FS7: HFR for sports

L

LennyLevy

Veteran
I have to shoot some sports: soccer (7:30 - 9:30 so the light will change) ) and volleyball (indoors) with my FS7 and the client wants 4K and a mixture of standard speed and high speed.
I'm not shooting for a game video , just B roll.
I don't shoot much sports or much HFR so I'm looking for a little advice.

I figured I would shoot the standard stuff in UHD 60P and just use a 1/180th shutter. Then they can slow it down more or less or keep it normal with audio.

For more extreme HFR obviously I have to go to HD and here's where I have some questions:

1- Will I get cleaner video shooting center scan at speeds of 120 fps and 180 fps?
This would just be a christmas present because it won't hurt me at all to get a more telephoto image.

2- Is there any lowering of quality when going above 120 to 180 or is the additional softening and moire from pixel binning the same for anything over 60fps?

3- Is footage shot above 60fps recorded as 8 bit or 10 bit in XAVC-I

I haven't talked to the producer yet but if by any chance they want interlace - does that affect anything? (I hardly ever shoot interlace.)

I know I need to watch out for flickering with the existing light sources and I guess you can only check that on playback in the camera.

Any tips about shutter speed or anything else.

Thanks folks

lenny levy
 
GOing in and out of 4k and HFR is very annoying at the kind of pace you might want to switch at a live event.

HFR of either mode is not really up to presentation on a 4k timeline.

Id say Crop HFR equals or betters fullframe HFR.

You have the camera and can test. I did test a while back, unfortuanately I annotated it in a confusing manner

'Crop' means crop mode
400% means Ive blown up the footage on the timeline..
Im not sure what crop 25p means - I guess I was seeing the S16 zoom lens options

I think the two shots u care about are 38s onwards.. comparing fullsensor HFR and crop sensor HFR - Id say crop is better :)

https://vimeo.com/153679257

 
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morgan_moore said:
To check for flicker you must playback - you wont see it in shooting mode.
Click to expand...

+1 on the flicker issues! Often venues in the States will have lighting flicker issues if your shutter goes past 1/120th - and even if the lights aren't flickering you may experience flickering weirdness in things like billboards.

But at least during the Soccer you should be good. I would normally go with a 180 Degree shutter whenever possible - so double your frame rate for the shutter.
 
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Thanks for your help.
I'm not worried about changing between between 4K and HFR because I'm only getting B roll and beauty coverage of these events not trying to document the course of the events.

However I am concerned about whether switching between 59.94 UHD and HD HFR would create any Post issues?
 
LennyLevy said:
However I am concerned about whether switching between 59.94 UHD and HD HFR would create any Post issues?
Click to expand...

Why would it? you specify the base rate in the camera and S+Q conforms it perfectly.

(You better check that as Im not familiar with 59.94 as a frame rate - I 'whole number' 25p as my base)
 
Yeah I guess its HD and UHD that I would eb concerned about but typically that's not a big deal.

what about mu questions of 8 or 10 Bit for HFR? (I won't be shooting log so its not a problem on this one anyway. )
 
XAVC-I is always 10-bit. Every resolution and every frame rate. As for center crop, I always use it for HFR. I find the artifacts from pixel binning too obvious in high contrast situations. You can run your own tests to see if you find it objectionable. I typically shoot HFR with a 1/500 shutter. Anything slower and you can get motion blur which just has a video look to it. It all depends on how much light you have available.
 
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