Tag Archives: slow mo guys

Slow Motion Videos You Have to See!

Slow Motion camera releases are slow at this time of year but that doesn’t mean we have to be deprived of cool stuff to see. We have gathered a few slow motion videos that warrant your time and attention and surely push the art of capturing snapshots of time forward.

Even when these high speed cameras that in most cases are worth a lot more than the typical luxury midsize car, many creators are getting their hands on them and being creative in ways that could not be imagined in an earlier timeframe. From natural phenomena to technological feats, the footage has that mesmerizing quality that only this type of footage can instill on the viewer.  → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Slow Motion News August 2019

Slow Motion News

We have a few developments to share in the high speed camera world. Things have been somewhat quiet in the phone front as the high speed component feature was relegated to a footnote in 2019 after a great 2017 and 2018 main spec treatment. We may get much better phone slow motion as memory size and speed increases while maintaining the same price range thanks to the fast pace of electronics development.

Sony just announced their latest RX VII camera which means that an RX10 and maybe a new RX VA version will show up before the year is over.  We were not happy with the feature being stagnant in resolution and speed on the RX series for 3 years in a row now. Sure AF and overall speed have increased when it comes to other parts of the camera but the high frame rates remain frozen in 2016 specs.  In the meantime, we have a few new things to show you.

Slow Motion News August 2019:

iX Cameras releases i-SPEED 5 SERIES of Full HD professional slow motion cameras.

iX cameras has now released the brochure and spec info for a new Full HD camera line composed of the (508, 510 & 513)  that are capable of recording up to 6,382 fps in Full HD and up to 1 million fps on the lowest resolution.

508 Specs:

  • 3,980 fps @ 1920×1080
  • 1,000,000 fps Max Frame Rate
  • 18/36/72/96/144 GB RAM Memory
  • Mono ISO 8,500D (sat) / 68,000D (sat)
  • Color ISO 3,060D (sat) / 24,480D (sat)
  • In the $30k USD Range

510 Specs:

  • 4,980 fps @ 1920×1080
  • 1,000,000 fps Max Frame Rate
  • 18/36/72/96/144 GB RAM Memory
  • Mono ISO 8,500D (sat) / 68,000D (sat)
  • Color ISO 3,060D (sat) / 24,480D (sat)
  • In the $50k USD Range

513 Specs:

  • 6,382 fps @ 1920×1080
  • 1,000,000 fps Max Frame Rate
  • 18/36/72/96/144 GB RAM Memory
  • Mono ISO 8,500D (sat) / 68,000D (sat)
  • Color ISO 3,060D (sat) / 24,480D (sat)
  • In the $100k USD Range

“State-Of-The-Art 1080p HD Sensor
The heart of the i-SPEED 5 Series is a custom 12-bit CMOS light sensitive image sensor capable of recording 3,980 fps at full HD resolution, with a maximum speed of 500,000fps*. With the optional Fast mode shutter option*, the 5-series can achieve 250ns exposure times. Other features include an internal SSD of up to 8TB, an external SSD of up to 2TB, high-speed image download, memory segmentation, and camera control via the unique touch-screen CDUe control device or via the powerful i-SPEED Software Suite 2.0 that controls the i-SPEED 7 cameras.”

More information about these and other iX Cameras at the official company website: https://www.ix-cameras.com/best_value_high-speed_camera_slow_motion.php

Chronos 1.4c Camera Software V0.3.2 Development improves Frame Rates and adds new features:

We installed the Chronos V0.3.2 RC1 Beta software and on initial testing find the software to be mostly stable and the new features make it a better camera all-around.

In our testing, we found that noise and column gain was reduced considerably after a 15min warm-up.  Also, the saving to SDHC cards is faster in RAW mode, we were getting 4.8fps instead of 3.7fps in 0.3.1 this makes a very noticeable difference in saving speed which seemed too restrictive in RAW.

We did encounter some problems when using HDMI external monitors and viewfinders when using the peaking function. These are already being patched for the next release so we recommend you wait for v0.3.2 RC2 if that feature is needed while monitoring.

The camera now has the ability to format and see how much space is left on SD and USB/SATA media which is a very welcome feature set for on the field users. We would love the ability to load saved clips for playback at a later date as software evolves including post save editing and clip erase if possible.

Another welcome feature is now the ability to shoot even faster frame rates for all resolutions. 720p has gained 17 frames from 1502fps to 1519fps which is our main use resolution.  However, the camera is now able to shoot up to 40,420fps at 320*96 pixels which used to be 38,565 fps for a 1,855fps gain with no quality degradation. It is not often that you get free speed in any camera, this time it is lossless and operates just as before.

For more information on the Chronos 1.4 camera visit the Krontech.ca and or info on the patch at the development forum thread here: http://forum.krontech.ca/index.php?topic=488.0

Notable Changes:
– Automatic ADC calibration during black calibration, which should reduce column banding across a wider temperature range.
– Add a storage tab to the util menu to view, eject and format the attached storage devices.
– Speed boost at most resolutions, with a top speed of 1069fps at 1280×1024, and 40420fps at 320×96.
– Configurable automated power-on and off depending on the AC adaptor status.
– Option to disable the ring buffer when in segmented recording mode.

Minutae:
– Factory black calibration is now user accessible from the Factory tab of the util window.
– The software update button has been moved to the storage tab of the util window.
– Shipping mode to disable power-on by battery until an AC adaptor is attached.
– Add a watchdog to reboot the camera in case of a power-on boot failure.
– Display descriptive error strings instead of number on failure.

Fixed Bugs:
– Gated burst record mode may lock up after several trigger edges.
– Gated burst record mode unreliable when trigger debounce is enabled
– Memory leak in the M3 video coprocessors which could lead to a crash after lots of H.264 encoding.
– Ignore video which was recorded during zero-time black calibration (which happens after changing resolution).
– Stuttering issue on the playback window on new production LCD modules.
– Fixed deadlock in camera when restoring user settings from external media.

Fixed since V0.3.2-beta-6:
– Changes to focus aid or exposure aid (zebra stripes) would have no effect until resolution is changed.
– Changes to exposure may be overwritten during black calibration.
– Bad image quality at 336×120 resolution
– Util window, storage tab – bottom of text cut off if device has multiple partitions
– Factory black cal (black cal all resolutions) would get overridden by old user black cal, if a user had done their own black cal, even before.

Known Issues:
– On the save file settings window, the bitrate as listed above the resolution may be lower than the actual bitrate, if Saved File Framerate is lower than 60fps

Updating Your Camera
====================
– Extract the `.zip` file into the root directory of a FAT32 formatted USB drive.
– Turn on your camera and insert the USB drive into the USB/eSATA combo port, not the one labeled ‘OTG’.
– From the main window, tap the `Util` button to open the utility window.
– As a precaution, tap the `Backup Calibration Data` button on the utility window before starting the update.
– When the backup is completed, a pop-up window will be displayed.
– Tap the `Done` button to close the pop-up window.
– From the utility window, tap the `Apply Software Update` button to begin the software update.
– A warning message will be displayed, tap the `Yes` button to confirm and begin the update.
– If a pop-up that says ‘No software update found’ is displayed, even when a USB stick containing the update in the correct location is connected, reboot the camera and try again.
– During the update, the screen will go blank and an `Applying Update` message will be displayed.
– After approximately 60 seconds, the update will be complete and the camera will restart.

Xiaomi Black Shark 2 Pro Phone Announced with 1920fps at 720p!

As we have seen from Chinese phones this year, the 1920fps spec for slow motion at 720p is included in several spec sheets like the Nubia Red Magic 3 but we found out that it is not only a fake spec but the actual video quality is pretty low.  The phone uses a 480fps capture at 720p and then creates interpolation of 4x  which is 480 x 4 =1920fps to create the final video. In some phones, it is just playing back 4x slower but in others there is interpolation. WHatever the came may-be, you are better off by avoiding this feature in your buying decision.  The quality is low and compression high, then the stuttering of faking the 1920fps kicks in and you end up with a subpar experience.

Here is a video sample of what appears to be a real clip from the Blackshark 2 Pro. You can easily notice the interpolation.

Blackshark 2 Pro – 1920 FPS Slow Motion Video by Shail 360:

Now for some fun, The Slow Mo Guys have played with a huge amount of Gallium metal which becomes liquid at under 30 degrees C and looks pretty close to mercury without the toxicity. They do remind us that Gallium corrodes Aluminum on contact as it amalgamates with it, Aluminum which is what most cameras and lens cases are made of are pretty vulnerable,  so if you try this with your slow motion camera, be sure to use a barrier. -HSC

 

Pouring a Liquid Mirror in Slow Motion – 4K by The Slow Mo Guys: → Continue Reading Full Post ←

Slow Motion Fractions From the Web June 2019

Slow Motion Fractions

To better encapsulate the slow motion happenings of the web we are starting a new post type called Fraction/s as in “Fractions of a Second” that shows anything and everything related to slow motion that has happened recently.  This is based on the fact that high speed imaging hardware releases have been stabilizing and slowing down compared to previous years.  This way we can better cover anything small or large related to this craft.

Thanks to our readers who have submitted a lot of this information which sometimes escapes us. There is a lot of interest in slow motion related information but it is easy to get buried in the mountain of daily information. We hope that we cover many of these occurrences so you get to see them.

Slow Motion Fractions June 2019:

New One Plus 7 Pro Video Sample:

OnePlus 7 Pro Slow motion 480 fps by TechBeLike:

We can clearly see the same resolution loss as in the OnePlus 6 but with slightly better compression which is ok but still far from ideal. If OnePlus could clean this image and make it 1080p many slow motion fans would find it near incredible as it records 480fps for 3.75 seconds. This is already good enough to analyze your golf swing for example but hardly broadcast ready.

How to activate slow motion camera mode on Galaxy A30 and Galaxy A40:

This Article by Sammobile shows you how to activate a slow motion mode on these devices after a software upgrade.

https://www.sammobile.com/2019/06/10/galaxy-a30-galaxy-a40-activate-slow-motion-camera-mode

Top 15 Slow Motion Video and Camera Apps for Android 2019:

This article by jihosoft lists 15 apps and methods to get slow motion on your android devices. Note that if your hardware does not support it you will not get real slow motion frames.

Top 15 Slow Motion Video and Camera Apps for Android 2019

 

All 40 early bird units of the Chronos 2.1 HD camera have been sold out. Congratulations to krontech.ca on their early success.  If you need a 2.1 HD 1080p 1000fps camera from them you can still get one of the regular cameras from the next 200 unit batch after the early bird units have been delivered.  Go to their website for more info: krontech.ca

10 Sick Whips in Slow Motion from the Crankworx Innsbruck 2019 Whip-Off:

“Riders were absolutely sending it at this year’s Crankworx Innsbruck Whip-Off presented by Spank . Check out 10 of the sickest whips (and tricks) in slow motion.”

Help Someone by Buying his Chronos Slow Motion Camera:

This post at the Chronos Camera forum offers a near brand new camera for $2500 USD due to the terrible news of the owner’s wife having cancer diagnosed.  If you need a camera you could help someone while getting cool gear for a discounted price.

Post here: http://forum.krontech.ca/index.php?topic=472.0

More cool videos from The Slow Mo Guys:

Sony Venice gets more frame rate options at 6k resolution!

Cine Gear 2019: Sony VENICE Firmware Updates with HFR and more

 

Optimized slow motion for the DJI OSMO Action:

New Osmo Action firmware released by DJI – v01.03.00.10

 

Xiaomi Mi 9T to have 960fps slow motion mode:

Xiaomi Mi 9T is all set to debut in the Asian market on June 20

 

Creating Beautiful Slow Motion in Adobe Premiere Pro

 

There you have it,  thanks for reading our post. Be sure to send anything you deem worthy our way related to slow-mo stuff – HSC

Slow Motion News May 25th 2019!

Slow Motion News May 25th 2019

This year there have been a few surprises that got our attention in the high frame rate market. Some are firmware related, some are entirely new cameras and others are simply rumors that have yet to appear. We found a few things on the web that may shed some light on these happenings. But First…

Note Advisory: It is kind of disheartening that many Youtube channels are posting fake slow motion videos from cameras & Phones that they have no access to in order to receive clicks and advertising. We encourage you to report these videos on the Youtube interface as inaccurate or misleading. That way we may get less garbage and more real samples in the future. Thank you!

Slow Motion News May 25th 2019:

  1. The Chronos 2.1 -HD camera is about to sell out of their Early Bird lot of 50 cameras with only 3 remaining (LINK HERE). The buyers of these cameras will receive the first batch when it launches later this year.  If you are interested you can get a 1000fps 1080p RAW camera with a 4/3″ sensor for a starting price of $5000USD which is the first reaching that low price bracket that we know of.   You can find more information about this camera and their other products here: https://www.krontech.ca/

We also asked David Kronstein the mind behind Krontech a few questions submitted by our readers about the new camera:
1) Since the Prototype 2.1-HD is running on the 4k Luxima sensor, is it possible to order a camera based on it? We assume pricing for bulk order and Gpps might be limiting factors, but it certainly is an interesting idea for also the intermediate resolutions like 2.5k and 3k frame rates.
D.K.:The limiting factor right now is the CPU’s video system, which doesn’t support resolutions over 1920×1080. We’re not sure if this limit can be overcome right now. 4k is something we’ll look into after the 2.1-HD is launched and stable.

2) If a m4/3 mount is planned as an accessory, does the reduced lens flange distance cause a problem for m4/3 lenses?
An adapter is in the works, this will maintain the proper flange focal distance so MFT lenses or other lenses with an MFT adapter will focus properly.

3) Since the Chronos 2.1 shares a board, is there a possibility of an upgrade path on the same 1.4 platform? The LCD at least was hinted in the krontech forum as a possibility.
LCD upgrades are definitely possible, but converting an old Chronos 1.4 to a Chronos 2.1-HD would require replacement of the case, sensor board and mainboard, there’s not much left of the original camera, so this is not cost effective. 

4) Is power consumption increased in the new 2.1 compared to the 1.4?  I.e. battery life.
Power consumption is increased, the battery life goes from about 1.5 hours on the 1.4 to about 1 hour on the 2.1

5) Is black the only case color available or silver is still around? 
Just black, unless there is a significant demand for silver. When we had silver offered last, so few people bought it that it wasn’t economically justifiable to keep the silver model as it doubled the number of SKUs we have to build and stock.

Meet Chronos 2.1-HD, the Low-Cost High-Speed 1,000fps Camera at NAB by No Film School:

Chronos 2.1-HD Demo Reel #1 by Chronos Cameras: → Continue Reading Full Post ←

NVIDIA Slow Motion Interpolation With AI Deep Learning Tech!

NVIDIA Slow Motion Interpolation

NVIDIA has been hard at work on the problem posed by high frame rate interpolation of video data shot on lower fps.  We have had this tech since the late 1990s with the advent of Twixtor and refined over the decades in systems like Twixtor Pro and Adobe’s Optical Flow in After Effects. You are still not getting real temporal detail data since the frames are created by extrapolating velocity and direction vectors plus pixel values between frames to get the result.

We explored this technique in our post on interpolation here and why it is no substitute from a real slow motion camera solution.  NVIDIA’s new method uses machine learning along with 11,000 videos to arrive at a more convincing result. Considering the relatively small sample size we can imagine a future where hundreds of thousands or millions of footage samples are used to generate near flawless interpolation. This technique takes some serious computation and data sets so as of now it is not really ready for the mass market but that could change with the cloud very soon.

NVIDIA Slow Motion Is New But Still flawed:

As you can see in the sample video below the artifacts produced by interpolation are very evident and more so when a fluid or fabric motion is introduced. The human eye can hide some of these in real time playback due to the persistence of vision effect and brain image processing but it is still quite apparent if you look at it witha  critical eye.

Transforming Standard Video Into Slow Motion with AI by NVIDIA:

There is no question this might be the best looking interpolation method we have seen to date but it is still not generating new information that has any scientific value. In other words, you can’t create something from nothing.  Nothing being the estimated values between two distant frames in time.  It sure is a marvel of computation and could really help in getting many more frames where detail is vast and artifacts suppressed but there is no real image captured from a live event.  If you record an explosion or fluid with this technique you will get what the computer estimates should be there and not what actually happened. Any rogue debris or physically distinct motion phenomena will not be there.  This technique is completely useless for education and scientific research.

That said the technique can make your slow-mo videos shot on your phone just a little more interesting even when shot at 30 or 60fps. As with any interpolation technique you can get better results the more frames you give the system.  If you shoot at 1000fps with a shutter of 1/4000 for example you will get the ability to interpolate down to 3k or 4k fps without much artifacting happening.  Then again if you shoot at 4000fps like what an edgertronic SC2+ can do you could interpolate down to 16,000fps without much in the way of artifacting.

We can certainly see a future in which you can upload your lower frame rate footage to the cloud and choose which frame rate you want it at within a reasonable range.   The cloud AI with the Machine Learning algorithms will get better with more and more videos being added to the collection. It is possible to do it with millions of samples instead of only 11,000 videos like the NVIDIA researchers were using in the lab.    The interpolation should get better and better as the computer learns from the added content.

It will also be possible to create footage from scratch by using video parts much like what Google did with Machine image learning to create new art.  What an interesting future it will be.

We are all for better interpolation but do not believe the hype when you are told you may never need a slow-motion camera again. In fact, temporal detail and nature recording cannot be interpolated to generate real information. So you better continue to use your slow motion camera and expect to get one more capable as technology improves and the price continues to lower. -HSC

Nvidia Slow Motion Interpolation Press Release on the Technology Below:

Link to the article here: https://news.developer.nvidia.com/transforming-standard-video-into-slow-motion-with-ai/?ncid=–43539

Transforming Standard Video Into Slow Motion with AI

June 18, 2018

Researchers from NVIDIA developed a deep learning-based system that can produce high-quality slow-motion videos from a 30-frame-per-second video, outperforming various state-of-the-art methods that aim to do the same.  The researchers will present their work at the annual Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) conference in Salt Lake City, Utah this week.

“There are many memorable moments in your life that you might want to record with a camera in slow-motion because they are hard to see clearly with your eyes: the first time a baby walks, a difficult skateboard trick, a dog catching a ball,” the researchers wrote in the research paper.  “While it is possible to take 240-frame-per-second videos with a cell phone, recording everything at high frame rates is impractical, as it requires large memories and is power-intensive for mobile devices,” the team explained.

With this new research, users can slow down their recordings after taking them.

Using NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs and cuDNN-accelerated PyTorch deep learning framework the team trained their system on over 11,000 videos of everyday and sports activities shot at 240 frames-per-second. Once trained, the convolutional neural network predicted the extra frames.

The team used a separate dataset to validate the accuracy of their system.

The result can make videos shot at a lower frame rate look more fluid and less blurry.

“Our method can generate multiple intermediate frames that are spatially and temporally coherent,” the researchers said. “Our multi-frame approach consistently outperforms state-of-the-art single frame methods.”

To help demonstrate the research, the team took a series of clips from The Slow Mo Guys, a popular slow-motion based science and technology entertainment YouTube series created by Gavin Free, starring himself and his friend Daniel Gruchy, and made their videos even slower.

The method can take everyday videos of life’s most precious moments and slow them down to look like your favorite cinematic slow-motion scenes, adding suspense, emphasis, and anticipation.

The researchers, which include Huaizu Jiang, Deqing Sun, Varun Jampani, Ming-Hsuan Yang, Erik Learned-Miller, and Jan Kautz, will present on Thursday, June 21 from 2:50 – 4:30 PM at CVPR.

Slow Motion Watch May 2018!

Slow Motion Watch May 2018

There have been some jaw-dropping slow-motion videos produced so far in  2018 and we want to showcase a small but excellent sample of them in Slow Motion Video Watch. Thank you to our readers for many of these submissions, we really appreciate your help in finding much of this footage as the sheer amount of quality material produced would make it much harder to select the good ones.

We have some incredible magnet work, weapons, military artillery, hockey, gymnastics and also the recent royal wedding in full display. It is also encouraging to see the widespread adoption of slow motion in phones as handsets like the Galaxy S9 & Xperia XZ2 start to inundate the video sites with user samples. It goes to show that good planning and a well-executed shot is possible even with time restrictions and limited hardware. Send us your samples or finds on our contact page!

Magnet Collision in Slow Motion like Iron Man Nanobot suit up by Magnetic Games:

Rainbow Paint on a Speaker – 12,500fps PHANTOM v2640 (LATEST MODEL) by The Slow Mo Guys: → Continue Reading Full Post ←