX Console, so this will certainly be an exciting addition in the future.

You can also add Adjustment layers, Nest clips as Premiere Does or per Excalibur which allows for multirack audio to nest. You can add a show clip keyframe command.

My next post is another post on Excalibur, so be sure to check that out as well.

I am having some issues with this release in Premiere Pro 2019, which it did work in previously and as the error message shows it has to with world scripting added in later releases.

Apple Quicktime on Mac and it’s awful issue of Gamma Shift in Video from Premiere and DaVinci Resolve

An image from a short film I have been grading, on the left is the image as shown by quicktime, and the right is in VLC matching what you see in DaVinci, you can see that they are quite different. It is the damn Apple Quicktime Gamma shift!

So I have been having issues with the gamma problem with my producers viewing my movies, since I am working from home, and we are running Premiere. I knew about the issue in the past, but have been looking into any solutions, and found some amazing articles on the subject that you should certainly read to know more about this frustrating issue.

Todd Dominey has an awesome article on the issue from Janurary 24th, 2021, that is a must read.

And Dan Swierenga has another great read on DaVinci and the issue at his blog The Post Process.

For those who don’t know is that basically Apple and Quicktime have a Gamma shift issue with Video Footage that has to do with Apple Colorsync and how it tags video. So if you play your videos on a Mac in Quicktime or in any Colorsync application (life Safari) a video from Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve they will be brighter and less contrasty than they actually are. It can be a huge issue when sending to clients.

The issue does not occur with Final Cut Pro X because it uses ColorSync (not having to be cross platform).

The solution is to use a non-colorsync application to play the video back and it will look correct (or at least more as it was intended). This can be done with Mozilla Firefox or VLC.

You could add a LUT to try and fix it (and Adobe actually has one) but for people on windows or using a non-color sync app the image will be too dark, and the the fix is never going to be perfect.

So the problem become getting people to use VLC as Apple is never going to fix it’s messed up Gamma settings.