Camcorders should be made that feature slow motion. Real slow motion... lots of frames per sec. Not just slow playback or whatever.
It should be cheap as possible so young people, who like to film lame action scenes, can afford them. Perhaps it would have limited video quality, no audio record, limited record time, etc.-- go77, Aug 22 2002 Re-Timer http://www.realviz.com/products/rt/Awesome, really. Take a look at some of the Quicktime clips showing before and after Re-Timer processing. [bristolz, Aug 23 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] Eagle Digital Camera http://www.motionan...bout_mac/eagle.htmlA 1.3Mpx (1280x1024) camera capable of about 450 fps (600 million px per sec). [bristolz, Aug 23 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] Photron http://www.photron.com/index.asp100,000 FPS! Unfortunately it's a $65,000 camera. [bristolz, Aug 23 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] You may have to pour a lot of light on the scene depending on the frame rate but that's to be expected I guess.
On a slight related tangent, there is software available that does a _very_ good job of generating slow motion from normal speed footage. In fact, the current video effect flavor of the day, suddenly shifting from normal to severe slow in the middle of a shot (and back to normal again), is often carried out with this software. I have seen demos of it where a credible motion scene has been derived from only two stills, one used as the start keyframe and the other as the stop/end keyframe. Made in France, it's called RealVIZ Re-Timer. About $1500 USD.
The code was originally written (so the legend goes) specifically for the visual effect known as "bullet time" in the movie "The Matrix," but I'm not so sure that's the truth.-- bristolz, Aug 23 2002 It's a reasonable development to ask for, especially with the current generation of digital camcorders. With a decent low-light CCD, and normal outdoor daytime levels of illumination, you should be able to get reasonable imaging.
Croissant.-- 8th of 7, Aug 23 2002 Although I like the idea, I wonder why you prefer doing this at the recording stage. If you do it at playback, you have the opportunity to try several in- and out-points to get the best effect; doing it at record-time ties you to what you recorded. If you muck up, it's "Take 47 guys, I hit the button too soon."-- angel, Aug 23 2002 I think there is merit to being able to capture at different frame rates but fixing it in post is very powerful stuff, too.-- bristolz, Aug 23 2002 Angel: //why you would prefer doing this at the recording stage// For true high-framerate slow motion effects, there is no other time in which you could gather this information. During playback of a normal 30FPS video, the slower you play it, the longer the gap between each frame. You need additional frames of video to fill those gaps in order to keep the motion fluid.
If you recorded a video that was 120 frames per second, you could play it at 1/4 speed for insane slow motion, however the image would appear as fluid as a true 30 frame per second video. You are still in fact displaying 30 frames per second, it just takes 4 times longer to display it.
Bristolz: Indeed, that is where the magic takes place. But, it's hard to make magic happen without the extra video frames you need to work from being captured in the first place.
8th: Is a CCD capable of reliable high-speed imaging? While they do function reliably under extreme low light situations (1/10000 sec shutter speed), there is still a certain amount of time required to create the field from the information gathered from the CCD..
You can do a fairly effective slow motion effect using any DV camcorder and Adobe Premier, or other high-end video software. DV video contains 30 frames per second (60 interlaced fields per second, each field is 1/60th second apart) and can be extrapolated to create a 30 field non-interlaced video that plays as almost as smooth as the original at half the speed. Sorry PAL users, you only get 25 frames per second... but standard theater movies are only 24 frames per second anyway..
I'll stay neutral until you can give me a half-baked explaination of how it works, because I'd buy one if they were truly baked (and inexpensive).-- Mr Burns, Aug 23 2002 [thcgenius] Ah, but that's where you are wrong. The entire point of motion-vector based temporal remapping applications is that they do not need the "extra frames" rather, they _manufacture_ the extra frames and, in the case of Re-Timer, do it so well that many DPs don't even bother shooting off-speed these days unless it's for a very special purpose.
All that aside, the core idea here, having having a amateur-level video camera capable of recording at high speed would be cool and if it recorded to disk/array rather than tape, probably wouldn't even be that exotic. In fact, maybe it is possible right now (link).-- bristolz, Aug 23 2002 Bristolz: I did not consider motion-vector based temporal remapping to be //cheap as possible//.. although you are correct. I was offering a low-budget solution using already existing technology.
Upon further thinking: What would happen if you just overclocked a DV camcorder? .......-- Mr Burns, Aug 27 2002 [thcgenius] That may be so but you didn't mention the "cheap" part in your anno. You just implied that not having the data to begin with precluded doing anything good. As I discovered, the equipment for high-speed capture is quite expensive so the re-timing in post approach is probably the cheapest way to do it today.
Maybe a cheap CCD can be overclocked (not sure that's the right term, though. I noticed that the high-speed camera makers specs include the number of pixels per second the imager is capable of). Photron (link) is getting those high-speed CCD imagers somewhere, perhaps they are available to a well-heeled hobbyist.
In a quest for pricing, I called a dealer and, wow, those cameras are expensive. Even the monochrome 640x480 cameras are $10K. The color 1024x1024 versions are $29K and up. They come with a PCI card and software for capture.-- bristolz, Aug 27 2002 It wasn't in my anno, it was part of the idea. Is there anything computers can't do nowadays? I'll just add the overclocked DV camera to the list of things that "WIBNI they could run above factory specs?"-- Mr Burns, Aug 27 2002 random, halfbakery