a couple questions.

I

irvineimages

Member
greetings, i've been doing still landscape photography on a pentax 6x7 for about 5 years, just recently got the hmc 150.
my plan is to create a tourist dvd for the city i live in.
it will have sunsets, lightning storms, rainbows, wild life, time lapses, ect ect.
so far i've been shooting in 1080 30p, do you guys think this is a good choice for a high resolution hd dvd, and eventually maybe a blu ray?

also, i got a cheap sdhc card reader, is this wise or should i get a firewire or something else?
i'm concerned about speed but, ultimately i need the highest quality files.

last question for now is... what kind of computer setups do you guys suggest for editing and such?

i'm low on time so thanks for any help.
 
Well, looks like you've got some ramping up to do. Congrats on your purchase thought.

30p is probably the very last choice I'd use to create a DVD. Shoot either 24p or 60i. Preferably 24p for a multitude of reasons. I don't know what you mean by a high resolution DVD. Could you explain that a bit?

Concerning the SDHC card reader. What do you need it to do? Just dump footage from the cards to your computer? If so, then what it costs doesn't matter. Should offer USB2.0 and that is a defined standard. Quality isn't changing, these are digital signals that don't degrade when you move them from place to place.

What kind of computer depends greatly on what kind of software you intend to run. But since you are shooting in AVCHD format, buy the fastest computer you can afford. You'll need it. A good video editing machine needs four things:

1. Fastest CPUs you can afford
2. Most RAM you can afford
3. Best video card you can afford
4. Fastest and largest disks you can afford

Everything else after that is gravy.


Good luck.
 
Congrats on your purchase, you'll love it.
As far as computers go, yes--you will need the most muscle you can afford. I would favor more RAMM over processor speed, in general. Out of curiosity, are you wanting to go Mac, or PC? What editing software will you be using?
 
30p is probably the very last choice I'd use to create a DVD. Shoot either 24p or 60i. Preferably 24p for a multitude of reasons. I don't know what you mean by a high resolution DVD. Could you explain that a bit?
Click to expand...

i see... could you explain the reasons why 24p is better? i already got a couple really nice clips.. so are they worthless as far as the dvd is concerned? or will i be able to convert them or somehow mix them in with 24p shots?
all i meant by high resolution was high quality detail and such. i'm not used to all the technical terms yet, my goal is to shoot this dvd in the highest quality mode possible.
i want people to be able to put it in their dvd or blu ray and watch it on a big screen tv and make their jaws drop.

I would favor more RAMM over processor speed, in general. Out of curiosity, are you wanting to go Mac, or PC? What editing software will you be using?
Click to expand...

leaning towards pc and adobe premiere since i have experience with it, could upgrade my pc that has raid 0, or ima have to buy a whole new rig, if that's the case... whichever is better... pc or mac, what do you think?
 
I'd say that 30p is exactly what you want. 24p is great for film-out, but adds interlacing artifacts with the pulldown on most TVs and video playback systems. 30p gives you the higher effective resolution of progressive footage, but plays much smoother on most TVs.
 
I'd say that 30p is exactly what you want. 24p is great for film-out, but adds interlacing artifacts with the pulldown on most TVs and video playback systems. 30p gives you the higher effective resolution of progressive footage, but plays much smoother on most TVs.
Click to expand...

phew, i hope you're right cause i got some excellent rare hard to get sequences on 30p... anyone else got info on this subject? i'm about to go out shooting again pretty soon here and need to know which mode to shoot in.
 
Concerning the SDHC card reader. What do you need it to do? Just dump footage from the cards to your computer? If so, then what it costs doesn't matter. Should offer USB2.0 and that is a defined standard. Quality isn't changing, these are digital signals that don't degrade when you move them from place to place.
Click to expand...

yes.. i'm just worried about making sure all the data is retained and i don't lose anything...
the card reader was like 20 dollars and i thought i saw ones for 80-100 dollars so i was a bit concerned.

it's usb 2.0, so i guess it's good?
 
There's a lot of info in the stickies, in the Panny literature, and in, e.g., Barry's books.

TV systems (in the U.S.) are in general 60i or 60p. If you put 24p material on a DVD, the DVD player will automatically add "pulldown", which means it INTRODUCES interlacing artifacts to get 24 fps material to fit a 60i stream. Some very recent TVs are then able to reverse this process (losing a bit of quality on the way), but the vast majority cannot. Sadly, recent native-progressive TVs often seem to emphasize interlacing artifacts when fed an analog signal (just like computer playback of interlaced material emphasizes jaggies), making even 24p DVDs quite artifacty. Of course, a few TVs will be native progressive 24p-capable, connected digitally to a DVD player that also can send a 24p digital signal, and hen 24p will look fine. But 30p avoids all these issues, requires no pulldown, and will look great on any TV/DVD player combo, whether analog, digital, progressive-native or interlaced-native.
 
irvineimages said:
yes.. i'm just worried about making sure all the data is retained and i don't lose anything...
the card reader was like 20 dollars and i thought i saw ones for 80-100 dollars so i was a bit concerned.

it's usb 2.0, so i guess it's good?
Click to expand...

A USB 2.0 reader will work fine - in fact, the one that comes in the package with the Transcend 16GB Class 6 cards for around $40 total works great. Data loss is not an issue. And the speeds of the cards themselves will be the bottleneck, not the reader.

The card mounts as a drive, and will look and act the same whether connected by USB or FireWire.
 
ullanta said:
There's a lot of info in the stickies, in the Panny literature, and in, e.g., Barry's books.

TV systems (in the U.S.) are in general 60i or 60p. If you put 24p material on a DVD, the DVD player will automatically add "pulldown", which means it INTRODUCES interlacing artifacts to get 24 fps material to fit a 60i stream. Some very recent TVs are then able to reverse this process (losing a bit of quality on the way), but the vast majority cannot. Sadly, recent native-progressive TVs often seem to emphasize interlacing artifacts when fed an analog signal (just like computer playback of interlaced material emphasizes jaggies), making even 24p DVDs quite artifacty. Of course, a few TVs will be native progressive 24p-capable, connected digitally to a DVD player that also can send a 24p digital signal, and hen 24p will look fine. But 30p avoids all these issues, requires no pulldown, and will look great on any TV/DVD player combo, whether analog, digital, progressive-native or interlaced-native.
Click to expand...


All of what is said here is true, and I won't argue it. My issue becomes what the OP said he wanted to do with these DVDs.

"my plan is to create a tourist dvd for the city i live in."

If we can absolutely guarantee that those videos will NEVER need to be shipped to non NTSC areas, then I am all for 30p. However, should any of these travel DVDs need to travel to PAL land, things get ugly in a hurry.

The "look" of 24p DVDs is very familiar to home viewers. Hollywood films at 24p and ships discs that have been telecined to 60i. This conversion is customary and common. I have no issue with that look. One of the reasons I suggested 60i. 30p is also a bear on the internet, especially in HD. many places don't support the framerate, so you have to decimate it back to 24p, and that is ugly.

So in short if shooting 24p:

1. The material follows exactly the same process Hollywood DVDs do, and the look is common.

2. International distrubution is eased because PAL countries are very used to seeing Hollywood films pushed up from 24p to 25p

3. Distrubution of 24p on the web is nearly universal.


Shooting 60i:

1. It is the common format of broadcast TV. NatGeo, DiscoveryHD, etc. all mandate it. Viewers are familiar with the look.

2. International distribution going from 60i to 50i is trickier but still doable.

3. Going from 60i to 24p is the reverse of what happens with Hollywood discs and the process is well understood and well implemented.


Shooting 30p

1. It is neither a film nor broadcast format. The look is very unique. Not necessarily bad, just not common.

2. Converting from 30p to 50i or 25p is awful, so international distrubution is a bear.

3. It is often not supported for web distribution in HD.


The decision to shoot 24p or 60i should be easy. Choose the realisim of broadcast, or the escapism of Hollywood. And the workflow from there is a national standard understood by everyone and docimented everywhere. The decision to shoot 30p carries some serious drawbacks with it, but it can look great as long as you know your ONLY target audience is NTSC televisions.

Just my thoughts on the matter.
 
irvineimages said:
yes.. i'm just worried about making sure all the data is retained and i don't lose anything...
the card reader was like 20 dollars and i thought i saw ones for 80-100 dollars so i was a bit concerned.

it's usb 2.0, so i guess it's good?
Click to expand...

Digital copies are lossless, regardless of the price of the device. If it's USB, you're good to go.
 
PerroneFord said:
All of what is said here is true, and I won't argue it. My issue becomes what the OP said he wanted to do with these DVDs.

"my plan is to create a tourist dvd for the city i live in."

If we can absolutely guarantee that those videos will NEVER need to be shipped to non NTSC areas, then I am all for 30p. However, should any of these travel DVDs need to travel to PAL land, things get ugly in a hurry.

...

1. It is neither a film nor broadcast format. The look is very unique. Not necessarily bad, just not common.

2. Converting from 30p to 50i or 25p is awful, so international distrubution is a bear.

3. It is often not supported for web distribution in HD.


The decision to shoot 24p or 60i should be easy. Choose the realisim of broadcast, or the escapism of Hollywood. And the workflow from there is a national standard understood by everyone and docimented everywhere. The decision to shoot 30p carries some serious drawbacks with it, but it can look great as long as you know your ONLY target audience is NTSC televisions.

Just my thoughts on the matter.
Click to expand...


I'm not going to argue the international case - but:

1) in the online case, I don't know where you get your information. 30p is likely the single most common frame rate I've seen for online video. Common interlaced 60i video is almost universally deinterlaced to 30p when posted online... it's the recommended frame rate for YouTube and many other sites.

2) In the broadcast/DVD case - a 30p stream is IDENTICAL to a 60i stream, so it is indeed a broadcast format. The only difference is the order in which the fields are captured at acquisition. 30P will be handled by any TV/DVD player/VCR in the Americas, and most systems in PAL-land will handle it as well.

The ONLY situation in which 30p is an issue is for film-out, where it's indeed the "worst case." But for anything in the video realm, it's often the best choice.
 
thanks for the help everyone.
i'll eventually research this all myself and understand it better, but i'm extremely busy right now, so i really appreciate the feedback.

If we can absolutely guarantee that those videos will NEVER need to be shipped to non NTSC areas, then I am all for 30p. However, should any of these travel DVDs need to travel to PAL land, things get ugly in a hurry.
Click to expand...

right now i'm leaning towards 30p, so.. if i were to pick 30p, would i need to put a warning label on the dvd for pal users? would the dvd not work, or just lose quality on pal setups?

another important question i have is about motorized tripod heads for panning and such... which ones would you guys suggest? and any general info about them would be useful.
thanks again people.
 
Here is the big one.

The Blu-ray spec is for 1080p24, 1080i60 or 720p60

If you shoot 1080p30 Blu-ray will want to interlace the end result and play it back as 1080i, so some resolution will be thrown away.

I am a fan of 1080p30, but I am going to shoot 1080p24 or 720p60 for everything from now on as it is the Blu-ray standard.

Irvine Images,

As you can see, this is a very complicated world you have stepped into.

I would do youself a favor and read all you can on forums like this and get to know a lot.

Basically, your end delivery medium should decide what you film in. So you really have to look into the future and decide how your content will be distributed.

I am putting Blu-ray first as once players go under $150/$100 DVD will start to wane once people see the difference.

And all of the Blu-ray formats work with DVD.

1080p30 is sort of out in the cold when it comes to non-television broadcast.

So do tons of reasearch and get to know your camera the best you can.

Good Luck.
 
My question relates to what you meant by using the footage to create a high resolution "HD DVD."

The format no longer exists. Just blu ray now, and if this is going to commercial replication, be prepared for enormous fees.

Best to stick with SD DVD.
 
Bassman2003 said:
The Blu-ray spec is for 1080p24, 1080i60 or 720p60

If you shoot 1080p30 Blu-ray will want to interlace the end result and play it back as 1080i, so some resolution will be thrown away.
Click to expand...


Again... a 1080/30p stream is identical to a 1080/60i stream; the only difference is at the time of ACQUISITION. Blu-Ray will handle a 30p stream with no loss in resolution.
 
I don't understand/can not agree with this statement.

In my mind/knowledge 1080i=720p interms of final output resolution and playback. 1080p is better holding higher resolution upon proper playback.

1080p is the full image, 1080i is the image in two parts, each at half resolution.

If Blu-ray does not playback in 1080p30, it will be cutting the fields in two, therefore turning 1080p into 1080i.

They are not the same, so how can the playback be the same?

Please explain
 
If you shoot 1080p30 Blu-ray will want to interlace the end result and play it back as 1080i, so some resolution will be thrown away.
Click to expand...

i don't lnow if this matters... but i put all my footage into my ps3 = blu ray after shooting and watch it on my big screen lcd tv, and it looks freaking incredible...
so do you mean it will look bad playing off a blu ray disc, or on a blu ray player period?

if there's no difference between watching the video directly from the sdhc card and once it has been copied to the blu ray disc, i'm happy with the quality i've seen so far.

Irvine Images,

As you can see, this is a very complicated world you have stepped into.

I would do youself a favor and read all you can on forums like this and get to know a lot.
Click to expand...

haha, yeah. but this is the only natural progression from what i was doing before... still photography, and so far i'm loving it.
the options are immense, and i can capture so many things that i couldn't before..
it's gonna take a while to learn but it's totally worth it.
i have been searching other forums for the questions i asked here and get the same mixed responses, especially in regards to resolution.

i want the first dvd project to be perfect, but i know i'll learn so much that my second project will make the first pale in comparison.

Basically, your end delivery medium should decide what you film in. So you really have to look into the future and decide how your content will be distributed.
Click to expand...

agreed, and i'm still open to changing my mind, but the amazing footage i already got makes it tough to want to shoot in another format.

My question relates to what you meant by using the footage to create a high resolution "HD DVD."

The format no longer exists. Just blu ray now, and if this is going to commercial replication, be prepared for enormous fees.

Best to stick with SD DVD.
Click to expand...

yeah, i want to do blu ray eventually, but start with dvd and see how good it sells first.
 
Bassman2003 said:
I don't understand/can not agree with this statement.

In my mind/knowledge 1080i=720p interms of final output resolution and playback. 1080p is better holding higher resolution upon proper playback.

1080p is the full image, 1080i is the image in two parts, each at half resolution.

If Blu-ray does not playback in 1080p30, it will be cutting the fields in two, therefore turning 1080p into 1080i.

They are not the same, so how can the playback be the same?

Please explain
Click to expand...


60i footage (1080 or 480) is what they call 60 FIELDS per second, or 30 FRAMES per second. A "field" is a set of alternate TV scan lines... say, the odd lines or the even lines.
In interlaced footage, all the odd lines are captured, then all the even lines are captured. That means that there is a time difference between the odd and even lines, which is what causes the "comb edges" or "jaggies", and on moving images causes a resolution loss as the eye kind of blurs them together. On a CRT screen, the fields are also played back in the same pattern - say, all odd then all even, and the decay of the charge in the screen phosphors cuases them to blend smoothly together. On new display technologies (Plasma, LCD), both fields are displayed at once; this is why interlaced footage is particularly bad on computer screens, etc. Some TVs use techniques to minimize the jaggies, but generally, it tends to look worse than progressive, and worse than interlaced on a CRT. Keep in mind that, on a CRT, a scan line is really a scan line; different flat-panel displays have different native resolutions, and handle different playback resolutions, which is why interlace artifacts are emphasized.


30p footage also has 60 fields, or 30 frames; but they are all captured progressively: the first odd line, then the first even line, then the second odd line, then the second even line, etc., so there's no temporal offset between the fields. On a CRT screen, displayed in an interlaced manner, it just seems as if the same frame stays on the screen for twice as long; on a flat-panel screen, it has no interlace artifacts and higher resolution. The data stream is the same, only the initial capture process differs.

So 1080/60i and 1080/30p have the same data rate, both have 60 fields per second.
720p has half the resolution, but twice as many frames per second (no fields - it's native progressive). So the data rate of 1080/60i is the same as 720/60p. Since 720p is always progressive, 720/30p has HALF the data rate of 720/60p or 1080/6oi/30p. And 720/24p has .4 times the data rate, while 1080/24p has .8 of the data rate of 1080/60i.

1080/24p is tricky because it doesn't divide easily into the 60i/60p that most TVs natively display. This is where "pulldown" comes in - for every four frames of 24p material, an extra frame must be added to make up a 30-fps (or 60 field-per-sec) stream. See page 35 of the HMC manual (ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/Panasonic/Drivers/PBTS/manuals/AG-HMC150_OI.pdf if you don't have it handy) for an image of how this works. Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine

Some TVs these days handle 24p natively, as do some Blu-Ray and up-converting DVD players... but most don't, and sometimes even the interaction of a 24p-native Blu-Ray player and a 24p-native TV will not end up with an unadulterated 24p signal all the way through. For the videophile or video professional with a good setup, it's a good way to deliver things... and certainly good for films transferred from 24p. But on MOST home setups, 30p will give a better result.

Finally - 24p, because of the slower frame rate, requires more careful attention to things like the speed of camera motion to prevent excessive judder. On non-24p native playback, the pulldown makes it a little stuttery in a way that I've had some clients complain about. The higher the framerate, the smoother the playback. Most peoiple still find 30p "pleasingly filmic" - and a little less smooth than 60i or 60p.
 
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This is crazy. And I wonder how many people here actually deliver for broadcast. And broadcast does NOT mean sticking a DVD or BluRay you made into your player and watching it on your TV.

irvineimages, I am going to suggest you do what anyone who actually submits for broadcast does. Read the specs.

Generally, when people have to submit shows to TV broadcasters they have to follow rules and specifications. Everything from making sure you audio is on the right channels, to making sure you video levels are perfect. These are laid out in black and white to read. The most strict of these standards is the PBS Red book. Generally, if your program can pass muster with Red Book, it'll pass anything. Another go-to resource is the DiscoveryHD producer's guide. I'll link you to the pertinent documents and you can read what ACTUAL brodcasters want when you really submit stuff for TV:

PBS Red Book: http://www.pbs.org/producers/redbook/TOS_2007_Submission_8_20_07.pdf

Please note paragraph 2.5. It is absolutely specific and non-ambiguous.

Discovery HD (Canada): http://www.ctvdigital.com/discovery/producersguide/CGM_Tech_Specs_05.4.3.doc

Please note paragraph 1.2. It is absolutely specific and non-ambiguous


While I know you intend to simply make your own videos, understanding that national and international HD broadcast is nearly ALWAYS 60i, and understanding that Hollywood film is nearly ALWAYS 24p should tell you something. When Hollywood wants to get their films shown on TV it's moved to 60i.

I would ask those who are proposing 30p 2 basic questions so that our poster can glean real information.

1. What HD television brodcast have you seen in 30p? Any one will do.

2. What Hollywood film have you ever seen in 30p? Again, any one will do.

If the answer is none to both questions then I have real difficulty in understanding how we can recommend 30p to someone looking to embark on a commercial project when the spec won't fit in Brodcast submission, won't fit in film, and isn't a part of BluRay spec.

I stand by my assertion that if what I am shooting is for my own personal use, then 30p is fine. But for anything that might leave my personal use, and get put on TV, on Film, or distrubuted outside the US, then it's 24p or 60i.
 
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