[Herb Sevush]

Leo –

“it is not “more common to shoot and edit at 59.94;” at least not on this planet. Overwhelmingly, the standard frame rate for HD is 24 fps, and for very good reasons.”

I meant it was more common to shoot at 59.94 then at 60 – I apologize if that was unclear. No one knows more than I how uncommon it is to shoot Varicams at anything other than 24.

“I think resolution plays only a very weak role on a filmic look. Does a film originated on 65/70 MM look more filmic than one shot on 35 MM? Do we sit in the theater trying to enjoy a movie but regretting that it’s only shot on 35 MM? I think not.”

I know for certain that 35 is more “filmic” than 16 or 8mm. I also know that if you get a chance to see a 70mm print of a 65mm negative every other way of viewing it will look mundane. To go even furher I know that I prefer 8×10 negatives to instamatics and that the most beautiful motion pictures I have ever seen were shot on 3 strip technicolor. I think that all other things being even, and they never are, more information is always more impressive than less information.

“Yes, 60 fps Showscan was unsuccessful; people didn’t like the look.”

At the Showscan screening I was at the film got a standing ovation. People liked the look, it was the accountants who didn’t. What hurt it was the fact that the only feature ever attempted in the format, “Brainstorm”, was a fiasco; in part because the leading lady died during filming (Natalie Wood) and in part becasue Trumball was an awful Director – witness “Silent Running.” The picture was hurriedly finished without even trying to distribute it in Showscan. Showscan was used in special event theateres for many years. And it dazzled the audiance.

“IMax is terribly expensive, but successful. It’s a totally closed system of cameras and projectors, so they could have chosen any frame rate; they chose 24 fps.”

I would suggest that it’s succes occured despite its frame rate, not because of it. As I said before there is nothing magical or mystical about 24 FPS. It was merely the slowest and worst possible frame rate that could reproduce acceptable audio in 1927. If they could have gotten decent audio at 18fps they would never have changed rates and my guess is that you would now be extolling the virtues of 18 fps.

Look, everyone is entitled to their opinion to like whatever they like – hey i have a brother who like the Mets – go figure. But I find it hard to believe that you cannot see that the reason you like 24fps is because, for historical and economic reasons alone, that is what you grew up watching. I like the Lone Ranger, but I can’t reasonably tell my son that those shows were better then the crap that’s on now. It isn’t, it’s just what I grew up with. Paladin on the other hand was better.

“I assume, Herb, that you’re a working professional and you’re clients are satisfied with your work at 60 fps; that’s fine, but I don’t think it’s at all good advice to give to emerging shooters.”

Yeah I guess I’m a working professional – although that can also be said of your basic south bronx street walker. But in case you didn’t read it all the way through this is how I ended my original post – “Film history aside, the biggest knock on 60fps is that it’s too good and too expensive, so if you

[Herb Sevush]

Dale –

I agree with you about where we are now, I just hate it when people defend this system as though it were logical.

As for your questions – 720P60 looks fantastic when down-converted to NTSC. It’s hard to explain, and perhaps the letter boxing helps, but it just looks better than anything I’ve seen shot in NTSC, on any camera. Red’s don’t seem to bloom as much and fine details don’t seem to hum. I haven’t tested to see how much it improves on NTSC interlace artifacts but to the eye it just looks great.

I’m the Director and Editor, not the DP, so I don’t know what they did about the shutter. I know we shot tests in the studio at 24, 30 and 60 just before we started the series. The camermen were new to the Varicam’s and they didn’t like the strobing through the viewfinders at 24 and 30, but that was a minor consideration. Bascially I didn’t like the look at 24. The final choice was between 30 and 60 and I went with 60 because of the better audio editing and also becasue this was my first HD project and I wanted to go with the most information I can record. I can always get rid of info later in a controlled way.

If I had it to do all over again I would shoot at 30. The better aduio editing isn’t worth the costs and headaches of working in a format that no else is working in.

If you want to see what 720P60 looks like the series I’m working on is called “Daisy Cooks!” and will be on most PBS stations starting in September in a standard Def release, with the HD relase starting next January.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Dale –

As I have posted elsewhere in this thread I think this point of view about frame rates is absurd.

There are many bad artifacts in film that nobdy likes – the stuttering look when panning hard verticals such as fence posts, the bizzare look of turning wheels that strobe and stutter, film titles that hold steady and display the film weave inherent to projection. I don’t think audiances liked films beacuse of this – I think they liked films and put up with this because there was no alternative.

You are confusing the symptoms for the disease.

3:2 puuldown isn’t a “film look” – flm doesn’t have a 3:2 pulldown. Film transfered to video has a 3:2 pulldown. What people repsond too is the quality that was put into most motion pictures and that is sorely lacking in most video productions.

That quality takes time and time is money and no one wants to spend it so instead we hear all this giberish about the film look. “Film Look” video treatments to make standard def video look just like film. What made film look like film was better quality and higher resolution – and there is no “treatment” that can make something with less information look like something with more information. You can’t get there from here.

But yes you can add all the negative aspects of film – scratches, grain noise, 3:2 pulldown stuttering – and make your video look even shittier – this of course is a lot easier than creating a quality product to start with.

Finally, if your argument about human perception associating fiction and imaginattion with poor quality were true – you sited “motion, grain, unrealistic colours, and even black & white” – then why stop at 24 fps – why not 18 or 16, and why not 8mm film while we’re at it. And why only with the visual – I guess the imagination should also be associated with crappy sound – I can see a vast array of imaginatively starved people throwing out their CD’s and longing for the days of wax cylindrical recordings.

I don’t know what you’re smoking but everywhere I look people want large screen TV’s with HD and surround sound speakers. You can’t get anyone to watch an old B&W movie – Bogart and Cagney may never have existed as far as modern culture is concerned.

I do agree with this statement you made about the desire to “give the viewer a different world to enjoy, unlike their own, everyday one.” But that’s the province of art, not crappy craftsmanship. As Hitchcock said “movies are life with the boring parts taken out.” That’s what viewers respond to. The beauty, not the artifacts.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

While it is true that standard def NTSC is 29.97, Hi Def has all sorts of frame rate standards – 24P, 25P, 30P, 30i, 59.94, 60i – and on and on.

So you can shoot and playback Varicam footage at 60 frames (actually it is more common to shoot and edit at 59.94 which is simply double the NTSC standard). This works great when down converting because every HD progressive frame becomes an interlaced field – NTSC having 2 fields per frame.

Final Cut Pro allows you to edit at 60 (or 59.94) quite easily with a couple of minor bugs. They apparently didn’t want to be bothered creating a Drop Frame time code system where you would have to drop 4 frames instead of the NTSC 2 frames on every minute except the 10th, so you’re timeline has to be in Non-Drop. Also some of the frame counters can handle counting up to 59 frames but others flip out when you enter a time code like 1:12:15:44 and change it to 1:12:16:14. By and large these problems can be worked around and currently I am working on 26 half-hour shows shot with multiple Varicams at 720P60.

The reasons for shooting at 60 frames are twofold:

The obvious one if image quality. In the unending quality comparisons between the SONY 1280i approach and Panasonic’s 720P it is only at 60 fps that you can make the mathematical argument that the Varicam actually contains more information per second than HD Cam. Information can be measured in “pixels per second”. By shooting twice as many frames – or in comparison with 24P – 2.5 times as many frames per second 720P60 makes up in temporal information what it lacks in size of the individual frame.

The other reason for working at 60fps is less well known but can have more important practical results – audio editing. If you are going to do all your audio editing inside FCP editing at 60 Frames gives you twice the accuracy of standard frame rate editing. Your audio edits can get down to 1/60 of a second instead of 1/30 of a second. That difference can be huge when cutting dialogue, especially If you are cutting documentary style audio. Again, if you are going to work on a project that is going to have it’s audio sweetened and mixed in Pro Tools – where they can get down to much finer points that that – this isn’t as big a deal. But for the rest of us it really can make a difference.

The negatives of working at 60 are increased storage, no Drop Frame timelines, need for faster hard drives to keep up with larger data streams and less “real time” effects for the same reason, and the occasional glitches in final cut pro because of the uniqueness of frames ending in 30 and above.

As for the argument that shooting at 60 is “only good for sports” and doesn’t give you a “film look” – that is total B**lshit.

The “film look”, as opposed to the

[Herb Sevush]

VM –

Thank you for your response, but I have the manual. And believe me, there is more to say about the 1200A that has been left out of the manual than is in it.

Herb Sevush

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Steve –

What you must first understand is that Final Cut does not ever output timecode. Not with the “black and code” setting, not with “edit-to-tape”, not with nothing.

The Final Cut work-around for this very serious limitation, is to use the timecode generator of the record deck to set the timecode. This is what “edit-to-tape” does. Once you have a tape with some initial time code it allows you to set an in-point on the record machine and then, IF your tape deck is set to “record run” time code, the deck’s own internal time code generator will lay down continuous time code on the tape. (As an aside this means that it’s totally irrelevant what time code your timeline is set to start at – the only thing that matters is the in-point on the deck.)

AS far as the “black and code” setting – you need to set the deck to use it’s internal time code generator and set the starting code from the deck’s menu. All Final Cut is doing is supplying the black. Many decks actually can supply their own black, allowing you to bypass Final Cut entirely for pre-blacking the tape. I don’t know the PVW2800 but you should check the menu for this option.

All in all this is a totally non proffessional way to do things, but at the moment it’s all that Final Cut allows.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Mike –

As long as you have multiple decks and don’t care about generation loss – not a bad work around. Better yet would be if Apple cna be pressured by it’s user base to fix the Capture window so it can handle this as well as PPRO for instance – let alone Avid or any serious NLE.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Kevin –

First let me say that I bought your Motion book and find it very well written and helpful.

However, your response to Harley’s post was just the opposite. As a working editor, not a producer, I often have no control of many technical aspects of a job. The mark of a well designed NLE is that it will HELP you, not Hinder you, as you try to work with whatever mess you’ve been given.

While your advice is quite appropriate for the Producer of the show, giving it in response to Harley’s post is a little like telling him to close the barn after the horse has gone.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Harley –

As others have mentioned your problem has nothing to do with TOD time code.

If FCP’s capture window get’s confused by time code breaks, which it always does, and gives you that “aborted” message and you either click OK or hit “escape” you are going to loose all the clips from that capture sequence. As you have noted, they are still on your drives, but you have to manually import them.

This is both a Bug and a Flaw, but the FCP faithful will almost never call it such. Basically the FCP capture window is terrible with time code breaks – by far the worst handling of ANY NLE I’ve ever worked with. But don’t look for it to be fixed, it’s not a sexy enough change for the marketing department.

It’s just one of many infuriating bugs in the system whose work-arounds have become so well known they are now considered part of the “normal” flow of the program.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Dasiy Cooks!, a new PBS cooking show, was shot on Varicam and on-lined in FCP.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions