In this video, we're gonna run through a complete slow motion tutorial for beginners so that you can learn how to make slow motion video using almost any camera or video editing software. Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video, where we help you amplify your business and brand with video. If you're new here, make sure you click that subscribe button and all the links to everything we mention in this video you can find linked in the description box below. So let's jump into it.
Slow motion video editing and video creation is a lot easier than most people think. These days, you don't need a fancy camera. For slow motion video, you can actually get awesome results just using things like your iPhone, your Android, or almost any current entry level camera as well.
Plus, with a few extra tweaks in your editing, you can quickly improve your overall results with next to no extra work. Using slow motion in your videos is a great way to really up the production levels of the video you're creating. But also, they're a great way to bring another perspective or create another level of intrigue.
or interest in your videos because you're able to show things in a way that our human eyes aren't used to seeing them in day-to-day life. So whether it's something like a bird flying or even just someone jumping up and down on the spot, this is something that we're used to seeing it in real time as it normally happens. but the moment you slow it down, it really changes the game and really creates some interest and intrigue for your videos, which is why it's a great tool to keep people watching your videos, and also to make your videos more interesting and engaging. But it can also be used to help bring a different vibe or a different feeling to the videos you're creating, or it might help you explain something easier if you're able to slow down what is actually happening so the viewer can follow along. So there's lots of great use cases for using slow motion in your videos, but how do you actually do it so that it that doesn't look average.
So in this video, we're gonna run through a complete tutorial for beginners, with a few options to get professional slow motion results, so that you're covered with pretty much any camera or editing software. Now just before we get into how you can make your slow motion videos, I do wanna cover a little bit of theory first, so that you have that solid understanding on how slow motion video actually works, so that you're able to get the best results out of it. So with regular, normal video, Video is made up of a certain amount of frames, or you could think of them as photos, per second to create that movement or that motion to create the video. And that number of photos, or frames as they're known, played back per second, gives you your frames per second, or your frame rate of your video. I hope I'm not losing anyone at this point, so stick with me, this will all make sense really, really soon.
So a regular video then can be made up of either 24 frames per second, 25 frames per second, or around 30 frames per second. So these are your standard frame rates for different types of videos. So 24 is typically used in movies and cinema, or for that cinematic look.
25 is used in PAL regions, so Australia, the UK. Whereas 30 frames per second and around 30 frames per second is used in the US and other countries as well. Now again, don't wanna lose you, don't wanna overcomplicate this, but this is regular video.
So 24. 25 or 30 frames per second. So knowing that in order to create a regular video that's not slow motion, we need to be capturing, let's say, 30 frames per second. In order to capture slow motion then, we need to be capturing more data or more frames per second of our video so that we've got the ability to slow that down and have that be smooth as well. The moment that our video drops below those standard frame rates, that's where you're going to get that jittery motion or the stilted motion in your video.
and that is slow motion done wrong or done bad. Where a lot of people go wrong with this is they'll try to slow down their regular footage, in which case they're dropping that frame rate. The end video still needs to be around those frame rates, but your computer or whatever app you're using to slow down the video, if it hasn't been specifically shot the right way for creating slow motion videos, which I will show you in a second, then you're essentially just adding in empty frames to fill those gaps.
because you don't have that extra data captured. So now that you've got an understanding on how slow motion works and what we need to do, now I'm gonna show you how to do it. So the easiest way to do this then, whether you're on iPhone or Android, is to open up the camera app that came with your device and switch it over to slow motion mode.
Now, the newer phones are going to have more options and going to be able to capture more data or higher frame rates slower. slow motion than some of the older ones. And they're also going to capture higher quality slow motion footage as well.
But in here, once you've selected slow motion, you're essentially pressing record, and that is going to start capturing at much higher frame rates. So if your iPhone, your Android device, or even your DSLR, mirrorless point or shoot camera has some sort of slow motion mode, this is where you're able to kick it into those higher frame rates and shoot at 120, 240 or above. frames per second and it's automatically going to slow down that clip for you So that's the first way, or the easiest way, is just using those built-in slow motion modes.
The next way that you can do it, and again this will come down to which camera, or which phone, or which device you are using to capture your videos, is to manually set the frame rate to a higher frame rate. So you're not just enabling a slow motion mode, where you may or may not be able to specify how many frames per second. This is kicking your camera into manual mode and saying, I wanna shoot at 1080p, the video resolution, at 50 frames per second or 60 frames per second.
Or you could kick it up into 120, 240 or higher, again depending on the cameras that you are using. A lot of DSLRs and mirrorless cameras and those sorts of things out there these days, so the more professional cameras, are going to have settings in there for creating 120 frames per second or higher. So it is gonna come down to the camera or the device that you are using, but most cameras out there these days will let you shoot at 1080p 50 or 60 frames per second.
which is again going to capture twice the amount of data than your regular video that you are creating, which is going to let you slow down that footage in your video editing to play back at that regular frames per second, 25 or 30 frames per second, and have it actually be in two times slow motion. Now I do wanna mention that with some cameras out there, especially some of the older ones, in order for you to kick it into those higher frame rates, 50 or 60 or above, some cameras will lower the quality so that you're not able to record forward out. 1080p you might be restricted to only recording at 720p to be able to capture that extra data. Or in some cases, the moment that you increase the frame rate beyond those normal frame rates, that you are dropping even lower qualities or lower resolution for your end video as well.
So definitely something to be aware of and definitely something you could Google about your camera, your make, your model, and what resolutions and what frame rates you can record at so that you know what's possible on your specific device. But the only The idea here is that you want slow motion video, the higher the frames per second you're able to record at, the slower the end video is going to be. Now one big plus about shooting your videos at 50 or 60 frames per second is that in most cases, on most cameras, most devices, these will still record audio so that you can use the video as regular video as well and you have the ability to slow down those sections that you would like to in your editing.
Now while this isn't going to give you super slow motion like you would see as as 120 or 240 frames per second or above. This might be enough though, just to give you enough slow motion to break it up, to make it interesting and intriguing for your viewers, and to make it look more cinematic, if that's the look that you're after. All while still having the ability to play it back at normal speed as well. So the process for doing this is as easy as selecting one of those higher frame rate options, depending on the camera or the device that you are using, recording your video, and then jumping across into your editing software, and there's a couple of different ways that you can use then to slow down your footage.
The first thing you wanna make sure that you are doing is when you're importing your footage, you wanna make sure that your timeline or your editing project is still on that regular frames per second timeline. So not the higher speed one, you wanna make sure that you're still creating your videos how you regularly would at either 25, 24, or 30 frames per second. So the project is set to that.
And this way when you bring in your higher frame rate video, you get to choose whether that is played back at a normal speed, or whether you're going to use that as slow motion. Now there's a couple of different ways that you can do this. Let's say you've recorded your video at 60 frames per second and you've brought it into a 30 frames per second timeline.
So a pretty standard use case, and I'd say where most people would be creating their videos. This means that you've got access to twice that data there, so you get to choose whether you want it played back at normal speed, or 30 frames per second, or whether you wanna slow down that section of the video so that you're making use of that extra data that you captured to play it back as slow-mo. So it really can be as simple as finding this speed control section of your video editing software, selecting the clip and slowing it down.
to half because you've got twice the amount of data. You can slow this down to half or to 50% speed without losing any of that nice smooth motion that you've captured. If you go beyond that 50% and you're slowing it down further, that's where your software is gonna have to try and add in those extra frames or where you can end up with stilted or jittery motion with your slow motion.
But you can go up to half if you've recorded at twice the frame rate. Obviously if you're recording at much higher frame rates 120 240 or above when you bring those into your timeline You can slow it down so much more before you're hitting that point Where your computer is going to have to try and add in frames to play back your video that slow Another option that you've got depending on the video editing software that you're using is that you can tell your video editing software That a specific clip that you want to be treated as or interpreted as a slow motion clip and not try to be played back at regular speed. So in Adobe Premiere for example, you can right click on a clip, you can select interpret footage, and you can tell Premiere to interpret that footage or to look at that footage as, and then you type in the frame rate that you'd like it to be played back at. So this is another easy way that you can have your video editing software process your footage as either regular played back speed or as slow motion footage. Alright, so we've covered off on using built-in slow motion modes.
What you don't really need to do anything else in your editing, whatever you're creating in your phone or in your camera, is a slow motion clip. I've then shown you how you can slow down your higher frame rate clips, whether they're 50 or 60 frames per second, using your video editing software to adjust that slow motion, and to really make your clips slow motion at that point. There's one more thing that I want to show you here which is applicable to a lot of video editing software out there but probably more on the professional side of things and this is where you can add in some of those extra frames or smooth out Your footage if you are going to drop below the data that you've captured. So going back to one of the first examples or one of the first things I mentioned in this video around where people go wrong with creating their videos, they'll just take their regular footage, say 30 frames per second, drop it into their editing app or into their editing software and try to slow it down then, causing the computer or the app to try and add in extra frames, but all it does is make your footage jittery or stilted as it plays back. because it doesn't have that extra data.
So in a lot of the more professional video editing software and tools out there these days, and it's also flowing into a lot of the cheaper ones as well, you can actually have the software create what's called blended frames. If you need to do that, or if you need to slow down your footage beyond that point where you don't have enough data to do it smoothly, there's a lot of video editing applications out there now on the more professional side of things that will let you do that, and it will analyze your footage. and really create a smooth motion between them.
So it takes out that jitteriness or that stiltedness and it smooths it out for you. And in a lot of cases, it can actually do a pretty damn good job. So in Adobe Premiere, they call this optical flow. And when you go in and adjust your speeds, you can actually select optical flow.
This is where it's going to, again, analyze your footage and it's gonna smooth out your slow motion footage to make it look smoother and make it look as if you'd shot it at a higher frame rate. So even software like Final Cut has this exact same software as well. Again, when you're setting the slow motion, you can apply this and it's going to smooth out your footage for you. So I would say your best case here is to start out with those slow motion modes or if you've got access to a more...
professional camera, kick them in to those higher frame rates. And then if you need to slow your footage down even more beyond what your cameras or devices are capable of, that's where you can use things like the optical flow in your video editing software to slow down your footage beyond. Now, I do wanna say that optical flow and having the computer analyze and slow down your footage, it can give you great results, but it also can make your footage look a little warped and a little warbly and look a little strange. So that is something that is gonna come down to what is actually in your video and whether it's going to work right for you. But it's definitely worth testing and it can really give you some great results as well.
So that's how easy it is to create great looking slow motion videos. Now, if you're interested in leveling up all of the the videos that you're creating with your iPhone or Android device, then check out the free guide that we've got linked on screen now and below in the description as well, which will take you through a step-by-step process to ensure you're creating the best quality videos using those devices. And I'll see you in the next one.