Shooting in 60fps vs 24fps

[John Young]

[Michael Saffan] “After all that I am wondering if it is worth shooting ANYTHING (except slow motion) in higher than 30fps or is there something I’m missing to get my short film online without sacrificing it’s quality to a very high degree? Did I miss something in post?”

Yes. You are. The reason your file is huge has much more to do with the codec, resolution, and bitrate than the frames per second.

Give us some more information so we can help you out. Exactly how are you exporting your file?

http://www.johnathanyoung.com

[Chris Tompkins]

All high quality videos and feature films for that matter are of HUGE sizes. This is normal. “Useless” is a bit dramatic.

You have to learn the art of compression. You can achieve high quality video optimized for web playback. Many, many people do this almost daily.
You frame rate choice has nothing to do with it.

Try exporting you finished piece using “current Settings” (Using FCP?)
Make it self contained if you want a digital master to keep forever.

Take that file into your compression program to create your deliverable.

This can be SD-DVD, Bluray (HD DVD is dead btw) or web video.

Try using the youtube guide-lines for HD video to get you started:

1280×720
30p
.h264
.mov
3000 bitrate as a starting point, I don’t know how long your vid is…

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC

[Owen Wexler]

Your footage is probably ok, following the compression guidelines above is a pretty good start.

Although personally, I find shooting 60FPS to be impractical unless you are shooting sports, or you intend to slow your footage down later. If you are shooting a movie, episodic TV, any kind of narrative, most commercials or music videos, etc., then shoot 24FPS, if you are shooting a non-episodic TV show (the news, reality TV, soap operas etc.) shoot 30FPS… those framerates will help give you the “look” that people expect to see for those respective types of video.

Cinematographer – Editor – Motion Graphics Artist – Colorist

https://www.owenbwexler.com

[Michael Saffan]

Thanks for all the advice and perhaps I was being a bit dramatic by saying it was useless. I tried a lot of different compressions before posting, though I will try the compression tips Chris has made exactly today….

I will post again on this thread if I continue to run in to problems.

Thanks again

[Alex Campbell]

I use Premiere and the program allows you to have a 24 FPS timeline, which keeps the file size down while using whatever footage you want. Unlike FCP, you do not have to conform your footage before bringing it in. I like to shoot 60P and edit in a 30P timeline, allowing a smooth 50% slow down of my footage.

[John Young]

[Alex Campbell] “I use Premiere and the program allows you to have a 24 FPS timeline, which keeps the file size down while using whatever footage you want.”

Let’s say it again, frames per second is NOT a contributor to large file sizes. For almost all situations you want to have a timeline that matches the attributes of your source footage. If you need to change attributes, do it on the export. (Slo-motion effects are one of those odd situations where your timeline will not have the same attributes as your source footage)

John

http://www.johnathanyoung.com