A few DVX Questions

C

Cameron S

Member
OK, so I film skateboarding, usually at 60i. What would the best shutter speed be to use during the day? And at night? Im looking for the smoothest image possible using 60i.

Also, does anyone have any good compressor and/or any other free compression program settings they use for uploading footage to the web? (preferably 60i, 4:3 settings)

Thanks
 
You shouldn't be shooting 60i if the Internet is your intended distribution medium. Internet video is progressive, and interlaced video - especially with faster motion and camera moves - looks terrible on the web. To avoid that with interlaced video (60i), it must be deinterlaced before upload. This can be done in Compressor, but the video takes a massive hit in resolution since literally half of the picture information is being deleted.

Shoot at 30P if you're shooting for the web. You can use 60i if you're shooting for slow-mo, but your footage will still take a hit as conforming it to slow-mo requires deinterlacing.

As for shutter speed, 1/60 should do you just fine unless you want to stutter the image a little for texture of water or dirt splattering or spraying ("Saving Private Ryan" is typically referenced as an example of high shutter speed for this effect).

For compression to upload, I use MPEG StreamClip (www.squared5.com), which is free to download. Export to MPEG-4, then choose h.264, 100% quality, data rate limited to 5000kbps. Sound set to MPEG-4 AAC, stereo, auto sample rate, and 256kbps. The frame size should default to the source video, so no change there. Deselect "Interlaced Scaling," and select "Deinterlace Video" if you're working with 60i. Field Dominance should be set to "Lower" since you're working wtih DV source footage.
 
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Thank you for all the info. I am aware that 30p is better for the internet, but my final distribution will be for DVD. Thanks for the mpeg streamclip settings that was just what I was looking for. I'll give them a try!

-Cameron
 
Also Alex, what difference would a shutter speed of 1/60 have from 1/120? I only ask this because I already have important footage that was shot with 1/120.
 
Cameron S said:
Also Alex, what difference would a shutter speed of 1/60 have from 1/120? I only ask this because I already have important footage that was shot with 1/120.
Click to expand...

If you don't see a huge difference, then the answer is, "None."

The higher the shutter speed, the less "blur" you'll see in each frame. Once you get to 1/120, and especially to higher rates like 1/240, you may start to see a jittery effect. It really depends one what was shot, and how it was shot. So again, if you don't see a huge difference, then don't worry about it.

The other difference between 1/60 and 1/120 is that you lose half your light at 1/120, which forces you to open up your aperture. On small sensors like the DVX, it isn't quite as big a deal, but it is something to consider.
 
Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. One more thing: On mpeg streamclip, should I have multipass or b-frames checked? What do these do?
 
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