Tutorial: Warping Time in Avid Liquid Timewarp, Part One

Event DV by Joe Figura & Paul Ekert Want to achieve the cool slow-motion and double-speed effects seen in feature films without losing quality or pinpoint control of your edit, or substantially increasing your editing time? Here's how to create quick, on-the-fly speed changes in Avid Liquid, using Liquid's Timewarp toolset. Many times in an editor's career, speeding up or slowing down video footage is a necessity, whether to add grandeur to a certain shot with elegant, carefully placed slo-mo, or just to add some sped-up levity to a production, Keystone Kops-style. On the Planet Liquid forums (www.planetliquid.us), one of the most commonly asked questions concerns Avid Liquid's Timewarp editors and how to achieve the various styles of slow-motion or double-speed effects so commonly seen in the movies and on TV. Avid Liquid 7.1 has a very powerful and professional toolset for doing this called Timewarp, a function which, as the name suggests, warps time. This feature comes in various ready-to-use forms such as 4-point editing and Fit-to-Fill—which can be used to create quick "on the fly" speed changes—as well as the full Linear and Dynamic Timewarp editors, which are designed for advanced speed editing. This first article will look at 4-point editing, Fit-to-Fill, and the Linear Timewarp. Next month we will deal with the more advanced Dynamic Timewarp editor. read more...