Skip frame/slow motion effect

I am trying to achieve a specific effect with FCP X and I am not sure there is a tool to do it. So basically the effect is a sort of slow motion, but using frame skipping. So basically I would like to skip like 3 frames out of 4, and make frame 1 the duration of 4:

frame 1: displays for the duration of 4 frames
frame 2: don't display
frame 3: don't display
frame 4: don't display
frame 5: displays for the duration of 4 frames
frame 6: don't display
etc...

So the effect would be like a series of photographs, but preserving time as each frame displayed would be so at the proper timestamp (so this is not really a slow motion).

Thanks in advance for your input.

-- oli

Strobe in Motion comes close, but I don't know anything at preset that will do exactly what you want done.

You could create a new Timeline, drop your clip into it, edit it to the In/Out points you need, then export as a Image Sequence. That gives you each frame as a still file. Delete the ones you don't want. Then in FCP X import that folder, lay them all into your Timeline, highlight them all, Control-D to set their duration to 4 frames.

You had me intrigued and I've been wanting to get a chance to properly explore the re-timing tool for a while. This seemed like the ideal opportunity but your probably better with Ben's image sequence idea. It’s not hard or anything but could be very tedious if you have a long clip to do.

I'll post anyway, it might be of interest.

Stage 1

A - Select the clip and press “⌘R” to show the retiming editor

B - Select a range around the first 3 frames and hit “shift H” to set a hold frame.

C - Skip through the 3 frames you want to skip.

D - Select a range around the next 4 frames and hit “shift H” to set a hold frame.

E - Skip through the 3 frames you want to skip.

Return to step B and continue through to step E for as long as you need.

Stage 2

Select each of the sections between the holds (1 at a time), this will create a range around them. Set these to 4x speed.

Thanks guys, I will try your suggestions, but I had hope there would be an automated way to do this or something equivalent. Doing this manually will take a lot of time.

Ben's image sequence idea won't take long. When you have it exported open the folder that contains it in finder, set finder to show icons, resize the window to fit 4 icons wide and choose to "clean up by name". Then just drag a marquee to select the 3 right most columns for deleting.

The rest is pretty much automatic.