Motion Interpolation

[MrTheAnimatist]

I've been trying to get motion interpolation working for a quick little video I'm making. However, the video (The new Mirror's Edge trailer, I know it's not anime but I figured this would be the best place to ask) Is only at 30fps, and I know 60fps is required to achieve proper motion interpolation. However, I'm sure most people here will have seen the video Into the Labyrinth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXX7dRULFaE), and have seen that proper motion interpolation can be achieved with only low fps footage. I've asked the video creator in the comments, but I still don't really know how this works. If someone could explain to me how to achieve this effect with low FPS videos, I would be most grateful. Thanks in advance.

[Brad]

I'm gonna go ahead and assume when you say motion interpolation, you're talking about being able to do good looking slow motion (by adding in in-between frames to non-high-fps footage). Well, the first thing I'd suggest is just using After Effects built-in Pixel Motion frame blending setting. I'll admit, it's not the greatest, but I've had some fairly surprising results with it. Here's a quicky how-to:

1) Make sure your clip is being time remapped (hopefully you already know how to do this. If not, let me know and I'll explain)
2) Right-click the clip on the timeline, and turn on Frame Blending > Pixel Motion
3) Make sure that the Enable Frame Blending button is activated in the comp (it's the icon with 3 little film strips to the left of the Motion Blur activation button)

Then just RAM preview your clip and see how it looks. Typically the very first frame is going to have a big mess of distortion on it, but you can just cut that off.

Now, on the likely chance that it doesn't look as good as you'd hoped, there's the 3rd party plugin, Twixtor. This is what most people use to achieve this effect. I'll go ahead and say, I don't have a ton of experience with it, but on principle it works in a fairly similar fashion to Pixel Motion, but it tends to be far more accurate and has way more settings that you can fine tune (as opposed to Pixel Motion which is just either on or off). I'm sure if you Google it you'll be able to find a bunch of guides/tutorials to help you along the way.

If what I've been talking about ISN'T at all what you were looking for, let me know with some more clarification. Good luck!

[MrTheAnimatist]

I'm gonna go ahead and assume when you say motion interpolation, you're talking about being able to do good looking slow motion (by adding in in-between frames to non-high-fps footage). Well, the first thing I'd suggest is just using After Effects built-in Pixel Motion frame blending setting. I'll admit, it's not the greatest, but I've had some fairly surprising results with it. Here's a quicky how-to:

1) Make sure your clip is being time remapped (hopefully you already know how to do this. If not, let me know and I'll explain)
2) Right-click the clip on the timeline, and turn on Frame Blending > Pixel Motion
3) Make sure that the Enable Frame Blending button is activated in the comp (it's the icon with 3 little film strips to the left of the Motion Blur activation button)

Then just RAM preview your clip and see how it looks. Typically the very first frame is going to have a big mess of distortion on it, but you can just cut that off.

Now, on the likely chance that it doesn't look as good as you'd hoped, there's the 3rd party plugin, Twixtor. This is what most people use to achieve this effect. I'll go ahead and say, I don't have a ton of experience with it, but on principle it works in a fairly similar fashion to Pixel Motion, but it tends to be far more accurate and has way more settings that you can fine tune (as opposed to Pixel Motion which is just either on or off). I'm sure if you Google it you'll be able to find a bunch of guides/tutorials to help you along the way.

Thanks very much for the reply. I don't know about time remapping My knowledge of AE is really weird, in that I'm perfectly capable in some ares, and useless in others), so if you could tell me how to that I would be most grateful. I have tried using Twixtor, but it never really works, and it just goes stuttery. I know lower fps footage can be interpolated somehow with Twixtor, I just can't figure it out

[Brad]

Hmm. Maybe I'll do a little Ask Brad video on it.

[MrTheAnimatist]

Hmm. Maybe I'll do a little Ask Brad video on it.

Having done the research to find out what that is, if you honestly feel that that would be the best way to address this then I would be extremely grateful. However, making a video like that may be Time Consuming for you, so if it is an inconvenience in any way, please don't trouble yourself. But thank you very much anyway.