so I shot some footage in 720p60 on my EX1
i imported it into FCP into a 23.97fps timeline, when I put the footage into the timeline it still plays at regular speed, not slow motion???
can andybody help me with this? am I doing somthing wrong
In the future, you should record the footage in the 720/24P mode, but with S&Q motion menu set to 60. Then it will play slo-mo in a 23.976 frame timeline. This is the only correct way to do slo-mo on the EX1
To get slo-mo out of the footage you shot, slow it down to 40% speed (frame blending off) in FCP. This is not going to be the best quality, so that's why you shouldn't do it this way in the future.
The setting for 24p, 25p, 30p, 60p tags the files with a playback speed. So those files will play back at those rates regardless of the S&Q setting that was used to record them.
More importantly, those settings determine the data rate and time code. If you have the camera set at 24p, it will play back at 24p at 35Mbps. If you record at that setting with S&Q set to 48, for example, you will be recording at 70Mbps, for eventual playback at 24fps at 35Mbps. Also, your time code will be moving twice as fast (on record) and will still be based on 24fps.
If you record at 60p, the data rate will play at 35Mbps, so in essence, on a frame basis, recording at 60p is 2.5x more compressed than 24p.
I am guessing another advantage of 720p60 (or 720p50 in PAL land) is the fact that you can convert to standard def 60i or 50i without the problems caused by scaling interlaced footage. So while it might not be quite as high quality as 720p30, it might be more useful in certain situations.