Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 14.16
The Retime Editor in the Timeline.
6.
Let's lengthen the freeze to 4 seconds and 18 frames. Position the playhead at 33 seconds and 7 frames in
the Timeline. Then drag the end of the red Hold Frame up to the playhead. Finish off by trimming the end
of the audio clip to the end of the video clip. Play back the clip to see the effect.
Retiming Clips
In addition to freeze frames, Final Cut Pro allows you to change the speed of a clip to create a slow-motion or
speeded-up effect. This is created in the same way as a Hold Frame by selecting a clip or dragging out a Range
Selection in the Timeline and choosing either Slow or Fast from the Retime menu. From here, you can choose
to slow down a clip by 10 percent, 25 percent, or 50 percent, or multiply the speed by 2, 4, 8, or 20. Choosing
Slow lengthens the clip in the Timeline and displays an orange bar to represent the slowed section in the Retime
Editor. Fast shortens the clip and displays a blue bar to represent the speeded-up segment. Once applied, the
speed can be adjusted further by selecting a new speed from the bar's drop-down menu or by dragging the
handle at the end of the bar. Dragging to the left speeds up the clip, and dragging to the right slows it down.
Checking Preserve Pitch in the Retime menu ensures that the pitch of the retimed clip's audio remains the same.
Final Cut Pro has to generate additional frames when creating a slow-motion effect and, depending on the
amount of slow motion, this can sometimes result in jerky images. When this is the case you can smooth out the
effect using the Video Quality option found in the Retime menu. This gives you a choice of Normal (the default
setting), Frame Blending, and Optical Flow. Frame Blending smoothes out the slow-motion effect by cross-dis-
solving (blending) between the additional frames, but it requires additional rendering. Optical Flow analyzes the
movement within the clip and uses the results to generate the extra frames needed to create the slow-motion ef-
fect—a process known as interpolation. This produces better results than Frame Blending, especially for clips
that have been slowed down a lot, but it can result in unwanted artifacts depending on the movement within the
frame. Optical Flow takes longer to generate because of the analysis; it also requires rendering.
Let's retime one of the clips in the Bump in the Night edited sequence that you created earlier in the topic.
1.
Mount the
Craft of the Cut
disc image, launch Final Cut Pro, and open the Bump in the Night Project that
you created earlier.
2.
Press Shift+ +2 to open the Timeline Index and type
Scene 8 Slate 59 Take 1
into the Search field.
3.
Select Scene 8 Slate 59 Take 1 in the search results to locate it in the Timeline and play the clip back. As
you can see there is a very long pause before Katie kicks the alphabet blocks, which really slows down the
action. Let's speed up the middle section to keep things moving along.
4.
Press R to bring up the Range tool, and draw a Selection over Scene 8 Slate 59 Take 1, starting at 1
second and 6 frames into the clip and ending at 5 seconds and 7 frames. The selection should have a dura-
tion of 4 seconds and 1 frame.
5.
Choose Fast
⇒
4x from the Retime menu. The Retime Editor displays above the clip, with a blue bar rep-
resenting the speeded-up area (see Figure 14.17).
