Importing 120 fps video from 6th gen iPod touch into Finalcut

[ricede]

I have checked through the Movie Inspector window in QuickTime that the videos clips i want to use are indeed shot in 120 fps.

When adding the first clip into the timeline window of Finalcut pro x - a drop down opens and it says " The Video Properties of this clip are not recognised. Click ok to use the settings below or cancel to use another clip. "
The format (720 HD) & resolution (1280x720) boxes are correct - however the rate box shows 60p.

I've tried to slow down a clip to 25% and its quite choppy. When slowed down to 50% its very smooth. This makes me think that its only working with 60 fps.

Can anyone please tell me where I'm going wrong.

Finalcut pro 10.1.3

 

[AFPoster]

I have checked through the Movie Inspector window in QuickTime that the videos clips i want to use are indeed shot in 120 fps.

When adding the first clip into the timeline window of Finalcut pro x - a drop down opens and it says " The Video Properties of this clip are not recognised. Click ok to use the settings below or cancel to use another clip. "
The format (720 HD) & resolution (1280x720) boxes are correct - however the rate box shows 60p.

I've tried to slow down a clip to 25% and its quite choppy. When slowed down to 50% its very smooth. This makes me think that its only working with 60 fps.

Can anyone please tell me where I'm going wrong.

Finalcut pro 10.1.3

Looking at this link - iPod Touch 6th Gen you can record slow motion at 120fps, but it's a misconception on what is actually being recorded. I'm pulling a comment from the Apple Community forums from "Luis Sequeira1" on this.

There is a misconception about the "slow motion videos" in iPhone. In fact, they *really* are videos recorded with a high frame rate (up to 240fps in iPhone 6). They are *not* in slow motion per se - even though the iPhone software may play them as such. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that there is no such thing as slow motion videos. There are videos played in slow motion. What happens when, say, you drop your 240fps video in a 24fps timeline, is that it plays at normal speed. This is as it should be!

The big deal is that, since your clip has all those extra frames in it, you can use FCP X to slow it down (up to 1/10 the original speed in my example) and it will use all the real frames the camera captured. Plus, you can use all the retiming features in FCP X to obtain perfectly smooth slow motion.



By means of comparison, if you slow down a video recorded at the same frame rate as the project it is in, FCP X has to make up extra frames that did not exist. Even though FCP X has some great algorithms for this (like "Optical Flow"), it can't match real captured frames.

 

[sevoneone]

I'll add to this one very nice feature of FCPX when working with overcranked footage is that you can select the clip in the timeline and select: Modify > Retime > Automatic Speed and it will adjust the speed of the clip to play every frame instead of realtime (timing that is true to life). I have this set to a custom keyboard shortcut, so if there is something I want slowmo, I just tap that.

A key to getting the smoothest playback of footage with a different frame rate than your timeline, whether it be normal, slow, or fast motion, that I have found is that you want to make sure you set the speed so you have an even ratio of frames playing back. For example: 60FPS footage in a 24p timeline. If you just drop the footage in the timeline, it will playback in realtime, and it will be playing back the footage at a ratio of 1 frame in the timeline for every 2.5 in the source clip, which FCP does by alternating tossing out 1 frame, then 2 frames. So, each frame does not cover an even period of time. Depending on the shutter speed the footage was shot at, it can look pretty bad, even after adding motion blur or optical flow.

If you take your footage and apply the Automatic Speed and then set your speed percentage to be a multiple of the percentage FCP sets the clip to, you will get the cleanest motion. Again for 60fps in a 24p timeline, the speed for 1:1 frame playback would be 40%. If I didn't want the footage to appear as slowed down and closer to real time while still getting the smoothest motion, I would opt to use 80% or 120%

 

[ricede]

If you take your footage and apply the Automatic Speed and then set your speed percentage to be a multiple of the percentage FCP sets the clip to, you will get the cleanest motion. Again for 60fps in a 24p timeline, the speed for 1:1 frame playback would be 40%. If I didn't want the footage to appear as slowed down and closer to real time while still getting the smoothest motion, I would opt to use 80% or 120%

Thats very interesting - I didn't know that. Thanks for the info.