I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with other tools that use Motion Prediction for smooth interpolation between frames?

 
Imagine you have a short video sequence, perhaps a skateboard jump of 3 seconds, at 30fps that's 90 frames, and you want to slow it down to 300 frames or more so it takes 5 -10 seconds, runs in slow-mo.

 
Or, you have a 3D rendering that takes hours to complete even for just 30 frames, and you need 5x to 10x that many for longer duration but can't wait for the rendering of several days.

 
Frame blending with time stretching ain't cutting it because it leaves crawling effects, as it blends from one frame to the next.

 
Motion prediction can in some cases produce better results. It has its limitations too but in some cases it can help turn a 60 frame sequence into a 600 frame sequence and it only takes minutes to render those additionals.

 
So, I'm looking for other tools that do that, want to compare, see their options etc...

 
Anyone work with video, 3D animation, do post work? Does After Effects do frame tweening with motion prediction? Any other tools out there?  (I mean other than PD Pro of course :-)

 
-Philip

I've stretched time for rendered animation using both Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12 and Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11.  Their stretch limits were 4x I think though.  I was stretching 3 sec (90 frames) to 12 sec (360 frames).  Both did just fine as far as I could tell.  I'm guessing you've already done something similar.  There is also VirtualDub that can slow things down.  But it only works with AVI format.

Or are you trying not to slow down.  But keep the same motion speed.  Just without jitter/jumping?

Off the top of my head I can't think of any tool that does that right now. Some compositing applications have retimer tools that can do this, but I don't know how they work since I've never used them. I mean "pro" compositing appls like the defunct Shake, Nuke or similar. Premiere Pro has a time remapping tool, and so does AfterFX, but I've never tried to slow down something that much, so I don't know if the result is any good (and I don't have the time to do it right now, since I'm in the middle of a project, and I can't promise I'll do it over the weekend either).

Quote - I've stretched time for rendered animation using both Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12 and Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11.  Their stretch limits were 4x I think though.  I was stretching 3 sec (90 frames) to 12 sec (360 frames).  Both did just fine as far as I could tell.  I'm guessing you've already done something similar.  There is also VirtualDub that can slow things down.  But it only works with AVI format.

Or are you trying not to slow down.  But keep the same motion speed.  Just without jitter/jumping?

Yeah I've also seen time stretching in other tools like Power Director, but that one in particular doesn't frame blend. So each frame is just held longer, and it can create a bit of a 'stuttering' side effect.

Just curious: Did Pinneacle Studio do frame blending?Were there portions in the video that moved fast and got a bit of ghosting, showing bth frames at times? (50% weight each)

Quote - Off the top of my head I can't think of any tool that does that right now. Some compositing applications have retimer tools that can do this, but I don't know how they work since I've never used them. I mean "pro" compositing appls like the defunct Shake, Nuke or similar. Premiere Pro has a time remapping tool, and so does AfterFX, but I've never tried to slow down something that much, so I don't know if the result is any good (and I don't have the time to do it right now, since I'm in the middle of a project, and I can't promise I'll do it over the weekend either).

I've used Premiere and After Effects and vaguely recall time remapping but don't recall seeing motion prediction. I'll have to research their docs.

Looks like The Foundry makes a plugin called Kronos for After Effects and others, focused on retiming, which includes slowing down with motion estimation:

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/kronos/

Quote - Just curious: Did Pinneacle Studio do frame blending?Were there portions in the video that moved fast and got a bit of ghosting, showing bth frames at times? (50% weight each)

My version doesn't have a feature that converts normal film footage into high-speed footage for slow motion viewing.

As I am googling and learning about this I find that a few plugins exist that do similar stuff, they may call it Motion Estimation rather than Motion Prediction.