- This video is all about how to use speed ramps
to make your transitions super smooth.
(upbeat music)
As you can see behind me, I am not at my studio.
There's Rachel.
We actually just finished a shoot here in Kansas City.
This is the studio that we're in.
My crew back there is cleaning up,
and Rachel just wants to say hi.
Come here, say hi. - Oh, am I in it?
- You can say hi. - I was tryin'
to screw you up. - So, how do you do
a speed ramp transition?
(blows raspberries)
So, a speed ramp transition is basically
when you have your footage playing at full speed
or whatever speed that you shot at,
and then you either ramp into it by going fast to slow,
or slow to fast, when you ramp in or ramp out.
(upbeat music)
So we basically use this in transitions
to make it flow a little bit better between each transition.
And if you saw my video earlier last week,
I had a video all about some different transition ideas,
and if you add a speed ramp to any of these,
it's gonna make them fluid and move faster and smoother.
Now, there's some other techniques
that you can do to add on to a speed ramp
that's gonna make it even smoother,
and I'll get into that later at the end.
But first, let's get into the basics of speed ramping.
Now, you need to think about your speed ramps
before you even get into the edit bay.
So when you're out shooting,
you need to keep that in consideration.
So, for these shots that I'm showing you on this
in particular, I'm shooting at 120 frames per second,
because I wanna speed ramp into the slow motion,
let it play for a second,
and then speed ramp into the next shot,
which is another slow motion shot.
So, you have to keep in mind
that you want some movement in the shot,
and you wanna shoot it with the edit in mind.
So now let's get into the editing software.
I'm using Final Cut X to do this,
and you can definitely do this in Premiere as well,
however, I'm gonna show you using Final Cut.
So, in Final Cut, what you need to do
is first find the shot from beginning to end,
the parts that you wanna use.
This includes the part
that you're gonna speed up and slow down.
As you can see here, I have the shot of Jesse
and I shot it in a way where the part
that's in focus is where I want to land on the slow motion.
Now, I'm going to mark off where I want this shot to start,
and where I want it to end.
And I'm using some music to kinda guide me for this.
So if you use music, (uptempo music plays)
you can mark your in and out on a beat,
or somewhere in the track that drives the video.
Now I have the marks where I want to start the slow motion
and end the slow motion.
What I'm gonna do is speed ramp the front half
and the back half.
And so, in Final Cut, if you use Shift+B,
make sure you have the clip selected,
have your cursor at the point
that you want your speed ramp to end.
When you hit Shift+B, what's gonna happen
is going to basically split the clip,
and give you the option to speed up the front end.
So, you're gonna use your re-time tool,
and you're gonna speed it up.
You can use eight times, or you can use, say, 20 times.
Because this is a slow motion native clip,
I'm gonna use 20 times,
because it's already slowed down four times.
And now you have a section that is sped up 20 times.
It's going to gradually go back to real-time,
which is slow motion for this specific clip.
And you can see here, there's different ways
that you can move around these sliders at the top
of your re-time tool,
which basically allows you to change the amount
of your speed ramp.
So you can play with the beginning or the middle,
and play with how long you want that speed ramp to last,
and how long you want the fast section to play.
It's all up to personal taste,
and it's up to how you're gonna edit this,
if it's with music, or if it's with a certain pace,
this is where you're gonna play with that speed ramp.
So the first part is the speed,
second part is the ramp, and the third part,
you can see, it says it's native 100%,
that is where my clip is playing in real-time.
So if you're shooting at like 120 frame per second,
but it's not slowed down in camera,
you're not using a variable frame rate camera,
then right here is where you'll change the speed
to make this clip slower.
And you do the same thing on the tail end
of your video as well.
So you can ramp into your clip,
and then you can ramp out of your clip.
Now what you're gonna want to do is do this
for each of the shots that you want
in your transition sequence.
(upbeat music)
You can already see that it's a much smoother transition
than if you were to just do a cut between these,
or if you were to just speed up the clip to 20% at the end.
Now, to make this even smoother between the shots,
you can add a motion blur.
I'll put a link down below where you guys can check out
this motion blur effect that you just add over
the top of your footage.
And when you do this, it just makes it flow
a little bit more.
(upbeat music)
So adding some speed ramp and a motion blur
to any transition is going to just make it
that much smoother, and just make it look
that much better.
And one last thing, go check out my other video
on some different transition techniques.
This will give you some ideas of different ways
to do transitions, and then you can add
the speed ramp and motion blur to those transitions,
and really take your edits to the next level.
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All right, guys, I'll see you on the next one.