Slow motion is a great way to add a simple yet powerful cinematic feel to a video project, but it can look terrible and choppy or artificial if it is not done correctly. So follow along as this guide shows you how to improve slow motion quality in DaVinci Resolve by adjusting frame interpolation settings. These changes, as well as a few others, will help you create smoother motion between frames, especially when working with speed ramps, heavily slowed clips and even clips that weren't recorded with optimal frame rates.
Takeaways:
- Learn how to make slow motion footage look better in DaVinci Resolve.
- Are there any ways to make slow motion footage better using DaVinci Resolve?
Table of Contents
How to Get Smooth Slow Motion in DaVinci Resolve
If your slow motion clips look jittery and stutter during movement, or show unnatural blending artifacts, its proably the way that frames are being generated during playback. This typically happens when the original footage does not contain enough frames per second to support the slowed playback speed you are trying to pull off. Which is why it's super important to record at the highest possible frame rate you can, so that when footage is slowed down in post, it has enough frames to make it look smooth.
While frame interpolation helps reduce this issue by creating additional in-between frames, the quality depends heavily on the chosen processing method and motion estimation settings, which we are going to walk through in a second.
To get better slow motion quality in DaVinci Resolve, go to your project settings:
- Project Settings > Master Settings > Frame Interpolation
Here you will see all the options that show how software handles frame generation when clips are slowed down or retimed. Below are a few recommended baseline settings you can use for most projects. These are a good balance between performance and quality. However, the final results will ultimately depend on your hardware and footage.
- Set this to Optical Flow.
Optical Flow analyses motion between frames and generates new intermediate frames. This is way smoother than frame duplication methods and is generally the best option for slow motion stuff.
- Choose one of the following depending on your software version: Speed Warp (Studio version) or Enhanced Better.
Note: There are a couple of AI options at the bottom of the page you can experiment with, but they may be pretty resource intense so be prepared for that. They won't appear in older versions of Resolve.
Speed Warp: typically provides the highest quality results, especially for complex motion such as fast camera movement, hair, water, or crowd scenes. But it is way more demanding on your system and may introduce artifacts in some cases.
Enhanced Better: is a more stable alternative. It offers improved quality over basic modes while maintaining better consistency across different types of footage.
- Set Motion Range to Medium.
This setting determines how far the algorithm searches for motion between frames. Medium is usually the most reliable option, giving you a balance between accuracy and processing stability. Low quite offten misses larger movements, while high can introduce unwanted warping in detailed scenes. It's fairly visible, so you will be able to see it quite easily and adjust accordingly.
Testing and Fine Tuning
There is no universal setting that works perfectly for every single clip. How well frame interpolation depends heavily on factors such as lighting, subject movement, shutter speed, and resolution. I've found that simple things like shimmer on the surface or water or shadow movements can quite often confuse the system, making it overcompensate for things that aren't actually a problem. At the end of the day, you are going to have to use a bit of common sense as always.
