120 fps footage to 60 fps but keep the 120 fps look

[DerekWF]

So I have 120 fps Videogame footage, but I'd like to upload it to YouTube, and most people don't have 120 Hz monitors. So, I have to render at 60 fps. However, I want the footage to look like it's still 120 fps, to keep things smooth looking. I found a video that did this by somewhat combining the two frames into one, which is somewhat of a lossless compression technique. By pausing at any given point on the video mentioned, you could see a "ghost" of an extra frame that wasn't already in the video. It acts as motion blur, but it isn't as obvious since it wasn't "faked". Also, motion blur will blur UI components in the game, which doesn't look as it should. I suspect it was done in After Effects, though it could also be done in a video editor like Premiere Pro. Does anyone know how to replicate this?

[Rick Gerard]

Are you sure the footage is 120 fps? How was it captured? Do you have a good understanding of video formats, standards, visual perception and things like retinal retention? If you are seeing blended frames when you preview in Premiere Pro or After Effects then there is an extremely good chance that the video is not actually 120 fps.

If you actually have 120 fps footage and not a screen capture of a video game from a computer screen that has a refresh rate of 60 Hz and you drop it in a comp that is 60 fps you will just get every other frame, not a blend of two frames. It's also a fact that even if you take the 120 fps footage and drop it in a timeline that is only 30 fps or even 24, more than 90% of your audience could not tell it from 120 fps footage that was converted to 60 fps.

Even if somebody has a 120 Hz monitor, Vimeo and YouTube will not be sending 120 fps footage to that computer screen. Have you looked at their standards? Recommended upload encoding settings - YouTube Help

Unless you are doing some kind of compositing or visual effect that can't be done in an NLE, there is no reason to bring the footage into After Effects. Just use Premiere Pro. Make sure your footage is actually 120 fps by verifying the frame rate interpretation, creating a sequence from the footage and stepping through a few dozen frames one frame at a time. If you see repeated frames anywhere then the footage is NOT 120 fps. If it is actually 120 fps then create a new sequence that is 60 fps and drop the footage in there, make your edits, then render using the YouTube preset that matches the frame size. You can step through the footage in Premiere Pro one frame at a time to look for blended frames. If the frame rate is an even multiple you should never see a blended frame.

Unless your captured screen is a common video frame size, the sizes are in the YouTube recommendations, you are going to have to scale the footage to fit before you render or YouTube is going to do the scaling and encoding for you. That scaling will do a lot more to degrade the footage than rendering at half the actual frame rate of the footage.

If you send YouTube or any other streaming service something that is not a standard frame size or data rate, they will re-compress it with a sledgehammer and you will have no control over the final output. Even if you use the Presets and follow their recommendations perfectly, your video will be compressed again for delivery at different frame sizes and bit rates. Unfortunately checking your render in a media player on your system does not guarantee that you will see the same thing when you play it on YouTube.

[DerekWF]

The question I was asking is: "Could I possibly blend every frame with the next, therefore cutting the amount of fps to half". I want blended frames. The first thing I said was: "So I have 120 fps Videogame footage, but I'd like to upload it to YouTube". I'm aware of the fact that YouTube doesn't support 120 fps. That's why I'm here, asking this question I want to turn 120 fps footage into 60 fps footage that still looks like 120 fps. Videogames have much faster camera movement than, say, a movie, and so I guarantee that my audience will notice the smoothness of the blended 60 fps frames. You noted that if I make a composition with 60 fps, and drop in 120 fps, I won't see blended frames, but instead every other frame. ​That's what I'm trying to change​

[Martin_Ritter]

@sasha_graber just destroyed the discussion.

DerekWF To be fair, this should point you into the right direction: After Effects CS5 Tutorial - Frame Blending Slow down clips without losing fps - Frag videos - YouTu...

*Martin

[Nathan342959299e1k]

dumbass answer

[OussK]

you need frame blend when you want to slow down your footage below the normal speed, example you have 60 fps and you want to make it 120 fps, but in your case i don't think you need any kind of frame blending, because frame blending it's a virtual frame generated by AE and who's need virtual frame when you can achieve the 60 fps from your original footage.

[Rick Gerard]

If you want blended frames and you want to keep the speed of the playback real-time, drop you 120 FPS footage in a 24 fps comp or a 24 fps sequence in Premiere Pro, and you'll get blended frames. I don't think you'll like the result. You can also force blended frames in either PPro or After Effects right in the timeline. The time sampling algorithms produce identical results. There is some fairly good information in the User Guide that explains the differences in the frame sampling modes. The names are different but the math is basically the same. AE:

Premiere Pro:

I've got some screenshots for you. Let me explain my production planning. For these shots, I need some time changes for dramatic effect I need to slow down the footage so one second of real-time takes 2 seconds of screen-time and I need to match the motion blur of footage shot at 29.97 fps. The original footage was shot at 59.94 fps with a 359º shutter which gives me the same motion blur as a shot at 29.97 fps and a 180º shutter. Both of those shutter settings give you an effective shutter speed of almost exactly 1/60 of a second. Here is the original frame at 200% magnification playing in real-time with Frame Sampling turned on which causes me to see every other frame of the original footage because I'm sampling every other frame. I don't have the exact same shot with the bicycle in the same exact position shot at 29.97 but the motion blur would be identical.

This is what happens when you turn Frame Blending on:

Frame blending in After Effects produces the same result. If you are not doing anything else to the clip but blending the frames there is no need to move over to AE. Your work will go faster in Premiere Pro.

There is one other option: Optical Flow. This option actually tries to calculate the movement of the pixels between frames and generate the best estimation of where the pixels would be.

At first glance, you might think this is doing a better job of blending the frames but it is actually identical to the original frame. You should be able to figure out the math on that one. If there was an intermediate frame to calculate because the speed change was 123% or the sequence settings were 24 fps instead of an even multiple of the interpreted frame rate you would get a better result with Optical Flow turned on than you would with frame blending but that calculation is going to cause an increase in rendering time.

If you want the best looking footage and the best looking frame when playback is paused use Optical Flow when the frame interpretation is not evenly divisible by the sequence or comp frame rate, or if the frame rate of the sequence and the footage can be evenly divided like your 120 fps footage in a 60 fps comp you can just use Frame Sampling. If you are OK with every frame that has movement in the frame to look like it has some funky motion blur, then use Frame Blending.

I apologize for misunderstanding your original post. I didn't mean to offend. When you said you wanted the footage to look like it is 120 fps I incorrectly assumed that you wanted the best looking footage with the sharpest edges and the least amount of motion blur. I guess I missed the part where you wanted the ghosting because that simulates motion blur and 120 fps footage doesn't nave much motion blur.