Denniscasey
Well-known member
With apologies for this long note, I would appreciate comments on my understanding of shooting modes from my beginners perspective. Despite lots of reading on forum and Barry Green’s book, I am having trouble getting my head around various frames, fields, interlace, progressive and how HMC40 records and outputs and settings I should use for making Blu Ray (or AVCHD DVD) to view on my plasma TV. Within this are settings to compensate for rolling shutter issues with CMOS.
I will experiment and make mistakes on my own later, but for upcoming vacation can I selfishly draw on forum experience to see if my following understandings are correct for my purposes (don’t want to re-ignite previous discussions about “best” modes)—I don’t really have time now to experiment with many different options.
First, I do two basic types of hobby level shooting; (A) vacation scenery typically without a lot of fast moving action; (B) vintage sports car racing shooting fast moving cars.
Second, my intention is to burn Blu Ray discs to view on my plasma tv (42 inch at moment but dreams of building home theater with projector) and share with others who have Blu Ray players. For “rough cuts” plan to burn AVCHD on DVD discs (but that is another topic). I am not professional so won’t be providing footage to tv channels. I will edit on Avid Media Composer 5 (once I get my head around that).
Third, at the moment I moved from standard definition VX2000 camera to the HMC40 to get the “video” high definition look I see on high def television programming. Later on I will experiment with “film” look of 24p, but may give 1080 30p a pass.
Fourth, both Panasonic Blu Ray player and plasma tv I will be using support 1080 60i, 60p and 24p as well as 720 60p (and also support AVCHD—I can view HMC40 SD cards directly from the Blu Ray player)
Questions for comment:
1. I plan to begin vacation shooting in 1080 60i. If I wanted to capture frames from video to make still photos I might use 1080 30p. However, for video page 39 of Panasonic HMC40 PDF says following if you “Set camera to 30P mode (with 1080 mode): “
Quoting: “Shoot 30 frames a second in the progressive mode. For output and recording , the 30 frame per second signal is converted to 60 field per second interlace. This mode gives you high quality images.” End quote. I don’t really understand this but I take this to mean any output from camera via HDMI cable to tv or SD card to load into NLE editor will be 60i interlace anyhow?? So, temporal look of 30p will be different than shooting 1080 60i , but high definition “look” on TV will be same for both 1080 30p and 1080 60i????
There have been many comments about vertical resolution suffering in 60i because the interlacing means you have two fields of 540 vertical resolution—but to human eye viewing the video don’t you see one frame of 1080 vertical resolution?? Also, Barry notes on p 86 of his book to minimize skew associated with CMOS use a fast frame rate—recommends 1080 60i.
Also as Barry says on p 132 of his book: In interlaced mode (1080i/60i) the camera captures 59.94 progressive frames per second, but since there is not yet any established broadcast standard for 1080/60p the camera has to slice each progressive frame into fields (essentially half of a video frame, either the even lines or the odd lines). When set to 1080 interlaced mode these AVCCAM cameras simulate interlaced video and record interlaced video like any video camera.” So again, it seems human eye watching video will see 1080 vertical resolution.
2. For fast action sports cars I may use 720 60p. I do sometimes capture frames from video to print photos and the progressive mode would make batter photos I think than interlace mode of 1080 60i??? It has also been commented that 720 60p appears to have as good a high definition when viewed on tv and most tv sports programming is shot in 720 60p. However, what about skew due to CMOS scanning from top to bottom even in progressive mode—is 60 i still better than 60 p to avoid skew??? I typically pan with race cars as they go by and I never noticed any problems with the CCD sensors on my old Sony VX2000 ( I know they take a frame all at once) but may see a problem with CMOS??
I will experiment and make mistakes on my own later, but for upcoming vacation can I selfishly draw on forum experience to see if my following understandings are correct for my purposes (don’t want to re-ignite previous discussions about “best” modes)—I don’t really have time now to experiment with many different options.
First, I do two basic types of hobby level shooting; (A) vacation scenery typically without a lot of fast moving action; (B) vintage sports car racing shooting fast moving cars.
Second, my intention is to burn Blu Ray discs to view on my plasma tv (42 inch at moment but dreams of building home theater with projector) and share with others who have Blu Ray players. For “rough cuts” plan to burn AVCHD on DVD discs (but that is another topic). I am not professional so won’t be providing footage to tv channels. I will edit on Avid Media Composer 5 (once I get my head around that).
Third, at the moment I moved from standard definition VX2000 camera to the HMC40 to get the “video” high definition look I see on high def television programming. Later on I will experiment with “film” look of 24p, but may give 1080 30p a pass.
Fourth, both Panasonic Blu Ray player and plasma tv I will be using support 1080 60i, 60p and 24p as well as 720 60p (and also support AVCHD—I can view HMC40 SD cards directly from the Blu Ray player)
Questions for comment:
1. I plan to begin vacation shooting in 1080 60i. If I wanted to capture frames from video to make still photos I might use 1080 30p. However, for video page 39 of Panasonic HMC40 PDF says following if you “Set camera to 30P mode (with 1080 mode): “
Quoting: “Shoot 30 frames a second in the progressive mode. For output and recording , the 30 frame per second signal is converted to 60 field per second interlace. This mode gives you high quality images.” End quote. I don’t really understand this but I take this to mean any output from camera via HDMI cable to tv or SD card to load into NLE editor will be 60i interlace anyhow?? So, temporal look of 30p will be different than shooting 1080 60i , but high definition “look” on TV will be same for both 1080 30p and 1080 60i????
There have been many comments about vertical resolution suffering in 60i because the interlacing means you have two fields of 540 vertical resolution—but to human eye viewing the video don’t you see one frame of 1080 vertical resolution?? Also, Barry notes on p 86 of his book to minimize skew associated with CMOS use a fast frame rate—recommends 1080 60i.
Also as Barry says on p 132 of his book: In interlaced mode (1080i/60i) the camera captures 59.94 progressive frames per second, but since there is not yet any established broadcast standard for 1080/60p the camera has to slice each progressive frame into fields (essentially half of a video frame, either the even lines or the odd lines). When set to 1080 interlaced mode these AVCCAM cameras simulate interlaced video and record interlaced video like any video camera.” So again, it seems human eye watching video will see 1080 vertical resolution.
2. For fast action sports cars I may use 720 60p. I do sometimes capture frames from video to print photos and the progressive mode would make batter photos I think than interlace mode of 1080 60i??? It has also been commented that 720 60p appears to have as good a high definition when viewed on tv and most tv sports programming is shot in 720 60p. However, what about skew due to CMOS scanning from top to bottom even in progressive mode—is 60 i still better than 60 p to avoid skew??? I typically pan with race cars as they go by and I never noticed any problems with the CCD sensors on my old Sony VX2000 ( I know they take a frame all at once) but may see a problem with CMOS??
