24p vs 30p vs 60p vs 60i

Reason why I ask is because a lot of people seem to favor 720 over 1080, I can't imagine why either. So, I shoot in 1080, send it to Voltaic, and in that program I believe it does the entire conversion (Prores/24p) bring it into FCP for editing? Does this sound about right?
 
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Barry_Green said:
His editor wants a 1080/60i timeline. Easiest way to go is to give them the footage in 1080/60i format -- which is what the GH1 records. 1080/24p embedded in 60i.

For everyone else, yes, editing 24p is the right way to go. But the deliverables requirement for this particular poster was 1080/60i.
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Right, I was speaking more in a general context why the much of the industry is still using legacy workflows. Come to think of it, if 24fps has been around for so long, why did it take so long for digital workflows to implement 24p timelines?
 
When shooting one of the first question you need to ask is how will this project be distributed? If the final product is to be out put to motion picture film then use 24P If it will only be shown on a TV ie Broadcast or DVD then use 30 frames a second ether Progressive or interlaced although Progressive has more of a film look. 24P look no better than 30P when shown on a tv actually there are many more artifacts on 24P when shown on a TV
 
Yak said:
24P look no better than 30P when shown on a tv actually there are many more artifacts on 24P when shown on a TV
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There are many of us who will disagree quite vehemently. 24p looks just fine on television, in fact any movie ever broadcast on television is an example of how 24p looks on tv.
 
"John Galt:...You often hear cinematographers saying, there's something special about movies at 24 frames per second. This may be true, but I'll tell you one of the problems of 24 fps, it’s the reason we watch such a dim picture on a movie screen, because if you pump up the screen brightness, you would notice the flicker from the 24 fps motion capture.

So when you are watching in a dark surround and a dark movie theater, the eye and brain gets into this state called mesopic, that is neither photopic, which is full color vision in bright light, or scotopic which is night vision and no color. It's the in-between state between full color and no color vision. What happens there, the brain takes longer to integrate an image, so it fuses the motion better and we are less sensitive to flicker, but we also lose color acuity.

But we have to remember that 24 frames was never designed from an imaging standpoint. It was designed for sound.

http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/the-truth-about-2k-4k-the-future-of-pixels
 
From "Mike Chaney's Tech Corner - Technical Topics in Digital Photography"

http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/march-2009-video-frame-rates-(24p-25p-30p-60i)/

"...The only difference between 24p and 30p in video is that 24p will actually show slightly more "strobing" effect, most visible when the camera is panning. Film makers are aware of this and often avoid panning high contrast scenes where strobing might occur. If you use 24p in your own video and you are not careful about panning, you'll be more prone to the strobing effect than you will at 30p. So really the only way 24p can "look more like film" than something like 30p is if you are able to see strobing during certain scenes: something I don't particularly think is a positive aspect of film!"
 
So really the only way 24p can "look more like film" than something like 30p is if you are able to see strobing during certain scenes
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Nonsense. I can pick out 30p from 24p all day long. And many other folks can too. There might be some out there that can't, but that doesn't somehow elevate this assertion to being the truth.

24p is not as high a sampling rate as 30p, that's true. But 24p looks like film, and 30p doesn't. 30p looks more like film than 60p does, obviously, but 24p is the frame rate film runs at, and it is obvious by just looking at it.
 
Do not confuse 30 frames interlaced with 30 frames progressive, the most important point in shooting 24P or 30P is that it is not interlaced. By shooting 30p you get the advantage of progressive with out the disadvantage of 24P which requires a "pulldown" transfer when been broadcast. If one is going to transfer to motion picture Film then there will be an advantage to recording in 24P which has the same frame rate as film.
 
Trust me, I'm not confused on that issue. 60i = "the live look", 24p = "the film look", and 30p = "something in-between."

Been shooting film for 30 years, and 24p video incessantly and nonstop since 2003. Very aware of pulldown, and I reiterate -- ANY film you've ever watched on broadcast television is 24p with 2:3 pulldown.

There are many advantages to shooting and mastering in 24p, not the least of which is that DVD players can play native 24p (but not 30p) and it's pretty universal for new television sets to understand native 24p signals and avoid the pulldown process entirely.
 
unless you TV has a progressive mode or "film scan" 24P will be played back over 60i with pull down. when 30p is play back over 60i there are no interlaced or pull down artifacts.

The "film look" has much more to do with other factors than the number of frames @ second
 
Yak said:
unless you TV has a progressive mode or "film scan" 24P will be played back over 60i with pull down. when 30p is play back over 60i there are no interlaced or pull down artifacts.

The "film look" has much more to do with other factors than the number of frames @ second
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24p played with pulldown looks very much like native 24p, though it has 2-3 judder in addition to inherent 24p strobing. On modern TVs, 24p is more often than not correctly restored from 60i stream, so you get full vertical resolution in 1080i broadcast. So far, few of TVs can restore 30p from 30PsF.

As to the look, I prefer 30p to 24p any day.
 
I had this debate and battle back on the usenet newsgroups when I was editing on the damn Newtek Video Toaster Flyer. 30p is some weird bastard child that I only used prior to the DVX100 coming out because it was the closest you could get to 24p (canon a1 digital high 8.. then canon xl1) before the DVX got it right. While 30p was waaaaaay better than shooting 60i if you were trying to do something dramatic.. it is not 24p and it does not have the motion cadence of film.

Your eyes cannot detect motion changes of much more than 70 frames per second max, and this is why 60p or 30i (which is really 60 changes of motions per second) look 'live' because the changes in motion reflect how you see.

The 24 frames per second was chosen specifically because it was the minimum satisfactory rate that motion could go and sync up with sound correctly on mag film.
Also, as was stated earlier in this thread, because it is actually pretty slow 'temporal' resolution, it hypnotizes the mind a bit and causes a much easier 'suspension of disbelief' in subjects. This is best exemplified by watching a 'the making of' series on any film. They usually film these in 60 frames per second, and everything looks fake, and plasticy.. and the set looks like a set.. and ect, but then they cut to the film footage - and wow - now you buy it.. it looks different somehow.. that doesn't look so much like a plastic sword..

the end all effect is that the lack of temporal resolution (the amount of frames per second) actually works to the film makers advantage - by furthering the illusion, and the dream of the film - from 'reality' or the look of reality. This is why we have seen increase after increase in 'spatial' resolution (pixel res) but no increase in temporal resolution (frames per second) in all these years.

Now some directors argue against this. James Cameron and Roger Ebert have been pushing the industry to go to 48 frames per second for some time now.... but I personally don't like the look of it for dramatic films. I saw a imax style film at a convention once, and it was high resolution film, projected at 60 frames per second. It was VERY bizare to say the least. Pretty amazing as a novelty or EPCOT style thing.. but again, it looked to 'live' and I wouldn't want to make a whole movie in it unless that story needed that 'live' effect.

Peace,


- Blackout
 
I would say 60i= "the look of Video" , 24P = "the stutter look of film" , 30P = "a smother look of film"
 
Let us not forget that frame rate is only a part (and some say a small part) of "the film look" , other things like DOF, dynamic range, lighting, color grading, grain among other things also help create the "film look"

One of the most important difference between 60i and 24P (& 30P) is capturing in a interlaced or progressive frame. A large part of the "video Look" comes from shooting interlaced
 
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