Speed ramps — that ubiquitous editorial trick where a shot transitions between slow- and fast-motion — are a pain, no matter how you create them. When you do them the easy way in your NLE (by dicing up the clip), they’re still difficult — and the transitions are clunky and abrupt. When you admit defeat and jump over to After Effects to do speed ramps the “right” way — with time-remap curves — you wind up in a tangled mess of confusing keyframes.
What really makes this frustrating is that, if you've ever worked with a slow-motion clip on an iPhone, you know how easy it should be to ramp in and out of smooth, beautiful slow motion.
My goal with Prolost Speedramp was to make something as easy to use as the iPhone, and that could produce the highest-quality professional results. To do that, I created an After Effects preset that lets you use Layer Markers to specify where the changes in speed occur. You set the speed at each marker, and the duration of the smooth transition from one speed to the next.
Prolost Speedramp lets you set up to five different speeds for your clip. When you turn on After Effects's Pixel Motion frame blending, you get high-quality motion-vector interpolation. The results are the best-looking speed ramps you've ever created, with the least amount of fuss. You can even Speedramp to a freeze frame, or into reverse motion!
Prolost Speedramp is available now for $19 on the Prolost Store.