How to Get Smooth Slow Motion on Premiere Pro

Hey,

Will Dano here! Today I am going to go into how to get smooth slow motion on premiere pro. I Personally use Premiere Pro but you can use any other video editing software because all the concepts applied are pretty much the same. Some of the settings might just be named differently.

If you prefer you can watch the full video here:

 

Step #1: Shoot at a higher frame rate

Preferably higher than the frame rate of the sequence settings you are working on. Usually, the sweet spot for slow motion is 60 fps(frame rate per second) but there are obviously other options above or below that for example 120fps or 48 fps. But for the purposes of this blog I am going to assume that you filmed at 60 fps.

Step #2: Create a lower fps timeline

  • Create a timeline in your video editing software with a frame rate that is lower than 60 fps. Usually that would be 24 or 30 fps.

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  • Right-click on the footage, go to modify, and then interpret footage. 

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  • Click on “Assume this Frame rate” and set it to the same frame rate as your sequence setting you are using. In my case, that’s 24 fps so I change it to 24 fps.

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The reason we do this is to make the clip play itself as if it was 24 fps. So we are essentially stretching the 60 fps originally in the video to accommodate for our 24 fps timeline which by default will just slow down the footage. If we don’t do this step and just drag and drop the clip into the timeline then we are just going to get normal speed. But if you interpret the footage to the same frame rate as the timeline then you are going to get the smoothest slow motion possible from your footage.

A lot can be said about working with slow-motion footage, but this is just the gist of how you can get it to look really smooth in your editing software.

I hope it helps, let me know your thoughts and questions and I’ll see you in the next one!!

Make sure to check out our blogs page to learn more tips & tricks. You can also see how to get smooth slow motion on premiere pro full video here – https://youtu.be/vZryZTMtTeU