- In this video we're gonna run through
a complete slow motion tutorial for beginners
so that you can learn how to make slow motion video
using almost any camera or video-editing software.
Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video,
where we help you amplify
your business and brand with video.
If you're new here,
make sure you click that subscribe button,
and all the links to everything we mention
in this video
you can find linked in the description box below.
So let's jump into it.
Slow motion video editing and video creation
is a lot easier than most people think.
These days, you don't need a fancy camera
for slow motion video.
You can actually get awesome results
just using things like your iPhone, your android,
or almost any current entry-level camera as well.
Plus, with a few extra tweaks in your editing
you can quickly improve your overall results
with next to no extra work.
Using slow motion in your videos
is a great way to really up the production levels
of the video you're creating,
but also,
they're a great way to bring another perspective
or create another level of intrigue or interest
in your videos,
because you're able to show things in a way
that our human eyes aren't used to seeing them
in day-to-day life.
So whether it's something like a bird flying
or even just someone jumping up and down on the spot,
this is something that we're used to seeing it
in real time, as it normally happens.
But the moment you slow it down,
it really changes the game
and really creates some interest and intrigue
for your videos,
which is why it's a great tool
to keep people watching your videos,
and also, to make your videos
more interesting and engaging.
But it can also be used to help bring a different vibe
or a different feeling to the videos you're creating,
or it might help you explain something easier
if you're able to slow down what is actually happening
so the viewer can follow along.
So there's lots of great used cases
for using slow motion in your videos,
but how do you actually do it
so that it doesn't look average?
So in this video we're gonna run through
a complete tutorial for beginners
with a few options to get professional, slow motion results
so that you're covered with pretty much
any camera or editing software.
Now just before we get into the how you can make
your slow motion videos,
I do wanna cover a little bit of theory first
so that you have that solid understanding
on how slow motion video actually works
so that you're able to get the best results out of it.
So with regular, normal video,
video is made up of a certain amount of frames,
or you could think of them as photos, per second
to create that movement or that motion
to create the video.
And that number of photos, or frames as they're known,
played back per second
gives you your frames per second, or your frame rate,
of your video.
I hope I'm not losing anyone at this point,
so stick with me,
this will all make sense really, really soon.
So a regular video then
can be made up of either 24 frames per second,
25 frames per second,
or around 30 frames per second.
So these are your standard frame rates
for different types of videos.
So, 24 is typically used in movies and cinema
or for that cinematic look.
25 is used in PAL regions, so Australia, the UK.
Whereas 30 frames per second,
and around 30 frames per second,
is used in the U.S. and other countries as well.
Now again, don't wanna lose ya,
don't overcomplicate this,
but this is regular video,
so 24, 25, or 30 frames per second.
So knowing that in order to create a regular video
that's not slow motion,
we need to be capturing, let's say, 30 frames per second.
In order to capture slow motion then,
we need to be capturing more data
or more frames per second of our video
so that we've got the ability to slow that down
and have that be smooth as well.
The moment that our video
drops below those standard frame rates,
that's where you're going to get that jittery motion
or the stilted motion in your video,
and that is slow motion done wrong or done bad.
Where a lot of people go wrong with this
is they'll try to slow down their regular footage,
in which case they're dropping that frame rate.
The end video still needs to be around those frame rates,
but your computer or whatever app you're using
to slow down the video,
if it hasn't been specifically shot the right way
for creating slow motion videos,
which I will show you in a second,
then you're essentially just adding in empty frames
to fill those gaps,
because you don't have that extra data captured.
So now that you've got an understanding
on how slow motion works
and what we need to do,
now I'm gonna show you how to do it.
So the easiest way to do this then,
whether you're on a iPhone or android,
is to open up the camera app that came with your device,
and switch it over to slow motion mode.
Now, the newer phones are going to have more options
and going to be able to capture
more data or higher frame rates,
slower, slow motion,
than some of the older ones.
And they're also going to capture
higher quality slow motion footage as well.
But in here, once you've selected slow motion,
you're essentially pressing record,
and that is going to start capturing
at much higher frame rates.
So if your iPhone, your android device,
or even your DSLR mirrorless point or shoot camera
has some sort of slow motion mode,
this is where you're able to kick it
into those higher frame rates
and shoot that 120, 240, or above frames per second,
and it's automatically going to slow down that clip for you.
So that's the first way or the easiest way
is just using those built-in slow motion modes.
The next way that you can do it,
and again, this will come down to which camera
or which phone or which device you are using
to capture your videos,
is to manually set the frame rate to a higher frame rate.
So you're not just enabling a slow motion mode
where you may or may not be able to specify
how many frames per second.
This is kicking your camera into manual mode
and saying, I wanna shoot at 1080p,
the video resolution at 50 frames per second
or 60 frames per second,
or you can kick it up into 120, 240, or higher
again, depending on the cameras that you are using.
A lot of DSLR's and mirrorless cameras
and those sorts of things out there these days,
or the more professional cameras,
are going to have settings in there
for creating 120 frames per second or higher.
So it is gonna come down to the camera
or the device that you are using,
but most cameras out there these days
will let you shoot at 1080p,
50 or 60 frames per second,
which is again going to capture
twice the amount of data
than your regular video that you are creating,
which is going to let you slow down that footage
in your video editing
to play back at that regular frames per second,
25 or 30 frames per second,
and have it actually be in two times slow motion.
Now I do wanna mention
that with some cameras out there,
especially some of the older ones,
in order for you to kick it in to those higher frame rates,
50 or 60 or above,
some cameras will lower the quality
so that you're not able to record at 1080p.
You might be restricted to only recording at 720p
to be able to capture that extra data,
or in some cases,
the moment that you increase the frame rate
beyond those normal frame rates,
that you are dropping even lower qualities
or lower resolution for your end video as well.
So, definitely something to be aware of
and definitely something you could Google
about your camera, your make, your model
and what resolutions and what frame rates
you can record at
so that you know what's possible on your specific device.
But the idea here
is that you want slow motion video.
The higher the frames per second you're able to record at,
the slower the end video is going to be.
Now one big plus about shooting your videos
at 50 or 60 frames per second
is that, in most cases,
on most cameras, most devices,
these will still record audio
so that you can use the video
as regular video as well,
and you have the ability to slow down those sections
that you would like to in your editing.
Now while this isn't going to give you super-slow motion
like you would see as 120 or 240 frames per second or above,
this might be enough though
just to give you enough slow motion
to break it up,
to make it interesting and intriguing for your viewers,
and to make it look more cinematic
if that's the look that you're after,
all while still having the ability
to play it back at normal speed as well.
So the process for doing this
is as easy as selecting one of those
higher frame rate options,
depending on the camera or the device that you are using,
recording your video,
and then jumping across into your editing software.
And there's a couple of different ways you can use then
to slow down your footage.
The first thing you wanna make sure that you are doing
is when you're importing your footage,
you wanna make sure that your timeline
or your editing project
is still on that regular frames per second timeline.
So not the higher speed one.
You wanna make sure that you're still creating your videos
how you regularly would
at either 25, 24, or 30 frames per second
so the project is set to that.
And this way when you bring in
your higher frame rate video
you get to choose whether that is played back
at a normal speed,
or whether you're going to use that as slow motion.
Now there's a couple of different ways that you can do this.
Let's say you've recorded your video
at 60 frames per second,
and you've brought it into a 30 frames per second timeline.
So a pretty standard used case,
and I'd say where most people
would be creating their videos.
This means that you've got access to twice that data there,
so you get to choose whether you want to
play it back at normal speed, or 30 frames per second,
or whether you wanna slow down that section of the video
so that you're making use of that extra data
that you captured
to play it back as slo-mo.
So it really can be as simple
as finding the speed control section
of your video editing software,
selecting the clip and slowing it down to half.
Because you've got twice the amount of data,
you can slow this down to half, or to 50% speed,
without losing any of that nice, smooth motion
that you've captured.
If you go beyond that 50%
and you're slowing it down further,
that's where your software is gonna have to try
and add in those extra frames,
or where you can end up with stilted or jittery motion
with your slow motion.
But you can go up to half
if you recorded at twice the frame rate.
Obviously, if you're recording at much higher frame rates,
120, 240, or above,
when you bring those into your timeline
you can slow it down so much more
before you're hitting that point
where your computer is going to have to try
and add in frames
to play back your video that slow.
Another option that you've got
depending on the video editing software that you're using
is that you can tell your video editing software
that a specific clip that you want to be treated as,
or interpreted as, a slow motion clip
and not try to be played back at regular speed.
So in Adobe Premier, for example,
you can right-click on a clip,
you can select interpret footage,
and you can tell Premier to interpret that footage,
or to look at that footage as,
and then you type in the frame rate
that you'd like it to be played back at.
So this is another easy way
that you can have your video editing software
process your footage as either regular played back speed
or as slow motion footage.
All right, so I've covered off on using
built-in, slow motion modes
where you don't really need to do anything else
in your editing,
whatever you're creating
in your phone or in your camera,
is a slow motion clip.
I've then shown you how you can slow down
your higher frame rate clips,
whether they're 50 or 60 frames per second
using your video editing software
to adjust that slow motion
and to really make your clips slow motion at that point.
There's one more thing that I wanna show you here
which is applicable to
a lot of video editing software out there
but probably more on the professional side of things,
and this is where you can add in some of those extra frames
or smooth out your footage
if you are going to drop below
the data that you have captured.
So going back to one of the first examples,
or one of the first things I mentioned in this video,
around where people go wrong with creating their videos.
They just take their regular footage,
say 30 frames per second,
drop it into their editing app
or into their editing software,
and try to slow it down then
causing the computer or the app
to try and add in extra frames,
but all it does is make your footage jittery or stilted
as it plays back,
because it doesn't have that extra data.
So in a lot of the more professional
video editing software and tools out there these days,
and it's also flowing into
a lot of the cheaper ones as well,
you can actually have the software
create what's called blended frames.
If you need to do that
or if you need to slow down your footage beyond that point
where you don't have enough data to do it smoothly,
there's a lot of video editing applications out there now
on the more professional side of things
that will let you do that,
and it will analyze your footage
and really create a smooth motion between them.
So it takes out that jitteriness or that stiltedness,
and it smooths it out for you.
And in a lot of cases,
it can actually do a pretty damn good job.
So in Adobe Premier they call this optical flow.
And when you go in and adjust your speeds,
you can actually select optical flow.
And this is where it's going to,
again, analyze your footage,
and it's gonna smooth out your slow motion footage
to make it look smoother
and make it look as if
you'd shot it at a higher frame rate.
So even software like Final Cut
has this exact same software as well.
Again, when you're setting the slow motion
you can apply this,
and it's going to smooth out your footage for you.
So it's at your best case here
is to start out with those slow motion modes,
or if you've got access to a more professional camera,
kick them in to those higher frame rates.
And then if you need to slow your footage down even more,
beyond what your cameras or devices are capable of,
that's where you could use things like the optical flow
in your video editing software
to slow down your footage beyond that.
Now, I do wanna say that optical flow
and having the computer analyze and slow down your footage,
it can give you great results,
but it also can make your footage look
a little warped and a little wobbly
and look a little strange.
So that is something that is gonna come down to
what is actually in your video
and whether it's going to work right for you.
That's definitely worth testing,
and it can really give you some great results as well.
So that's how easy it is
to create great-looking slow motion videos.
Now, if you're interested
in leveling up all of the videos that you're creating
with your iPhone or android device,
then check out the free guide
that we've got linked on screen now
and below in the description as well
which will take you through a step-by-step process
to insure you're creating the best quality videos
using those devices.
And I'll see you in the next one.