How Do I Change Clip Speed?

1. Using Edit DV (which has all the basic speed control functions)

To Change the speed of a clip within EditDV you can use two methods.

First, you can use the Speed Comand.

• You just highlight the clip in the timeline that you want to change the speed of (be it speed up or slow down)
• Pull down the Sequencer menu, select Speed (or you can just use the shortcut which is to hold down the OPTION key and double click on the desired clip to bring up the Speed dialogue box)
• Make your adjustment in the dialogue box that appears.

Second, you can use Fit To Fill.

• Pick a space in the Timeline you want to fill (mark in and out points in the timeline or program monitor).
• In the source monitor window pick a much smaller piece of source video (i.e. grab a shorter source clip from the bin, and mark in and out points for it).
• Choose Fit To Fill from the Edit Menu (or use the shortcut key combination of APPLE F). EditDV will then work out what percentage speed change that is required to make the selected source clip fit the defined space in the timeline. Might take a few tries to get just what you want.

NOTE 1: due to the fixed frame rate and interlaced field nature of video, some speed changes play more smoothly than others. For best results use the preset speed changes in the Speed popup box.

NOTE 2: Slow motion clips tend to be smoother if over 50% full speed (in other words, the speeds between 50% and 100% full speed tend to look the best)

NOTE 3: You will have to render the clip to see the F/X - until you do, it will show as black on playback.

NOTE 4: The Speed Command Dialogue box also gives you the ability to Reverse the direction of the clip (i.e. make it play backwards) or create a freeze frame (just by checking the relavent box, ...note that the freeze frame that you get will be the frame at the Mark In point of the clip)

2. Using After Effects (which allows for advanced speed control)

There are again a couple of ways of controlling speed within After Effects.

Firstly, we'll start with basic speed changing. After Effects does a very good slo-mo using 'Time Stretch', it's slow in rendering, but the best slo-mo you can get from video

• Import into After Effects (see note at bottom of page) all the footage you want to alter the speed of (be it a single clip or an EditDV "Program movie" which you have exported for further work) and create a new composition of the correct DV resolution (NTSC or PAL with DV square pixel ratio, etc)
• Drag the clip into the composition timeline and drop it (dragging it into the timeline rather than the composition window means it will be centred).
• Under the Layer Menu select Time Stretch
• set the new speed in the dialogue box that pops up (just a quick note in case the percentage thing seems confusing, since it is a "stretch" the percentage value is actually how much you want to stretch the clip by, so the equivalent of a 50% slow motion using the EditDV Speed dialogue box would actually require a value of 200% placed in the Time Stretch dialogue box in After Effects, ..since you are wanting to make the clip 200% as long as it was)
• click OK
• make sure that Frame Blending is on firstly in the layer (select the clip and go to the Layer Menu, go to the Switches submenu and makesure Frame Blending is enabled with a tick, ....or simply click on the Frame Blending icon in the timeline, ...the icon looks like a little film strip with checkbox under it) and secondly by general switch (click on the bigger Film Strip icon which is on the timeline between a little face icon and a little M icon)
• render the new movie
• Secondly, After Effects can also control the speed discontinuously by way of Time Remapping from the Layer menu (This means for example you can have the video start off slow, speed up, then slow to a still then speed back up again, ...you are not locked into a certain speed for the whole clip) .
• Import footage into After Effects (see note at bottom of page) and set up a DV resolution composition
• drag source clip into timeline
• go to the Layers Menu and select Enable Time Ramapping
• now in the timeline you can access the time remap graph, and alter the speed over time for the clip (moving the keyframes up to speed up and down to go slower)
• when happy, render movie

NOTE 1: In order to get the smoothest results when using DV footage in After Effects make sure that the first thing you do after importing source footage is to highlight the source clip in Project window, go to the File menu, select the Interpret Footage submenu and then Main, in this dialogue box set the Separate Fields pulldown box to Lower Field First, then check the Motion Detect box (this will allow After Effects to correctly handle the interlaced fields that make up the DV footage, which will give the best, smoothest results when combined with field rendering at output)

NOTE 2: Some After Effects preset templates (one for Render Settings and one for Output Module) came with EditDV so use those for rendering your final movies from After Effects