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Shooting 60p vs 30p
I’m working with a Producer/Director that shot a whole series (for Nat Geo) on the VariCam at 30p.
A field producer accidently shot 16 of those tapes at 60p. When you see the footage cut together you see a slight difference between the two. The 60p footage appears to have a “faster shutter look”.
This bugs the producer. Is there anything that can be done to get this 60p footage to look more like the 30p by removing frames?
and if so…
What is the process?
Thanks,
JD
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11 Replies
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No.
If the typical shutter angle of 180
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Thank you Leo, I will pass this info along.
The whole series was shot in Turkey. A field producer was hired to shoot additional footage in the US. He was the one who made the mistake of shooting in 60p even though he was told to shoot 30p.
JD
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Frame rate confusion can be commonplace for those inexperienced producers and or operators who just don’t understand the importance.
A simple thing to make them remember it for life is to play it fast and loose with their paychecks and change all the six’s to three’s and see if they care to complain about the difference.
Afterall if it did not matter to them for the camera why would a change in pay matter to them on the paycheck.
$6000 versus $3000 is that really a big difference afterall?
Tony Salgado
PS- Next time send the camera spec information directly to the DIT, camera operator or rental house and call just before they roll tape at the location to verify the camera has been set to the proper frame rate.
Don’t take anything for granted in multiframe rate HD camcorders or you will end up dealing with the headaches later.
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I forgot to add that you might try running the footage thru the UFC-1800 to cross convert to 29.97 PSF. You can do this all in real time. It will not be cheap to do this when you add up the hourly cost of the UFC-1800 and the two dvcproHD deck needed to make the dubs.
You can either dub across all the original camera tapes or make a selects reel and dub that across only.I have done this with 480 60P material. The temporal look is quite different than 60P and does take on a more filmic feel.
Tony Salgado
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One more thing: I’ve just completed two weeks of work for Discovery that was all shot at 60 fps except for some low-light work at 30 fps. Before we began I called my client and Discovery to make double sure they really wanted all their footage at 60 fps and the answer was yes.
I confess I’m still not sure why they think this is a good thing, but what I learned is not to assume someone is making an error when they require footage shot at 60 fps. To paraphrase what Tony mentions above, it’s all about communication. Even though we work in a communication business, sometimes I think there’s precious little of it going around!
Thomas Kaufman, DP
Washington, DC -
Suggests even further communications failure.
Could it be confusion about the 720p/60 recording and delivery format, which is not the same thing as the shooting frame rate? Are you sure they actually wanted the visual effect of a high shooting frame rate and the subsequent greatly reduced motion blur? That’s the important question to ask.
No matter what shooting frame rate you selected, such as 24 or 30, the mastered show would be 720p/60, unless, of course, you edited at a different time base, such as with 1080i at 29.97.
Unless the material was action oriented such as sports, other shooting frame rates are typically more engaging; for example, 24 fps with a 180
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Hi Leo,
Yes, I thought the same things, but the tech guy at Discovery knew about the difference between the constant record speed of the camera and frame rates, and still wanted 60 fps. Go figure. He said somethng about ease of conversion for international markets, but hasn’t 24 fps achieved that years ago?
What amazes me is that, after years of hard work, Panasonic (and Sony) have come up with a DV camera that looks like film — and the client doesn’t want it! They want nice-looking video!!
IMHO, it’s like buying a Ferrari to use for trips to the grocery store.
Thomas Kaufman, DP
Washington, DC -
I think the “tech” guy is wrong; very wrong.
Too bad.
Years ago I tried shooting film at 30 fps to transfer at 30. It seemed so logical that the faster rate would look better; one to one, frame for frame transfer to video, no pull-down, more pictures per second. To my dismay, the results were disappointing; it just looked like pretty video! In other words, it looked bad.
We’ve all talked about this; there is something very magic about shooting at 24 fps with a 180
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Leo,
I was at a SMPTE Digital screening once where the majority of engineers bitched and moaned about why all those “film people” like the 24 frame film look instead of 60P which many engineers preferred.
Arguments of better temporal resolution etc were the primary reason for preferring 60P over 24P.
The ironic thing is everytime I do a 24P shoot followed by a 60i shoot my brain is confused and it thinks something is wrong with the camera because of the shock in temporal feel and look.
24P is a beautiful thing when used correctly and in the hands of talented and creative individuals.
Tony Salgado
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Tony,
I raise my glass to you, sir!Engineers are great people; we couldn’t survive without them; however…
When you are shooting out of town do you ask the local engineer for recommendations on restaurants?
Do you wish you could dress as stylishly as an engineer?
If a hand-grenade exploded in an art museum, no engineers would be killed.Mostly kidding, of course, but there’s a reason engineers are hired to make the machines run and we’re hired to make magic.
Of course, there have been many times I wished I were as smart as my chief engineer!
Best regards,
Leo
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