Speed ramp better done in AE or Shake?

[Cobaltmax]

I need to do some 300 style speed ramp and I'm wondering if this is a job better done by Shake or AE?
Also, it will be shot with a HD camera and the max frame rate is 60fps. (any rate from 1 to 60fps) Normally speed ramp shots are shot in frame rates multiple of 24fps, like 48fps, 72fps, 96fps and so on. So the max with a 60p capable camera would be 48fs which is just half as slow. It would sure look nicer with a more extreme slow down. So is there a trick to use the whole 60fps and get a slower slow down? Thanks.

[Gentle Fury]

actually if you are shooting 60p oddly enough that equates perfectly to 24p...you can play 60p at 24 with no negative effects...it looks great. If you are working in final cut and shooting with a DVCPro codec you can convert it to 24p using all frames and you will get a 2.5x slowdown with which you could incorporate into your ramp.....its really good for instantly jumping in and out of slowmo.

[Cobaltmax]

Really? Good to know. I just know that in the film world shots destined to speed ramp need to be shot in multiples of 24.
What do you think is the best tool for the job in getting a result as close as possible to a in-camera ramp with the maximum image quality? AE or Shake? Thanks again.

[Gentle Fury]

The Foundry Furnace for Shake has kronos and it is the best time remapper i've ever used. Its only like $30 a day to rent.

[Cobaltmax]

I'm not sure I would be able to rent around here. Small town.
Shake alone can't pull it off? I also heard AE can do a great job but I#m not a big AE fan.

[Gentle Fury]

you dont rent it at a store you go to the foundrys website and you go to the shake plugin section you tell it how many days you need it for, download the software and the license key, install and enjoy

[Cobaltmax]

Aha, I thought you would rent time on a workstation.
Just got off the phone with a fella who uses Shake who was telling me Shake's time re-maping tools are great and how it's very simple to go into a nodle-in and change etc. But what I'm worried about is to make the footage look as close to a real speed ramped shot as possible. It shouldn't look like slowed and sped video, it needs to look like it was ramped in camera as done with film cameras.
I will check Furnace.

[Gentle Fury]

furnace actually uses optical flow morphing to create replacement frames...not blending frames. It is as close as you can get to drawing the new frames by hand

[Cobaltmax]

Sounds great.

Although Shake also uses optical flow no? I was just watching an online tutorial (really speeding through it actually) and the guy mentioned optical flow instead of blending. Unless he had Furnace installed. I have to watch it properly.

[Matt P]

Shake 4.1 has some nodes which use Optical Flow - for example if you retime something and set it to 'adaptive' rather than 'nearest' or 'blend'. Though it's not as good as Kronos, which is indeed a brilliant time remapper.

I've found in the past that AE gives me faster previews than Shake, which is handy when doing time remapping that needs to be dynamic and tweaked a lot. Though at the end of the day, both apps can do it pretty well and the Furnace plugins are available for both. It may just come down to which interface you'd rather use.

-Matt

[hevonen]

AE timewarp uses Kronos, I don't know if the interface has been dumbed down though.

edit: gboom was faster

[Cobaltmax]

So AE uses Kronos? Since which version? I don't have the newest CS4 yet. But it is good to know.
It's just that AE is timeline based and second can it work and render at the same quality as Shake?

[Matt P]

So AE uses Kronos? Since which version? I don't have the newest CS4 yet. But it is good to know.
It's just that AE is timeline based and second can it work and render at the same quality as Shake?

As far as I'm aware, AE can work in 32-Bit Float the same as Shake can. Problems with the Float workflow only really appear once you start using effects which don't work with floating point. If you're re-timing then you won't experience this problem.

I even think AE is a little more friendly with formats, given it's more recently updated state AE will bring in a few types of files Shake doesn't like - Though this problem doesn't exist if you're converting to, and working with frame sequences.

I didn't know AE's Timewarp *was* Kronos. I seem to learn something new every day. In any case - it's pretty sweet. Having the timeline interface makes it easier to understand and work with than Shake, in my opinion.

-Matt

[Gentle Fury]

As far as I'm aware, AE can work in 32-Bit Float the same as Shake can. Problems with the Float workflow only really appear once you start using effects which don't work with floating point. If you're re-timing then you won't experience this problem.

I even think AE is a little more friendly with formats, given it's more recently updated state AE will bring in a few types of files Shake doesn't like - Though this problem doesn't exist if you're converting to, and working with frame sequences.

I didn't know AE's Timewarp *was* Kronos. I seem to learn something new every day. In any case - it's pretty sweet. Having the timeline interface makes it easier to understand and work with than Shake, in my opinion.

-Matt

is CS4 full float? That was always the problem with AE you were restricted to half float.

[Matt P]

I thought that since 7, AE could handle float properly. Give this a lookie for more details.

-Matt