1080 vs. 720 for Feature

S

scarfhead

Member
Less than two weeks away from principal photography. Storage is not an issue. We are leaning towards 1080, but I must say, it does seem like the 720 has a certain warmth to it. Does it handle color the same way? This is all 24 frame, of course.

Saw some footage today at Laser Pacific -- projected from HDCAM and 35mm -- that was blown up from HVX sample footage provided by Panasonic in December. Curious to note that it was recorded at 720. Why would Panasonic send out sample footage from the camera not showing off its full capabilities?

At the end of the day, either way, this camera is very impressive. There was some banding and some artifacting, but for a $6,000 piece of equipment, the footage was spectacular. I've read all the debates here on the 1080 vs. 720 issue. On paper, there's no conversation. 1080 is the way to go if storage is not an issue.

I just wonder if anyone wants to convince me otherwise before we commit...
 
I say 1080/24p all the way.

Only question is how you're editing it; currently FCP doesn't handle 1080/24p, but Edius does.
 
Although it's a big pain in the ass to remove the pulldown, you can infact edit in a 1080 24P timeline in FCP. You may have to spend some hours finding an efficient workflow to extract the 24P using cinema tools but it will work. I recomend using Grame Natress's free cadence detect tool to deterine the specific pull down cadence of each clip.
I told you it was a pain in the ass. But it's workable, somehow.
 
Also, you can use after effects to remove the pulldown of 1080 material. I find this is a very effective solution for myself.
 
In our filmout test last week we did 720P to have variable framerates available - and it looked wonderful - We didnt have a comparison but 720 certainly looked great for the big screen
 
Is the 1080p actually an interlaced stream, 'faked' to be progressive like Sonys CF or Canons Frame mode? I know the HVX200 has a progressive chip, but I read that the 1080p is actually interlaced.

If it is, why is it interlaced video when the HVX200 is native progressive?
 
When you talk about an interlaced stream, it's just the way the image date is transported. Indtead of sending the captured image in one operation it is broken up in two packages. When you save a JPEG image in Photoshop you can also choose to make the image transfer in x amount of scan band segments. if you coose 2 it's actually an interlaced transfer but when the image has downloaded it is the same image as you would save in progressive. You have to differetiate between 'interlaced Capture' and 'interlaced transport'

It's very common to use interlaced transfer, most of the time a progressive frame transported interlaced is not called interlaced but psf, a short for Progressive Segmented Frame. HDCAM and DVCPRO HD tape formmats both use PSF for progressive recording, and as the stream has to confirm to the tape standard we still use PSF.
 
It is interlaced, but only as a recorded format. The camera still shoots progressive, its actually impossible for it to shoot interlaced, it can only transcode to interlaced.

1080 24PA is the same as 24PA in the DVX100.
 
booth said:
If it is, why is it interlaced video when the HVX200 is native progressive?
Click to expand...
It's basically the same thing as telecine'd film. 24 progressive frames are recorded in a 60i data stream.

DVCPRO-HD is a 1080/60i codec. The codec is interlaced. So they do a segmented-frame telecine of the raw progressive footage in order to transport it in the interlaced codec.

But the footage is genuine progressive. There's nothing "fake" going on. Remove the pulldown and you'll restore the original progressive sequence.
 
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