24p vs 25p PAL land

F

frankoi

Active member
Hello! I think it is an old theme but I don´t find a clear answer. Anyone had experience shoooting weddings in 24p? I´m in PAL land, I got GH1 and GH2, I know the GH2 has more quality in 24p ( more bitrate ), that make me want to try 24p. The final deliver would be BR, so it is supported by blue ray, and actually most people have full HD progresive TV. Aparently there is no risk except with some lights (50HZ) but some people say that shutter 50 should avoid the risk. What do you think? Any advice? What I´m trying to do is with the help of 24p, shooting style and lighting, achieve more film look, but maybe I´m going toget carzy in editing and maybe I shoud choose 25p...advantages and cons?..Thanks guys
I will run my own test this next week with some lighting, actually a can´t, but any experience out there?
 
Shoot 25p and 1/50.

Shooting 24p won't really make your material look more "film" or achieve a significantly higher quality result. I can't tell the difference between 24 and 25 (for both frame quality and frame-rate look), and I very much doubt your clients will either - but it's best to take the safe option! Especially as you have mentioned, where 50Hz lighting is concerned.


Also, if you ever have to run off a DVD, 25p will present an obvious lack of conforming hassle / general pain.
 
Thanks Geoff, I think 25p is the safer way, I will run my test as soon as posible. But for now, I won´t play the 24p option. The reason was the higher bitrate on GH2.... Probably I will shoot 720/50p, the most versatile option for slowmo or not. I will start looking for a good hack that gives me good SH and match my Lpowell 75mps peak, any suggestion? The obvious would be 100mps max latitud but in HBR mode I ended sometimes ( not many ) in frozen camera and loosing the shoot ( with sandisk 16g 45mbs card )
Are these hacks compatible between GH1 and GH2? Lpowell allways says wich patch is for each camera, but in general most developers forget about GH1.
 
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There are plenty of options for GH2 patches, just browse for them on this site. I can't recommend a particular type, other than state that you definitely need one that is made to be stable. Only use the super high bit rate versions if you know you'll have enough high performance SD cards handy.
Also make sure you use one that's made for the latest GH2 firmware (v1.1) so you can use 25p in HBR mode. (25p in 50i container)

GH1 and GH2 patches are not interchangeable. The various recording parameters are adjusted and tested to work on specific cameras, and specific firmware versions.

I have used some of the high bit rate GH1 patches when shooting some events in the past, with much success, but with the occasional crash. I really like the true 25p on the GH1 for shooting narrative pieces, but I now prefer to go with the "Lpowell 75Mbps" patch when shooting an event where crashing is not an option!
Having an embarrassing camera problem when you're out on a job looks really unprofessional, especially when you have to explain to everyone that the last ten minutes of material has been lost, for a reason that can't be easily explained to them. It's best to sacrifice a little objective visual quality sometimes to minimise these painful situations occurring.

It is a pity that there seems to be no significant further hack development for the GH1, but it's old tech now and most effort is expended on the latest and greatest. The GH3 is nearly here. There are fundamental limitations to the GH1 hardware that can't be fixed with firmware hacks, and I think what's available for it now is very likely as good as it'll ever get. It's still good, though!
 
Thanks again Geoff !
I got GH2 v1.1 and can use 25p, but allways with 50i wrapper. How can I get ride of this and take from it the true 25p? As I told before my next shoot will be 720p 50, so it will give me progresive, but I hate the look of 50fps if I´m not going to slowmo.
I agree with you, actually I´m matching GH1 and GH2 with Lpowell 75 and 100MBps becuase is very reliable and the quality is really good. You can work that with safety. But would be good shooting in true 25p......
Thinking to sell my GH1 and looking forward for a new GH2 or GH3.
 
i too hate the look of 50p, so i just drop the clips in a 720 25 timeline. You still keep the 50p in the file, so if you need a slomo, you conform to 25p with cinema tools ( if using final cut suite) and you have slomo.
Getting rid of the 50i wrapper on the gh2 is a big obstacle for me too at the moment.. i still haven't resolved in FCP...
 
Yes Henry! thats my workflow too at the moment, Lpowell are super patches qualty and reliable but still 50i in GH2. Did you resolved it in CS6?, thinking about doing the switch each day, but I have a matrox IO that would be usefull ( I should choose between FCP or CS drivers ) and that stop me. I will have a publicity shoot in few days. I don´t like shooting 50i wrapped, do you know a true 25p patch for GH2? I think Driftwood has a Smackmygopup PAL version, did you try? is it true 25p? I will give a try tomorow and see......
 
The 25p in 50i wrapper that the v1.1 GH2 records in HBR mode certainly looks better than the 25p/50i from the GH1.
Just treat the clips as "No Fields - Progressive Scan" and they come out as full 25p, buckets of detail.

Henry, if Log and Transfer in FCP is outputting your GH2 clips as 50i, then try some other transcoder (such as 5DtoRGB) -t hat will see them as 25p in 50i, and convert to true 25p ProRes accordingly.
 
In premier, interpret footage works and gives you 25p progresive. Why not to batch convert the originals via Cinema tools conformin to 25p and then import to the projet instead of log&transfer? I didn´t try FCP but I think this would work in FCP. Thnks both Geof and Henry!
 
Geof i tried transcoding with clipwrap but it didnt help. Never tried 5d2rgb, i might give it a try. setting field options to none in fcp doesnt work. It works with gh1 and gf2 footage i have, but not gh2.
i never thought about conforming with cinema tools. I will try that.
 
no, with cinema tools it still had interlaced crap. At the end i had to put all mts files on a premiere timeline and then export it from there. Now i have 1440x1080 files ( don't know why resolution change, i'm sure i set 1920x1080 in export settings..). Anyway, i have no more interlaced artifacts, and i am going to output to 1280x720 anyway , so i'll just keep it like this... but this is very annoying.. i don't do lots of FHD stuff, i shoot mainly 720P50, but i need to find a better way to keep maximum quality in FHD.
 
I recomend you download the last codecs acutalization for Media encorder, you will find there the whole apple proress family and then you can export proress from premier. But I would check first if I can jus get over of this step. If you did interpret footage to the whole mts clips, then they are progresive, so maybe you anly need open them in compresor from the folder and batch converter to proress and you got it right yo import to FCP.
 
i actually didn't need to interpret the footage.. i created a progressive sequence and just dragged in all the clips. I could already see in editing window that i didn't have interlace artifacts like on FCP, so i exported with media encoder to Apple Intermediate Codec ( i always use this to save some space.. quality wise its not that much worse than prores).
 
25P in a 50i wrapper v1 update is what i use with my GH2,and is no problem for BLU RAY,i wonder what frame rate with 24mbps other than 24P which here i pal i dont like there will be on the GH3,its 25P is normal BD non compatable i understand.
 
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