24/30P for web series?

You can tell the difference when there's a lot of motion. If you haven't seen it, then you haven't, but people aren't seeing things which "aren't there."
 
You can tell the difference when there's a lot of motion. If you haven't seen it, then you haven't, but people aren't seeing things which "aren't there."
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I think you're referring to the way footage looks after shooting it rather than after you upload it, no? In which case I can agree that 24p can look a little jerky sometimes depending on certain factors which you probably know more about than me. I know that the 24P I shoot on my V1U always looks great during the day or under good lighting, but it can be a bit jerky under low lighting for some reason. (I don't pretend to know why.)

However, having said that, the poster wanted to know if there was a difference between 24p and 30p with "uploaded footage", and my own take is that, if it looks good before you upload it, it'll look fine afterwards no matter which frame speed. At least at YouTube and on my own server. I've never really tried other video sites though. The way they encode the footage could make a difference I guess.
 
Looking at both YouTube and Vimeo video frame rate requirements, it seems for HD content Vimeo will limit the frame rate to 24 or 25 and if you upload HD in 30fps I've read the conversions look bad. YouTube, (http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=132460) does not seem to limit frame rate but does suggest sticking with 24 or 25, and further suggests not using any re-sampled (ie. telecined) footage. (This can happen if the original footage was shot at 24p and someone applied a pulldown to get 30fps (or 60i) and then you try uploading it.

Perhaps you won't be using either YouTube or Vimeo, but the fact is that a lower frame rate will play more optimally on the web when you factor in Internet speeds, Internet traffic, computer speed possibly, and ultimately that fact that 24p has 20% less frame data than 30p.
 
Great info. Thanks, guys.

Swoopie, yeah the amount of misinformation to be found is staggering. I can't believe how many sites say that various internet sites (like YouTube) REQUIRE 30p. Thrilled to read those YouTube official guidelines.

Starcentral, one thing: You wrote "... a lower frame rate will play more optimally on the web when you factor in Internet speeds, Internet traffic, computer speed possibly, and ultimately that fact that 24p has 20% less frame data than 30p." Doesn't bit rate also factor in?

Higher bit-rate 24p seems to do motion slightly better than lower bit rate 24p (judging by my own tests on an HFS200 I just borrowed) So what's the optimum setting for internet streaming? (That YouTube page doesn't even mention it.)

BTW - I hope that's not a dumb question. I am indeed a complete noob with this stuff.
 
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Cableaddict said:
Starcentral, one thing: You wrote "... a lower frame rate will play more optimally on the web when you factor in Internet speeds, Internet traffic, computer speed possibly, and ultimately that fact that 24p has 20% less frame data than 30p." Doesn't bit rate also factor in?
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He's referring to 24p vs. 30p at the same bitrate.
 
Yes, David, I realize that.

I'm asking what the optimum rate might be, for 24p, factoring in overall quality, low-light performance, motion blur, and ease of downloading on older computers.
 
Cableaddict said:
Yes, David, I realize that.

I'm asking what the optimum rate might be, for 24p, factoring in overall quality, low-light performance, motion blur, and ease of downloading on older computers.
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It really is highly dependent on the 'pipe' for download, the receiving side's ability to process, as well as the sending server, and the intermediate Internet... HD TV over the air broad cast is 20 Mbits but the TV receiver does have dedicated hardware for decoding... But a laptop may only do 10-15 Mbits 'well'... because that's sort of the ball park for DVD playing.

With fancier features, etc... better performance... but do all the viewers have such features...

The issue of bandwidth to the user:

While you may want to have them play at higher bandwidths, and even though the cable/phone company claims megabits... often in the weasel wording, it is anyone's guess as to what really is the effective bandwidth to the viewer. In addition to whatever the viewer may have to their 'house', there's also the server side... if the transport is UDP style... loss can occur... if it is TCP style loss will still occur, but through retransmissions, that may be overcome... at possibly the expense of 'smooth play'... other types of protocols have loss as well and some protocols have provisions for Forward Error Correction information being passed to the receiver to 'replace' lost packets... but that means more bandwidth than the absolute minimum you select for your media...

I've not done this in a while for 'web sites', but Quicktime Pro has an 'info' widget that shows the approximate bit rate and frame rate of the media being played. If you can get Quicktime to access the media, you can find out what is
the effective frame rate, bit rate, etc... for a given site... I've seen things like effective play rates of 15-24 for nominally 24 fps media...

Some of this can be dealt with in the viewer, with longer 'buffering times', 5 10 seconds... and retiming the video packets for smooth playing... but there's only so much that can be done given the vagaries of the Internet...
 
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Cableaddict said:
Starcentral, one thing: You wrote "... a lower frame rate will play more optimally on the web when you factor in Internet speeds, Internet traffic, computer speed possibly, and ultimately that fact that 24p has 20% less frame data than 30p." Doesn't bit rate also factor in?
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Bit rate definitely plays a factor. Having a lower frame rate to help out with reducing the over data stream is just one approach ("trick") to optimizing steaming video. You can still have too high a bit rate that your stream will crawl... or too low a bit rate that your footage will look muddy, blocky or just bad in general. The codec you use is yet another factor, as is the server, its connection to the internet, the viewers connection to the internet..

If you plan to encode using FLV, you might find this online bitrate calculator of interest to you : http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/apps/flv_bitrate_calculator.html
 
Holy SH*T Batman!!! i turn my back on you guys for a few days and all hell brakes loose. thanks for all of your input. i've made my decision.
 
48P because I heard Peter Jackson says its the wave of the future. .......... NOT, 24P for me. although i wonder if there is a slow-motion film festival? if that's the case then 1,500-2,000P is what i'd prefer.
 
I personally am holding out for 47.952... so I can maintain compatibility with NTSC... and drop every other frame, then use telecining to get it back up to 29.97...

I further am going to demand that my camera deliver a clean image at ISO 1600... so I can lose the stop in light with out cost to image quality... well, that is if I go with a 180 deg shutter
setting...
 
Michael B. McGee said:
you betcha!!!! do you guys wanna start a Phantom versus Weisscam versus Photo-Sonics short-film festival. do you think anyone would come? how much would admission be to see a Photo-Sonics film?
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Hahaha, it would be a very small festival considering Weisscam and Phantoms are over $3,000/day to rent properly... Maybe even $4,000 if you get really good accessories, glass and tech.

:)

On the bright side, it would take no time at all on set to reach the 6min minimum run-length.... at 1,000 fps you'd only need to run the camera for roughly 9 seconds.
 
9 seconds at 1,000 frames you say gets us just over 6 minutes of playback huh? sounds like just enough time to capture a "money shot" then.
 
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