What frame rate should I shoot at ?

earthling

earthling

Active member
Okay, I'm not there yet, but how can we stop thinking of what we will be doing once we have a Red One in our hands? I definitly hope to be shooting some stuff which will end up in cinemas, on 35mm most probably; however, being realistic, most of what I shoot ends up on TV screens. So, if I shoot something that might end up bieng projected, in festivals for example, should I shoot at 25 or 24 fps? I am from PAL land of course, so I won't be shooting st 30 fps.

Cheers,
Damien
 
If you're in PAL-land you have two good choices - 25fps or 24fps. 25fps is easiest as then you can put it straight on TV, or slow to 24fps for cinema. Hopefully digital cinema in the future won't mind what frame rate you shoot on. 25p also converts to 60i for NTSC very well, or to 24p for NTSC.

Graeme
 
polispol said:
24p or 23,98p?
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Hi,

If posting and shooting in PAL countries you can ignore 23.98 and the complications that brings!

If you shoot at 24 fps you will have to take more care of light 'Flicker'

Stephen
 
Hi Stephen!

What's your opinion on this one for PAL* countries shooting (50% theatrical release, 50% PAL TV & DVD)? 24p or 25p (or fps)?

:dankk2: in advance!

Cheers :beer:
Emanuel

* Apart those kind of concerns above-mentioned like the flickering hassle etc and the NTSC countries exploitation (for a PAL product).
 
Hi Emanuel,

I would go with 25 FPS, FWIW many cinemas in Europe also run at 25 FPS!
Makes life much easier, as many of the people working on the project, and their equipment are used to working at 25 FPS (50i I know) for television!

The only downside is a 4% increase in film costs, but I think you will be using a Red One!

Stephen

Emanuel said:
Hi Stephen!

What's your opinion on this one for PAL* countries shooting (50% theatrical release, 50% PAL TV & DVD)? 24p or 25p (or fps)?

:dankk2: in advance!

Cheers :beer:
Emanuel

* Apart those kind of concerns above-mentioned like the flickering hassle etc and the NTSC countries exploitation (for a PAL product).
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Thank you Stephen for your insight. I just would like to hear your useful opinion. Helpful as usual.

E. :)
 
23.976 & 29.976 is a NTSC thing ..
digital projectors can do all speeds 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30 ...

why are we letting NTSC control our digital cinema speed?
can't we leave it behind with SD ??
 
I wish they had ditched with HD. To keep the 1000/1001 factor in there is just plain silly and beyond belief. Indeed, with HD they should have ditched 30 and 60 too, and made HD a 24, 25 and 50 world.
 
I've done two movies in HD with international release on 35mm (the last one: www.salvadorfilm.com), and we shoot 24p instead of 23,98.
25 it's not an option, and 23,98 have some issues... but some post houses still asks for 23,98
in other hand, with the new F900R, if you shoot 23,98p you can have ntsc output through the onboard converter, but if you shoot 24p, you don't have any SD output.
 
polispol said:
25 it's not an option,
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Hi,

I am fairly sure there are more low budget features shot in Europe at 25, than at any other speed. Probably because partial finance comes from TV & DVD pre sales. Getting a general release is more difficult!

With a budget of $1,500,000 + I think the argument for 24 is strong.

Stephen
 
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Graeme_Nattress said:
I wish they had ditched with HD. To keep the 1000/1001 factor in there is just plain silly and beyond belief. Indeed, with HD they should have ditched 30 and 60 too, and made HD a 24, 25 and 50 world.
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I must say I'm happy to hear a NTSC citizen say this. A friend of mine who occasionally works as a projectionist in theaters told me most cinemas are capable of projecting at 25fps and that as a matter of fact many films made at 24fps are screened at 25fps so as to gain a few minutes on projection time! I am quite shocked by this practice, and I would be outraged if this was done with my film. I recall a comment by Graeme saying how most theatres have such poor quality you're better off having your home cinema. I don't quite agree, there is something about taking the time to just watch a movie and doing nothing else and being in a large room experiencing something with others, if the screening is of quality, you are totally immersed in another world! There is something magical about that, the magic of cinema. Although I suppose, if one has the means of having a truely fantastic home cinema setup, you could experience that at home...

Anyhow, I guess, taking this into consideration, I'll probably be shooting everything 25fps!

Cheers,
Damien
 
earthling: that indeed is common practice in Europe. I don't think there's anyone who can hear / see the difference. Same things happens with DVD's, check the different runtimes of the same movie in NTSC & PAL.

I'm a big hometheater enthusiast. Nothing like having your own room with projector, good sound system and excellent company.

However, I just found out a new theater in my city has a digital projector installed (looks to be 2K) and the screening of The Departed there was excellent. Until I move to a bigger house there is no way I can match that experience.
 
Lowkus said:
For those of us in NTSC land... what should we do, 24 or 30fps?
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120 fps. Remove every 5th frame to get clean 24 or every 4th frame to get clean 30 fps. The good thing is that you only need to save 48fps. If the camera don't already support multiple frame rates in a single clip, there have been talk (some time ago, so that might have changed) that you could write your own plug-ins that could run on the camera. I'm sure the file format support it. Right? :) (for PAL+film the number unfortunately are 50fps saved from a 150fps stream, which the camera doesn't support -- damn Yankees :) )
 
Andersh you are crazy :-)
Shooting 120 fps would give you a 1/240 sec shutter and strobe-o-rama if you go to 24 fps by dropping frames.
 
boothba said:
I suspected that NTSC was another planet. :) Greetings Earthling!
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Thanks, at least we know about them, cause sometimes it feels like they're not aware we exist. Did you know that if FCP is setup for PAL, and you set, in the preferences, your still image duration at 1 second, when you import a still image it has a 20 frame duration? I interpret this as FCP has the first step right, 1 second = 25 frames but then there's a second step where someone set FCP to 25 frames = 0.83 seconds which gets translated back into 0.8 seconds in PAL = 20 frames!

What I really wanted to say is not so much that I'm glad "A" NTSC citizen said there shouldn't be 30 fps in HD anymore, but that I am absolutely stoked the Graeme Nattress, one of the key persons developing my dream/future camera would say that. Now I'm sure that the kind of little bug described above is so much more unlikely. Thanks again, and again, and again Graeme (not so much for saying that, but for what you're doing), along with all the Red team.

And while I'm at it, Graeme do you think the gain in render times when converting from 2K RGB to DVCproHD verses 4K raw to DVCproHD would be considerable ? Also, quality wise, would there be a big difference between and downsize verses a crop, from 2K ?

Cheers,
Damien

Cheers,
Damien
 
Render times are up in the air until our software platform gets more developed.

However, the annoying-as-hell issue with HD frame rates is that you can't unilaterally decide or change them. However, I'll certainly be lobbying for dropping of daft fractional rates, and a world adoption of PAL (25p and 50p) and 24fps based frame rates. Issue there is how do you get other countries to adapt their power to 50hz to stop it flickering along with the image?

(Remember I was born PAL, but now live NTSC)

Graeme
 
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