24p vs 25p

[themartist]

For those of us who have PAL versions of the GH1, is the neoscene thing such an issue? I'm using FCP log and transfer and don't have any issues, so assumed the whole fuss was only regarding NTSC cameras. Am I right?

Then, regarding the film look... Is 24p vs 25p that noticeable? Is it really worth the effort? For the 30p, I can understand, but I dont see how there can be such a huge difference between 1p...


Please inform me...

 

[Park Edwards]

some say you can notice it, some say they can't. it's kind of relative. when i see bbc, i don't see 24p, i see 25p and it's distracting. but i've seen 25p stuff and thought it looked 24p...so wth man, i'm just as lost as you.

 

[Martti Ekstrand]

Back when Sweden made commercials on television legal (!), previously they have only been allowed in cinemas, there was a lot of heated discussions about this. I was involved in a couple of blindtests at the production company where I was hired and when played back at the same speed on a lab projector or a broadcast monitor nobody - cinematographers, directors, editors, sound editors, colour timers, animators, ie: a bunch of people with great experience at viewing film material - managed to be better than flip of the coin at spotting if stuff were shot at 24 or 25. The only guys who could spot it were a couple of musicians with pitch perfect hearing who heard it on the formants in voices but when viewing silent clips they were no better than the rest of us.

Swedish cinemas ended up bowing to the power of television and added 30 frames to each 30 second slot so since then all commercials here are done at 25 fps and played back at 24 fps if shown in cinemas. Which also happens to be the case of many european features as broadcast stations are one of the major financiers in film production this side of the pond. Mini-series end up being shown in shortened versions as features when becoming better than expected are not uncommon either. And I've yet to encounter anybody saying "Oh this was shot at 25 fps and shown at 24. How bad it looked!" after viewing such a production. So when I see somebody claiming to be able to spot the difference I just think that one day the young grasshopper will learn the limits of his powers.

Car3o - the reason you spot 25p or 50i on BBC stuff is because of the interference frame rate artifacts when transfered to NTSC 29.97 fps - those can be rather horrid, almost as horrid as 29.97 transferred to 25

The funny part of this discussion is seeing all clips out there with way too short shutter speeds and people claiming it doesn't look 'filmic' due to been shot at the wrong frame rate. To ordinary people a 29.97p clip shot at 1/50 or 60 looks a great deal more 'filmic' than a 24 fps clip shot with a 1/500 shutter.

So to answer themartist's first question, yes you are right. Dealing with pulldown removal is a issue with the NTSC model and has no bearing on the PAL version.