30p in final cut pro: is it worth it?

[Tom Brooks]

Shane,
I view the analog component from a Kona LHe on a SD Sony PVM monitor and sometimes on a Panasonic plasma. At the moment I don’t have the right interfaces to view on both at the same time. I’m not saying there’s any stutter or strange motion. Motion smoothness is just what you would expect–it’s regular, consistent, and not as smooth as 60i or 60P.

What I have been suspicious of is a softening of the edges of moving subjects.

It’s the theory of it that I’ve been interested in pointing out and getting reactions on. Everyone but me seems to think that when you play 30P in NTSC you are looking at purely progressive frames. That just isn’t true. You’re looking at interlaced fields at all times and the two fields are not always recorded at the same point in time.

It’s like watching 24P DVD on a non-progressive display, only the split frames are happening at a faster rate and you can’t see them on pause. With 30P it’s a constant, very rapid (59.94Hz) alternating of whole frames and split frames. Another way to look at 60i is that it is ALL split frames. 30P is only HALF split frames.

I made a mistake in one of my earlier posts too. I said that the two fields in the 30P split frames were recorded a sixtieth of a second apart. Actually, they’re recorded a 30th apart.

Try an experiment. Make a simple moving white box in 30P and one in 60i. Play them to an interlaced monitor. Which one looks sharper? To me, the 60i looks sharper. When played on the plasma, the 30P looks sharper.

Granted, the visual effect of all this is way more important than the theory. I’ve been asking the same question as the original post for some time–is 30P a good thing? For me, the jury is out. That said, I’ve shot 30P before and I’ll give it another look based on your support. Thanks a bunch for your interest and I hope I haven’t wasted your time. I’m afraid my Cow addiction is getting the better of me!
-Tom

[Sean Oneil]

Two things.

1. On the consumer end, it makes NO difference. 60i and 30p source footage will look identical. They’re both 30 frames per second and they’re interchangeable with one another. If a consumer has a progressive-scan display, all 60i signals get converted to 30p anyways. And vice-versa (if there was such thing as a 30p DVD).

2. “Film Look” means 24 frames per second (23.98). That’s it. That’s what it means. Shooting 30p is no more “cinematic” than shooting 60i. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just not cinematic.

In digital post, the only advantage 30p has over 60i is that it’s easier to work with on computers. That’s about it. Sure, maybe certain cameras behave differently when set to “30p mode”. Maybe the CCD captures more light. But those are just quirks unique to a particular camera – not something you use to definitively compare two formats. Not when we’re talking about the overall big picture.

Sean

[Tom Wolsky]

1. Not sure what you mean by this. Because it’s shot on a consumer camera it makes no difference? Standard DV consumer cameras shoot 60i. The material is interlaced. Consumer HD cameras shoot 60i with interlaced material. The interlacing is apparent. It is not present in a 30p recording.

2. What most people in North America perceive as film look is the flicker of pulldown. 30p is more filmic in that it shows no interlacing artifacting, is less apparently sharp than 60i because it displays more motion blur, closer to the motion blur of 24p, but without its juddering on camera movement.

The only reason we’re stuck on 24fps is that was the slowest frame rate, expended the least amount of film, that could still produce at the time decent optical audio recordings. It’s a quite arbitrary number. If they could have done it at 16fps they would have, and we’d be calling 16fps the film look. Lord knows what the pulldown for that would be. 30fps was chosen deliberately because it’s half the AC frequency rate, which provided an accurate source of synchronization. That we’re still living with horror of 29.97 fifty years after its necessity is pretty pathetic too.

There are other advantages to 30p besides making it easier to work with computers. The primary one is to get rid of combing, which is a horrible artifact of old technology. The purpose of interlaced frames was to reduce the bandwidth in the data stream, sending a smaller bandwidth signal at any one moment in time. That’s no longer necessary, so why do it. 30p produces a better looking signal, without as many deficiencies as 24fps. 30p also combines better with material that’s shot in 60p, which in turn is much greater advantages for material with fast motion and produces much better motion effects, slomo for sports and such, that interlacing interferes with.

All the best,

Tom

Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy” DVDs

[Rafael Amador]

[Tom Wolsky] “The only reason we’re stuck on 24fps is that was the slowest frame rate, expended the least amount of film, that could still produce at the time decent optical audio recordings. It’s a quite arbitrary number.”
This is the truth and in fact is a very low number of images per second. When projecting a film, each photogram is shown twice (by mean of a mechanic courtain) to avoid flickering. (BTW I learnt this in the school and I’ve never read nothing about. Not any comment in any forum or any other piece of techtnicall information).
To look for a Cine-look is nice (I love it) but a bit of a fashion. The video is reaching the color richness of the film and apport many other advantages. No the Cine is the one that has to evolve.
Rafael

[Herb Sevush]

“The cinema is truth 24 frames per second” – JL Goddard

And your post was “truth” at 30P. I’ve had way too many arguments about the perceived beauty of the “film look”, especially on the Varicam forum – personally i prefer 60P when I can afford the bandwidth – although it can be a bit of a nuisance in post.

Anyhow, great post.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Tom Wolsky]

The frame doubling on projection is quite right, and does remove the flicker, but i doesn’t do anything for camera movements like pans that still appear to step.

All the best,

Tom

Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy” DVDs

[Tom Wolsky]

It’s a line from one of his movies, “Le Petit Soldat” I think. Does that mean Godard said it?

All the best,

Tom

Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy” DVDs

[Herb Sevush]

Tom –

The full quote is “Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” It is Godard’s line, as are two other famous quotes:

“I like a film to have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”

and

“All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.”

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Stephan Hill]

first off, thanks for the wonderful responses in this thread!

I tried this suggestion, record in 30p, edit in 60i with field order to none. all of my footage in the sequence now has to been rendered? is this correct? should I create a special FCP template for capturing?

I also simply shot in 30p and captured and edited the video in using FCP the DV-NTSC template. no rendering needed but I see a little bit of “fluttering” in the FCP viewer window but not in my video monitor. is that what was being discussed earlier?

Stephan

[Tom Brooks]

Stephan,
You should be able to shoot in 30P and capture and edit in regular DV NTSC with no rendering. If you change the sequence setting to Field Dominance – None, I don’t think it changes that.

If you are still experimenting with what looks good to your taste, I have to say you should at least try 24P. 24PA is the best shooting mode for this if you are to end up with a 24P DVD. Your original post stated that your playback would be progressive DVD to a progressive monitor. Many of the guys suggesting 30P must have ignored that because you will not get a true progressive DVD with 30P.

Only a 24P workflow is directly aimed at a 24P DVD final product. Try the workflow with 24PA and see what you think.
-Tom