What are the disadvantages and advantages…

[Mark Raudonis]

[daniel De Avila] “shooting at 50fps or 60fps as supposed to 25fps or 30fps?
“
Dan,

I think you’re confusing “fields” and frames. 60FPS is SLO MO. 60fields is normal speed. I’d suggest that you do some googling to understand the underlying concepts in play here.

Mark

[Michael Sacci]

[Mark Raudonis] “60FPS is SLO MO”
Except if you are shooting 720p, then 60p is the norm.

What camera are you using, what favor of video are you shooting 1080i, 1080p 720p the list goes on

[Daniel De avila]

Hello

Thanks for the replies.

Mark:
I should have clarified that I was talking about progressive fames only and not interlaced or fields type stuff.

Yes 60fps (frames per second) can be slow motion if used as an over-crank and then playback in a time line that will interpret it as such. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

My understanding is that there are HD progressive formats that do record at 50 and 60 fps (progressive) and that their are editing platforms (like FCP) that do have 50fps (progressive) presets to edit that material as 50 or 60 fps progressive.

For example: one of the shooting formats for the Sony EX1 is HQ 720/50p. That’s recording at 1280 x 720 at 50fps progressive, as supposed to 1080 50i, which translates to 1920 x 1080 25fps interlaced. Or the US variant, 1080 60i, which I think is 1920 x 1080 and 29.97fps. FCP has a present to match this footage. Weather or not your third party output card does some sort of pull down for monitor playback is another matter. (hmmm…or is it)

So by the looks of things you can record and edit in 50 or 60 fps progressive and not necessarily use that for slow motion / over crank.

Michael:
“Except if you are shooting 720p, then 60p is the norm.”

That’s kind of what I was getting at. Why shoot at 60p? (That’s 60fps progressive) why not just shoot at 30fps? (or 29.97fps progressive). The Sony EX1 allows you these two options.

Or another example is some DVCPRO HP footage I’m currently looking at. Its 720p at 50fps. Why 50fps over 25fps?

I can understand the desire to shoot at 24fps, specifically if you are going to transfer to film.

So what does shooting at 60fps progressive (59.94fps) give you that 30fps progressive (or 29.97fps) doesn’t?

Is it a style choice? A broadcast TV/production choice?

Hope that makes sense. And I hope I’m not driving any of you nuts with this….

Sincerely
Daniel

[Alan Okey]

[Daniel De Avila] “So what does shooting at 60fps progressive (59.94fps) give you that 30fps progressive (or 29.97fps) doesn’t? “

60p is double the temporal resolution of 30p. When downconverted to interlaced SD, 60p becomes 60i, but 30p remains 30p as each field will represent the same moment in time. Visually speaking, 720p60 motion looks like NTSC 60i motion, and 720p30/720p24 look like SD 30p and 24p, respectively..

720p60 is useful for sports and other applications in which finer temporal resolution is desirable. Generally speaking, the higher the temporal resolution (frame rate), the more “live” material will appear. 24p video was created to emulate the film look because 29.97i has a “live” look that many directors have found unsuitable for dramatic material.

Some directors like James Cameron are intent on challenging the universal acceptance of the 24p standard for film/digital cinema projection because they feel that the temporal resolution of 24 frames per second is too limiting and imposes too strict of a workflow to avoid annoying motion artifacts when moving the camera. It will be interesting to see if their efforts are met with any acceptance.

Personally, I dislike the look of anything with a temporal resolution greater than 30p for dramatic material – it just looks too “live” to my eye. 24p and even 30p provide just enough of a detached, romanticized quality of motion to psychologically separate the viewer from the material, in my opinion.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Daniel De Avila] “That’s kind of what I was getting at. Why shoot at 60p? (That’s 60fps progressive) why not just shoot at 30fps? (or 29.97fps progressive). The Sony EX1 allows you these two options. “

60p gives you the absolute sharpest images and most information, much more so than 30p.

60p gives you absolutely smooth motion vs. the strobing / camera judder effect that can be caused by 30p.

60p gives you perfectly smooth conversion to standard definition as the 60 progressive frames per second turn into 60 fields interlaced per second.

We never shoot anything 30p. It’s 24 or 60 for us with the majority of all our work being 720/60.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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[Alex Elkins]

[Alan Okey] “Personally, I dislike the look of anything with a temporal resolution greater than 30p for dramatic material – it just looks too “live” to my eye. 24p and even 30p provide just enough of a detached, romanticized quality of motion to psychologically separate the viewer from the material, in my opinion.”

This sums it up perfectly. It depends on the content but particularly for anyone trying to achieve the ‘film look’, 60p will be a big disappointment. It’s just too crisp and really doesn’t look nice for much other than sports – just my opinion. Others may feel the total opposite, and I can see Walter’s point of 60p translating to 60i nicely makes sense. I’m just not into the aesthetics of it.

All the best,
Alex

[Daniel De avila]

Hello

Thanks everyone. That was interesting stuff.

I guess I have some more test shots to do…

All the best

Daniel

[Fernando Honesko]

Guys,

I’ve done some reading and there are some usefull information in this thread.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this whole discussion has cleared some doubts about broadcast final delivering? Right?

My case is a bit different. I shoot concerts for some bands and my final delivery is internet. I work with a HDcamcorder, quite cheap but it does the job. It’s a Canon Vixia HV30.
Actually, I can set it to 3 different HD framerates.

HDV Standard (which is what I have been using – 29.97 fps)
HDV30 (30 fps)
HDV24 (24fps)

Which should be the best for my final delivery plataform? (internet)
Reminding that , although I shoot live content, a detached sense could add atmospheare to the videos.

Thanks!

[Alan Okey]

[Fernando Honesko] “My case is a bit different. I shoot concerts for some bands and my final delivery is internet. I work with a HDcamcorder, quite cheap but it does the job. It’s a Canon Vixia HV30.
Actually, I can set it to 3 different HD framerates.

HDV Standard (which is what I have been using – 29.97 fps)
HDV30 (30 fps)
HDV24 (24fps)

Which should be the best for my final delivery plataform? (internet) “

In your particular case, I would go with HDV30. I assume that the HDV24 mode is shooting 24p over 29.97i, which means that the camera adds 3:2 pulldown when recording. That means your source footage will contain 2 “split” interlaced frames followed by 3 progressive frames, in a repeating cadence. Since you’re delivering to the web, you don’t want any kind of interlacing in your footage. If you shoot in 24p mode on your camera, in order to get a true 24p end result (not 24p over 29.97i with 3:2 pulldown) you would have to use Cinema Tools to remove the 3:2 pulldown on every clip you capture. This is very time consuming, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

It’s probably easiest for you to shoot 30p, edit in 30p and then compress your videos for the web as 30p – no deinterlacing or pulldown removal required.