Am I the only one who calls the new Optical Flow AWESOME?!!

Holy cannelloni, Batman!

Finally updated to v10.2, 3D title, yepp, super, been there, gross ... BUT!!!

The new Optical Flow is just awesome, not to say awesome² !!



This is an intentionally choosen 'bad' test clip:
No 'plain' background, cam shakes, shutter speed wasn't high enough=> some motion blurr....
This is a 100fps clip from my Pana FZ1000

Applied 10% and OF ....
a) not scientifically proofed, but the 'analysis' is much faster than before.
b) there's close-to-no 'wobble' around the moving subject - in the old version, I noticed an area of 'jellyness', which made the clips useless.
c) in another test, rotation ( = a ball on the green) is excellent interpolated - the old OF couldn't handle rotating objects (at last here...)

100fps * 10% = 1.000fps ... yeah, not really , software doesn't replace a Phantom ... but for MY standards? Perfect!!

..yep, 3D titles, great either, ja, ja .....

PS: The 'title' is attached via TrackX ... have to find out, how to 'smoothen' the tracking.... looks like, it tracks the 'un-smoothen' source clip ... (??)

Didn't even now there was something called Optical Flow

Seems cool, need to try it out!

Optical Flow has received a major overhaul in 10.2. If you want the title to smoothly track the retimed clip you can try this: export the retimed clip, re-import it and re-apply the tracking on the re-imported clip.

- Ronny

I've always found that the more motion blur your scene has, the better Optical Flow works. If you shoot at a high shutter speed and every frame is crystal clear, you'll get those nasty effects like you clearly see from miles away on this fellow's hand. I've been able to take poor video footage and slow it down to anywhere from 99 to 2% with no noticeable artifacting anywhere in the frame. The better your image, the less good it tends to work. So let motion blur work for you, not against you. Don't believe me? Shoot something at the same framerate twice, once with motion blur, the other with none. Slow them down to the same speed. Tell me which has less artifacting. I wish Optical Flow would work as well with crystal clear images because then the slower images would be far more impressive.

Redifer wrote: I've always found that the more motion blur your scene has, the better Optical Flow works. ....

hmm, really?
Any advice you find on the net, and a few tests of mine in the past, tell the contrary ...

Imho, the 'angular speed' was the culprit for 'jelly' around moving parts in the picture. Again, watch my demo: the shoes are not handled correctly - and the feet are the 'fastest' object in this demo, have the most angular speed.

Due to being 'new and improved', I will test it, blurred vs. crystal clear material. In my humble understanding, what OF does or is, I would be surprised, 'unsharp' gives 'better' results. The biggest hurdle to go with such tests is, how to motivate a teenager ( = my son) running up and down the street, 'cause Daddy likes to perform tests .... :lol:

And I confess; the cameras 100fps is for 'regula' needs fast/slow enough. 1.000fps is more l'art pour l'art.

@ronny:
Had the same idea - maybe the plugin needs some kind of 'consolidated' material? ... first coffee #2, than it's time to launch FCPX.

@dimitri:
When you use any 'speed effects' in FCPX, you're offered 'normal/blend/optical flow'. And for sports, slowmo is .... essential. Best practice is a cam with higher frame-rate, this was one of the killer-arguments for my new toy, the Pana FZ1k, which offers 1080/100p out-of-the-box. But for some artistry, super-slowmo is ... better. Yep, peanuts in the pockets, but sky.high ambitions - that's me LOL!!!

==addendum==
What a surprise - Ronny is right!



ex-/imported the range as Master, back into project, applied tracker - smooooooth.
Ronny, your knowhow is uncompared....- thanks for sharing it.

I have made a little testvideo with OF and 4K downscaled to 1080, but I´m denied access to reply/upload. This is the message I get:

"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /forum on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

- any suggestions to why I am denied access to upload a video?

EDIT: The video shows up correctly when I preview the post

Aha, - here we go. Seems the videolink shall be applied before the text.

I have never used OF before. Got curious when reading here that the lower quality footage the better results. Here is a little test,- 4K/24fps footage from my GH4 camera on a 1080 timeline in FCPX. 10% OF slowmo and original speed.

the new and improved OF is noticeable faster than its 1st incarnation, even when you 'abuse' it for some Movie Magic:


(poor man's morphing)

… this is done in seconds! … 
Tried this trick, years ago, when I stumbled upon - I had to wait quiet some time.