Optical Flow is a great tool that Adobe has implemented into their software. It allows you to take footage shot at a low frame-rate, and slow it down like it was shot at a high frame-rate. This feature has been in Premiere Pro for sometime now, but has only recently started to work really well. It’s a quick and simple thing to test out, so let’s get started. Today I am going to show you how to use Optical Flow in Adobe Premiere Pro.
How to Use Optical Flow in Adobe Premiere Pro CC
- Create a new sequence, or navigate to an existing sequence. Add or find the footage you want to slow down.
Method 1: Speed/Duration
- Right click on your footage and go down to Speed/Duration.
- Inside the menu, slow your footage down to something like 50%. You can maybe stretch it to 25%, but anything past this will most likely look bad.
- At the bottom of the menu where it says “Time Interpolation:”. Change this to “Optical Flow”.
- Your clip may need to be rendered out to view without being choppy. To do this hit the “enter” key on your keyboard, or go up to Clip->Render In to Out.
Method 2: Time Remapping
- Right click on the footage and go to Show Clip Keyframes->Time Remapping->Speed.
- Extend your clip down on the timeline to see the speed line.
- Create keyframes and and adjust the speed within the timeline. (More in-depth tutorial on that here)
- Right click on your footage, go down to Time Interpolation->Optical Flow.
- Your clip may need to be rendered out to view without being choppy. To do this hit the “enter” key on your keyboard, or go up to Clip->Render In to Out.
There you have it, a quick and easy way to add some optical flow to your clip. This effect works on about 80% of clips. If you have a really complex background, then the optical flow can start to add a bubbly effect. In this case, try slowing it down less to reduce the effect. The opposite is also true. If you have a really simple background, you can speed it up a lot. For example, on a green screen, you can bring a clip down to 5% or even 1% and have it look perfect!
If you have any questions, feel free to comment below, or on the video itself!
Other Premiere Pro Tutorials:
