PAL framerates!

[Toke]

Yep, only place where you can still buy new displays w/o multistandard is US. And maybe Japan also.
Here in Europe, if you buy a small flat tv with $500 it will propably handle 25,30,50,60Hz.
(But of course it’s too expensive for $6k camera…)
In fact lcd panels have fixed refresh rate, so they usually have to do framerate conversion anyway and this is where PQ differences petween models come up.

I meant that “regional” framerates are becoming global. Receivers and displays will be able to handle all used framerates.(24,25,30,50,60).
Traditional local broadcasters will of course stick with their equipment, but already people watch content from satellites and from internet. Might be that after one decade all wireless information communication is ip-based. Then all data is just ip-packets and nobody has to obey ATSC standards.

I asked a while a go from some EBU people that do we really need 25/50-hdtv here in Europe. Half of the programs aired are from US or global events like sports anyway. So the work is about same if you have to do frame conversion to those or to those programs that you have in your PAL archive.
Last framerate conversion will always be then in consumer’s cheap lcd display and if we want to think about PQ it will always be better to feed that display with its native framerate and do the framerate conversion with very expensive high end equipment by the broadcasters.

What we are looking now, if somebody wants to distribute a movie globally is:
23.976p for ATSC broadcast
24.000p for DCI
25.000p for Eu DVD
50.000i for PAL
50.000i for EBU 1080
50.000p for EBU 720
50.000p for EBU 1080/mp4
59.940i for NTSC
59.940i for ATSC 1080
59.940p for ATSC 720
+IP-VoD
+dvd/hd-dvd/blu-ray/etc.

So something like a dozen of different formats are needed for distributing same one content globally.
Smaller productions will have to use quite a big cut of their budgets for format conversions and that’s one thing that protects the few big players in the market.
Isn’t this digital technology easy, cheap and fast to make things simplier or what ?-)

[Jeremy Garchow]

[toke lahti] “Isn’t this digital technology easy, cheap and fast to make things simplier or what ?-)”

Yeah, but the trick is you can only pick two.

[Barry Green]

[doka15] “One last question regarding native mode. If you shoot 12 FPS native it lays 12fps to the P2 cards. But, if you shoot 12 FPS to hard drive (normal mode) will it then do a 12 to 30 conversion like 24 to 30 with duplicated frames?”

Sort of, but not to 30 — it converts to 60. When shooting 720p, there are three timebases you can choose. You can shoot 720/24pN, 720/30pN, or 720/60p. When using the “N” modes it only records the active frames to the card — so, 12fps gets written to the tape at 12 frames per second. How it gets played back is the determining factor of whether you choose 24pN or 30pN — if you chose 24pN, that 12fps will get played back at a 24fps rate, resulting in 2:1 fast motion. If you chose 30pN, that 12fps will get played back at a 30fps rate, resulting in 2.5:1 fast motion.

However, when you choose “over 60” mode, that’s totally different. The two modes you can choose are “Native” or “Over 60”. “Native” stores active frames only. “Over 60” stores 60 frames no matter what frame rate you chose. So it will duplicate frames to pad out the sequence to 60. So in the case of 12fps, each frame will be written to the card (or firewire) five times. The result is a very different look — it almost looks like slow motion, instead of fast motion! The “Over 60” mode is compatible with the way the VariCam shoots and the way the AJ-HD1200A DVCPRO-HD tape deck records. If you want to stream from the camera straight to the 1200A tape deck, you’d use the “Over 60” method.

Choosing “Over 60” doesn’t lock you into that step-printing look; you can still extract the frames in post (using something like the Apple Frame Rate Converter utility) which will create a new file with only the active frames in it. So you can accomplish the exact same thing, just with an extra step.

But the ability to record in 24PN, 30PN, or “Over 60” means that for each variable frame rate, there are actually three different looks you can accomplish!

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[Karl Holt]

its a real shame that the framerate only goes up to 50p. I was hoping for higher for slo-mo shoots.

I wouldnt have thought it’d be so difficult to shoot 720p greater than 50fps, the CCD is capable of 60p, so i dont understand the restriction. Even if this scan was encoded to a longer 25p file structure to be complient with the codecs. I guess a lot has to do with time.

If the crystal cannot scan at 60p, cant it do 58 or 55, find it odd that 50 is the maximum on the PAL camera.

[Graeme Nattress]

I’m sure if they’d designed the camera from scratch to be both PAL and NTSC, it would do all these things easily, but they didn’t. I’m sure that camera would still be in the wooden block stage and not ready for release to the public.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Toke]

[Graeme Nattress] “I’m sure if they’d designed the camera from scratch to be both PAL and NTSC, it would do all these things easily, but they didn’t.”

And I think that that’s a really bad design mistake.
HD is a new thing to PAL countries and maybe designing hd-cameras for PAL countries is a bit too new thing for Panny also.
Eg. even the cheapest sony’s minidv cameras have been a long time pal/ntsc switchable considering their VTR part. You just need a service remote controller or proper cable and a little piece of software to make the change.
Camera heads of those cameras have had different resolutions etc., so cameras have not been identical as a whole.
But things have changed with HD. Now pal and ntsc countries have same resolution, so it’s just logical (and also more economical) to build just one model for the whole world.
And that’s exactly what sony has done with Z1 and hdcams.

And like Barry said, maybe we’ll get both same resolutions and framerates for the whole world with uhdtv or dci…

[Graeme Nattress] “I’m sure that camera would still be in the wooden block stage and not ready for release to the public.”

How does sony then succeed to manufacture global models within designed schedule?

I hope that we get hvx200a or hvx300 from Panny that can handle 24, 25, 50 & 60 fps within the same camera.

[Graeme Nattress]

I hope so too. There’s no need to treat the larger PAL market as second class citizens. It shows a lack of respect. PAL customers have always had higher prices or less features or both. And really there’s no need for it.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Toke]

Yep, and overall the problem is that the designers are not listening the users.
Designers have acted like they know better what the users needs are.
Same thing with sony and progressive picture.
When fx1 came out, everybody was screaming for 24p, but sony tried to explain how they don’t need it.
Now every hvx buyer in Europe is screaming for 24p and some Panny’s reps have tried to make excuses like “second oscillator would be too expensive”. That is really underestimaing our buyers intelligence. Some of us do know how cheap those oscillators are and how they are used in much cheaper cameras.

On the contrary, there’s lots of good design in the hvx: giving user options that user can choose by him/herself. Choosing from shutter speed/angle is good example of this.

[Graeme Nattress]

Spot on Toke! You should join us in discussing what should be in the Red camera. Your input will be valuable. They’re actually listening to people and planning in features from the start.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Toke]

Thanks for the invitation.
Where do you discuss about Red?