Time Lapse Mystery

[MikeA]

I have looked up the documentation and viewed some YouTube teaching videos but have not seen the answer to my question. Maybe I am confusing stop motion with time lapse but I see nothing happen when I think I am using it. In brief, I put an HD (.mov) clip on the timeline and invoked speed/time lapse using the menu obtained by a right click on the clip. I see that by changing the speed I can make the motion faster or slower accordingly - and the clip duration changes appropriately. I see I can do the reverse. e.g., halving the duration = 200% change in speed. All this is fine. But it is the frame frequency that is bothering me. Changing it does nothing - the clip looks exactly the same regardless of how big the frame frequency is made. In this I am keeping the speed at 100%. I was under the assumption that dropping frames would lead to a stop motion effect, where a frame would remain unchanged for the denoted number of omitted frames, and then it would change, and this would go on to the end of the clip, leading to that jerky effect one sees. Is this not what is meant to happen? If we are not getting stop motion, what are we getting? Why does nothing happen? What is time lapse and how does it differ from stop motion?

[Ken Berry]

When you replay the video after applying the effect, have you also clicked the Project option directly below the preview screen, or is Clip still active? Project has to be active to see the effect of any edits applied. If Clip is enabled, you are just seeing the clip as it was originally before any edits were applied.

[lata]

Hi

If you change the Speed from 100% to 50% the duration of the clip will increase.
In fact double a 1 minute clip will now play for 2 minutes. Duplicate frames are added
The frame rate will remain the same so playback will be slower

If increasing from 100% to 200% will speed up playback by reducing the clip duration by half, frame will be deleted / removed


Are you saying that when you change the speed the “new Clip Duration “ does not change?

[BrianCee]

Are you saying that when you change the speed the “new Clip Duration “ does not change?

No Mike is not saying that - in fact he agrees that changing speed changes duration

What Mike - and I because I have played for hours - do not understand is why does changing "frame frequency" seem to do nothing at all - it doesn't speed up and it doesn't slow down

the inference from the little picture strip across the top of the speed/timelapse window is that if you set the frequency to 2 then two frames are removed in steps throughout the video - so why doesn't that change speed

I have experimented with numbered frames to see if I could observe frames being removed and I see nothing happening when I change the frame frequency


but the question Mike and I are asking is "What does changing frame frequency actually do ?"



.....

[lata]

Thanks Brian for explanation, I should have gone to "spec savers" now I see what you both mean Hmmm

[asik1]

This function is used for strobe effect, but.....
There is a bug in X8 and it isn't working.
It work well in X7 just make sure your frame rates.

I recommended in the past, getting few of these test clips
http://www.mediacollege.com/downloads/video/timecode/

[lata]

Thanks Asik

I have used X7 and indeed does seem to work.
When we set say 3 frames the program duplicates three frames then advances one, duplicates 3 advance one which would cause a strobe effect.

Now I see the effect using X7 clearly X8 is not working correctly?
Oh by the way I was using X7 64 bit program.

[MikeA]

Just upgraded to VS 9 and time lapse does not work with that either.

[lata]

Hi Mike
Apologies
Yep we did notice, I have just reported back to Corel, maybe the next Service Pack

[MikeA]

Wonderful! Thanks!

[fingerbreaker]

Like MikeA, I am also lamenting the broken strobe effect in x9 (and for the record have updated to 19.3.0.19 and confirmed it still does not work.) I am working on a project where I planned to use that feature liberally. I also have x7 and see that it works there but x9 has other features which I also need for this project (or want, anyway).

As a workaround, I was thinking I could complete the project in x9 (sans strobe), render and import into x7 and then apply the strobe effect where needed. If I were to do that, should I expect any loss in video quality provided the project settings and video formats are consistent from one render to the other?

Thanks,
FB

[lata]

Hi FB

You could open the file required for strobe in X7, render to a new video file using the same settings as would be used in X9. You would only be rendering the strobe clips, although you indicate having many clips to apply strobe to?

Then import / replace the clip in the X9 project.

I did try creating a project in X7 with Strobe Effect applied, then opening VSP in X9, but strobe effect does not show.

I have also looked through the X7 installation files trying to locate the Strobe file, then I could try copying that file to X9, hopefully to get it working, no luck so far.

[fingerbreaker]

I've been adulting for a few months and just now coming back to this. I just installed 9.5 and service pack 4 and it looks like the strobe effect is still not working, unfortunately. I also noted lata's experiment showing that strobed files from x7 don't strobe in x9 (though I haven't tried that myself on 9.4/sp4).

I was thinking that in my project, the strobe effect is only for a limited duration, probably 30 seconds or so. Would a valid workaround be to "manually" create a strobe effect by taking a snapshot every 10 frames (or whatever frequency), then creating a stop motion clip with each snapshot image repeated 10 times? Or is the output from a "take snapshot" not the same as the actual frame from the clip? Though fairly tedious, this should be a valid workaround and it doesn't seem like Corel is getting to this issue anytime soon. What do you think?

Thanks,
FB

[lata]

Hi FB

One option I did not mention was to add the Strobe effect using X7, render the clip to a new video file, Share - Same as first clip. Then use the new clip in X9

I guess I was concentrating on why the strobe effect did not work rather than a workround.

Manually creating the strobe is possible maybe using the freeze frame to add an image (5 frames duration) every second.

[fingerbreaker]

okay, thank you very much!