Mixing 1080 and 720 footage

[Scott Wolfson]

HI Dave,

I’m shooting with 2 canon 5d mark 11’s (I don’t believe they shoot at 720 24p? only 720 60p) and 1 Canon 60D (which does do 720 24p and a Sony XDCAM EX1r which I don’t believe does 720 24p. One suggestion I got was to shoot 1080 24p for the ceremony and toasts and shoot the rest of the b-roll all 720 60p. And to edit in a 1080 24p timeline. What do you think? Given that most of my cameras don’t shoot 720 24p? Again my final distribution will be blu ray and dvd. If I went the route of mixing 1080 24p and 720 60p on a 1080 24p timeline would my 720 shots look acceptable?

Thanks!

Scott

[Scott Wolfson]

Hi Dave,

Thanks very much for getting back with me on this! For clarification…the Canon 5D mark 11 does not do 720p at all. The 60D however does do 720 60p. I want to make the editing process simple! I can shoot all cameras at 1080 24p and then won’t have any problem…much like I do now shooting at 1080 30p. But if I want to slo mo some b-roll 24p is worse than 30p correct? Should I stay away from shooting with the 60d b-roll at 60p? How bad will slo mo at 24p look?

Thanks!

Scott

[William Carr]

Hi Scott,

I shoot 60p all the time for slo-mo shots in 24p projects, and as long as you bring in those clips the right way to your 24p sequence they look smooth and wonderful. And of course they will run slower than if at 30.

[Scott Wolfson]

Hi William,

Are you mixing 720 60p or 1080 60p in your 1080 24p timeline? Looking at Dave’s response it seems like a very cumbersome process to conform the 60p footage and upscale 720 to 1080?! I was planning on shooting b-roll with my 5D but if I go the 60p route I’ll have to use my second 60d b/c my second shooter is using a 60d too. But for the dance footage I only have two 60d and my third shooter can use either a 5D that doesn’t have 60p or my ex1r which I need to check.

Maybe I’m better off just shooting everything at 1080 24p and not doing any slo mo?!

[Sascha Engel]

One reason for down stepping to 720p I missed in all the feedback: If you only go for WEB and SD DVD, 720p timeline has a huge advantage: YOu can use your 1080p footage, and do Zooms, Pans and Tilts and even Vertigo Zooms without losing quality. It’s a nice extra gift.

Sascha

[Matt Campbell]

• Using Compressor, convert the frame rates of the NON-slo-mo footage to 23.976

Dave, I’ve been curious about this myself. I completely understand everything being discussed here. Conforming 60p to 24p for clean sloMo with Cinema Tools yada yada yada. I’ve done this lots. But not with clips only shot at 60p and and I need to edit in 24p for normal speed.

Regarding clips for 24p timebase at normal speed from 60p, can you just drop in them in FCP? And will it play correctly at 24p? Or as you say with Compressor, converting to 24p. This will play the 60p in a 24p timebase and not effect the speed, right? AKA keeping it at 100% live action, no sloMo.

I ask, because you see all these videos now, where things are shot using 1 take with GoPro’s, and the speed ramp effects applied. And now with the GP 3 shooting 120fps @ 720p. Rather than shooting 2 takes and splicing together, they look like 1 clean take. So if their shooting at 720p60 or 720p120 for just about everything and that then gives them the freedom to conform any clip to sloMo, would you just duplicate your source and conform the copy to 24p for clean sloMo and use the original 60p to edit with in a 24p timeline. Then at the edit point, cut in the conformed duplicate copy for a clean sloMo transition?

Does FCP simply play the 60fps or 120fps video at the 24p timebase? You see this all the time, but I can’t seem to figure out the method of converting properly. See link: from 1:16 to 1:20, the 2 snowboarders is what I’m referring to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3PDXmYoF5U

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

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