To Drop on not?

[Pavel+]

Hello: I've been shooting the HMC40 at 720p-30fps. One setting that I enabled without really understanding why was to use drop frame.

Can someone tell me reasons to use drop frame or to not use it? I am under the impression that it works better with NTSC televisions but am not even sure of that or why it should be - and then of course the question of why there is the option of having no drop frame in there.

I hope someone can help enlighten me here - thanks! :)

[Barry_Green]

It doesn't change anything as far as the video is concerned. It's just the way the timecode is numbered, and drop frame is appropriate for NTSC/60Hz televisions. If you're not using timecode in your edits, it will make no difference to you at all.

[Pavel+]

Thanks Barry. I am going to be using a separately recorded audio track ( recorded into a XLR recorder ) and thought that it may make an impact in some way in syncing the audio to video. I haven't thought about whether the recorder uses timecode itself.

Complicated world, this video!

[Barry_Green]

Definitely use drop-frame on both of them then, if the audio recorder uses timecode. If it doesn't, you don't have a problem, and the choice of timecode won't matter at all if the audio recorder doesn't have timecode.