Larry Swing
New member
Those last two videos where shot in PAL land and show no issues with 50Hz light/electricity flicker. So what exactly are the bad news and how are they related to the PAL standard?
5DII DOES 1080P footage!!!!!!
- Thread starter hungrych
- Start date
Those last two videos where shot in PAL land and show no issues with 50Hz light/electricity flicker. So what exactly are the bad news and how are they related to the PAL standard?
Duhhhh.... obviously you wont notice anything. They jst edited in a 30p sequence and exported 30p. For web content frame rates doesn't matter. The computer is universal and plays everything. But, playing back on TV, broadcast, DVD, VTR etc... is where the 30p has problems in PAL land.
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there you are:
"Please be aware that the image quality of the final product can differ from what you see here - it might be even better."
(comment on stratenschulte site)
well isn't this clarifying! - :dankk2:very much! do tell me native speakers, does the idiom "beating around the bush" work in this situation?
considering the persisting 25p requests, just read between the lines and "image quality ...might be even better" easily translates into "frame rate.. might be even supplemented with 25p"..
works at least for me :thumbsup:
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Rubbersquare
Well-known member
i think he meant the lights and such causing flicker during filming, not the final output.
Larry Swing
New member
Yes.
And this is the only potential problem that I would expect besides editing, when you want to mix older 25p footage with the new 30p footage. I doubt that the majority of users will be affected by this.
Why so agressive?
Given that this is a HD camera, you anyway need HD compatible TV equipment, for which there ist the "HD Ready" standard in Europe. This is very well compatible with 30p output. It actually does not include 24p, and therefore 24p output is only compatible with the very newest TVs.
PAL is the old TV standard and has nothing to do with HD. Older, PAL-only TVs won't play any HD format, be it in 24p, 30p, or 50i.
A very fitting comment about this from dpreview (they are in PAL land, too) where they wonder about the D90s 24p:
Perhaps it's felt that the digital camera industry needs more legacy standards that don't necessarily work at their best with contemporary digital technologies - LCD and Plasma screens in this instance.
Mark Williams
Veteran
Both clips looked really, really good to me. Since I am not in Pal land lets put that issue to the side along with 24 p since I don't use it. The exposure on the samples looked locked and motion was handled very well. Just for discussion what if in the development of the 5D on the photography side of Canon had worked independant of the video side, without the constraints of the tape driven HDV codec and have actually produced a superior recorded image. If so, then thats what I am looking to buy as the lower bitrate of Canon's camcorder HDV codec does not please me. Since I already own Canon L glass this makes the deal sweeter. My guess is the 5D will be so popular that the 1st revision of it will include 24p and independant aperature and shutter speed control. Just my two cents.
I think 30p is the worse option. 30p can NOT be converted to 24p or 25p smoothly/professionally. However 24p or 25p can be converted to 30p, Most DVDs are 24p/25p in both NTSC and PAL systems. In fact, 25p PAL cameras are selling in NTSC countries, but you cannot find a 30p NTSC camera in Europe cause is useless.
Apart from that, the broadcasting standars in PAL countries are 25p related.
so what can you do with a 30p video?
- weedings and similar events: no way, in most cases you must deliver to customer a DVD 25p .
- video for TV, HD or converted to SD: no way, Well if you shoot the loch ness monster at 30p there should be no problem, but for normal use, any PAL TV will reject your 30p footage.
- film or short: no way, need 24p or 25p
- ...
so for €2600 you get a DSLR camera that records video suitable only for home videos, or for the web, and probably you will be banned from stadiums or concerts or similar events due to video recording.
24/25p or NIKON!!!
Apart from that, the broadcasting standars in PAL countries are 25p related.
so what can you do with a 30p video?
- weedings and similar events: no way, in most cases you must deliver to customer a DVD 25p .
- video for TV, HD or converted to SD: no way, Well if you shoot the loch ness monster at 30p there should be no problem, but for normal use, any PAL TV will reject your 30p footage.
- film or short: no way, need 24p or 25p
- ...
so for €2600 you get a DSLR camera that records video suitable only for home videos, or for the web, and probably you will be banned from stadiums or concerts or similar events due to video recording.
24/25p or NIKON!!!
Nathan Troutman
Active member
Huh?? The notion that 30P cannot be converted is silly. DVD players aren't designed to do this conversion but it is very easy as an editor to convert this footage. Just drop it into a 24P timeline and then play. It's RT with FCP on practically any Apple. Render when you're done - presto. If you want better control, take your raw 30P footage, put the clips into compressor (apple FCP), create a preset to convert to 24P, process.
I've been doing this for years now with 60i footage and this footage is even harder to deal with because it's 60i not 30P. The results are great - it just takes longer. Before 24P existed in the prosumer world this is how everyone created 24P.
Of course there aren't any 30P camcorders in PAL land because there are plenty of 25P camcorders - what's the point? If you want to take advantage of what this Canon has to offer you can easily work around the frame rate issue. It will cost you time and processing, but you make it sound like it's impossible. It's not nor is the processing time excessive either. Again it's real time for me on FCP with an old G5.
Rubbersquare
Well-known member
i've tried exporting the raw files from vincent laforet's "reverie" with FCP and compressor to get to 24fps. sometimes it looks okay, but whenever there's a big movement, like the guy walking across to the girl in front of the water, there are huges gaps in the movement. yes, it takes a long time, which i wouldn't mnd too much (that's what sleeptime is for), but i could never get a smooth movement like if it were natively 24fps. and all the searching i've done and other people's comments have suggested it's not clean.
Nathan Troutman
Active member
I can't get the files anymore to do my own test. But I've worked with 60i HDV footage several times and converted it to 24P just fine. What you describe are not the results I have seen and the HDV footage has to be deinterlaced as well as converted to 24P. There certainly weren't huge gaps in the movement.
And this doesn't pass the common sense test. With 30P you have MORE frames than you need. Why would the motion get choppier when you have more frames to start - especially when compressor can blend frames to create smoother motion rather than just dropping the unnecessary frames? I'm sure you saw what you saw from your tests, but clearly something was wrong with your settings in Compressor because I know my results. There are not huge gaps in my footage. I also know people have been doing this for awhile - when we didn't have cameras that shot 24P.
I find my 60i to 24P conversion takes a bit of time on my old dual 1.8 G5. That's because of the deinterlacing I've felt. I've never done an already progressive straight frame rate conversion. It can't be as slow as what I'm doing. And I'm on an old machine. A new Mac Pro will eat this up. So I don't by the extremely slow argument either on an 8 core machine only doing a frame-rate conversion with no deinterlacing. Just my 2 cents.
Rubbersquare
Well-known member
agree about the common sense test. i have no idea why it did what i did, but like you said, i must have messed up the settings (though i tried it a bunch of ways until i just gave up).
actually, i'd love to get the 5d, 30fps and all, for a number of reasons. but the 2 reasons not to are cost (a HUGE reason) and the possibility of canon intentionally disabling features in the DSLRs to not compete with their camcorders. i can get the d90 now for very little $, and when the technology gets there for manual control and variable frame rates, i'll move up to something nicer. hopefully a canon.
60i can be converted to 24p really much better than 30p, to do the conversion the 60i is taken as 60p (halving the resolution of course). The problem with 30p is that when converting to 24p there are frames than must be completely "reconstructed" from the motion information of two 30p frames separated about 20ms in each time direction. when converting 60i, this maximum time distance is reduced to only about 8ms in the worse case.
I'm not against canon, but I've been doing a lot of tests with 5d footage, and even with the best and extremelly slow software like twistor, the results are unusuable (even for a wedding) in my opinion. I can post image captures if anyone interested. Of course I´ll be extremely happy if canon release a firmware for 24p o 25p, and will place my order the next second!
I'm not against canon, but I've been doing a lot of tests with 5d footage, and even with the best and extremelly slow software like twistor, the results are unusuable (even for a wedding) in my opinion. I can post image captures if anyone interested. Of course I´ll be extremely happy if canon release a firmware for 24p o 25p, and will place my order the next second!
Larry Swing
New member
Broadcasting in former PAL countries is and will be done in 50Hz interlaced (50i) , for HD in either 720 or 1080 resolution.
So if you expect your films to be broadcasted, both 24p and 30p footage needs to be converted and there 30p certainly has a disadvantage as the effect will be more visible.
So if you belong to the very small group of people who regulary film for broadcasting purposes in PAL contries, the 5DII is probably not (yet) for you. But given the D90s image quality issues, in that case this camera is certainly not for you either.
The majority of DVD players in PAL countries can display NTSC footage since many years (if there is no region code), so that shouldn't be an issue. I will test this with the new videos over the weekend.
PAL TVs im most countries are made to accept 576i. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/576i. They won't accept 720p/i or 1080p/i anyway, not matter the frame rate. 24/25p won't help you here.
"HD Ready" labeled Plasma and LCD Displays in Europe (this is the majority now) will display 30p very well while 24p is not part of the specification.
Wrong, see above. If you want to display on old PAL SD TVs, you will need to convert to 576i anyway and 24p won't work at all.
24p is incompatible with most Plasma or LCD displays, but that somehow doesn't seem to bother you.
Larry Swing
New member
I burned some of the footage (Reverie, Nachtfahrer, Backlflip, the latest one from Vimeo) to a NTSC DVD with 29.97p (conversion done by Tmpgenc). That was very quickly done and they look very good and work well here in PAL-land on my HD Ready plasma screen. I am in PAL land, both DVD and Plasma are regular products for the local PAL oriented market. No issue.
Otis Grapsas
Carbonite Member
PAL is simple. 24p to 25p conversion is very easy and it does not involve any image processing, just a small audio change without serious artifacts.
HD to SD is also very easy.
Both 25p and 24p can produce wonderful 50i and 50p, SD and HD without any frame processing in the time domain, so there are solid reasons to prefer them over 30p.
5DII footage from Canon Explorer of Light, Bruce Dorn.
http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2327
http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2327
Man, the motion looks so video, I could cry. Image quality is leaps and bounds beyond the D90, and yet the latter always looks more film-like to me.
Rubbersquare
Well-known member
and people shooting with the canon seem to be shooting pretty dull stuff imho.
ooh a bird in a tree and a bunch of cars going down a street and contrived romantic situations.
ooh a bird in a tree and a bunch of cars going down a street and contrived romantic situations.
Yep, the content of some of this footage is painful. Laforet's Reverie seems to overcome that 30p video look. It comes down to the content and lighting, IMO. If your going to shoot typical awful video content, it will look like a video.
....Canon still needs to add a 24p option though. I don't see how they can avoid it even if only just to help sales in europe and other PAL countries.
....Canon still needs to add a 24p option though. I don't see how they can avoid it even if only just to help sales in europe and other PAL countries.
