Can I combine 720 60p and 1080 24p in after effects?

A

ashhousewares

Member
I want to shoot a small film in 1080 24p and have some slow motion elements for twister shot in 720 60p on a canon t3i. Can I combine the two disparate frame rates and aspects into one timeline in after effects? Will the final result turn out well and usable? If it is possible what would be the best process and final frame rate and aspect? Thanks in advance.
 
Since I assume you'll be converting the 60p to 24p beforehand, yes. Otherwise it won't be in slow motion.

Usable? That's debatable. What are you shooting? Is it a wide shot with a brick building in the background and a shingled roof? I wouldn't think so. Is it a tight shot of someones face? Sure.
 
Sorry for my ignorance-newbie. What would I use to convert the 60p footage to 24p beforehand? and when that is accomplished can I combine the footage with the native 24p 1080? The deal is I don't like the way 60p 720 looks but that frame rate is needed to film and to convert to slomo in post. I like the look of 24p and want that look for most of my film with a few slow mo elements. What would be the post work flo for combining the two and would the end result (frame rate aspect) be uniform and goodlooking or 24p 1080 "goodlooking"? And side question, when I convert the 60p beforehand to 24p-will the footage then adopt the same visual characteristics as native 24p? Thanks again for any help in this area-I have a shoot coming up soon and I need to know how to address this situation.
 
If you want it for slo-mo, you don't want to convert it to 24p before you slow it down. That would defeat the purpose.

All of this sounds like you don't really want to be doing this in After Effects, anyway -- you're asking editing questions, so you should be doing this in Premiere. After Effects isn't an NLE.
 
Apologies. I misspoke. I meant conform and said convert (I'm more of an FCS editor, and that's a necessary step for the slow motion). But if I understand Premiere correctly, right click the footage>Modify>Interpret footage. Then choose whatever your frame rate will be (24, 23.98, or whatever).
 
Just interpreting it would not change the temporal speed. You want to right-click and change the playback rate to 40%.
 
Thank you for the replies. I think I know what to do. I'm just worried on what frame rate to shoot. 60p converted to 24p, if it looks good, that is like film not video, then perhaps I should shoot the whole thing in 60p and then convert and apply slo motion to certain parts. And I actually edit in Avid and finish in AE. I assume Avid has some sort of conversion system to convert 60p to 24p and make it uniform with native 24p.
 
The reason 60p works for slo-mo is that it has more frames per second than 24. So, if you play back 60p by slowing it down to 24 fps, you get a smooth slo-mo.

If you convert it to 24p first, then you lose all the benefit of the extra frames. It would be no different than just shooting 24p.

In a typical NLE -- and I don't know if this applies to Avid or not; never done it -- you edit on a 24p timeline and slow 60p down to 40%. Then, when you export/render the whole project to 24p, you have pitch-perfect slo-mo, and each 60p frame will become its own 24p frame.
 
The larger issue will be scaling up the 720 to 1080. Upressing is generally not a good idea.

You'd be better off shooting the bulk in 720p/24 to match the 720p/60 slow-mo shots.
 
With Final Cut, you conform the footage in cinema tools. Takes about 2 seconds.

Just about every complex project I've done that's using slow mo or a lot of keying, I do my final edit in 720P.

Purists may disagree, but 720 looks great on the web and on decent sized TVs (looks great on 42" plasmas in fact). That way, all of your 720 footage doesn't need to be uprezzed; keys and effects often benefit from scaling down after compositing (composite in 1080, render out to 720 for your NLE). And your 1080 footage can be cropped if desired, or moved around using 3d cameras or motion tracking.

Your only other alternative is up scaling your 720 footage - that can bring on the noise (and DSLR 720 footage is often a real mess of noise to begin with) and make things look much softer. Test test test.
 
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