shooting non-interlaced footage in whole frames

filmman

filmman

Veteran
I'm considering buying a D90 so I can shoot, for example, 24p and various frame rates, such as 12 and 15 frames per second -- progressive mode.

Can the D90 do that? Can I avoid working with 29.97 and 23.98 altogether ... because I just don't understand what those numbers mean. They have been explained to me many times; but I don't want to know about fractions. I am only interested in whole frames.

Can you answer my question regarding the D90? Can this camera shoot 24 whole frames per second?
 
filmman said:
I don't want to know about fractions. I am only interested in whole frames
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haha, sorry but that's a truly interesting concern. it's not like it skips the last few rows of the 24th frame, it's just that it doesn't have time for it in the first second. you're not losing any frames, you're just losing time. and btw the d90 shoots exactly 24 frames so you're set anyway.
 
We only have interlaced (i) or progressive (p) in video. If it's progressive - therefore non-interlaced - it must by definition be whole frames, no matter how many frames per second.

As mattsand says, you're talking about time, not frames. The numbers you gave concern TV broadcast standards, and this again may or will be different from particular camera capture rates.

What do you want to do with your footage?

and

The D90 captures 24p (that is, whole frames) per second and ONLY 24p. Any variation on this must be done in post production.
 
oh, that's where the mystery was! Video cannot display video in 24 frames per second; it's technically slow. So the D90 shoots 24 whole frames anyway and that is the 24p that causes so much excitement :)

Ok, thanks, gentlemen. I'm very impressed by the level of response. This is the first time I've received a proper answer to this question, which I've been agonizing over at so many user groups. LOL Thank you, for the info.

http://www.releasing.net/filmmaker/
 
yes and no, 23.98 is just fine too and in many ways better, it's 29.97/30p that a lot of people don't like, and 59.94/60i especially, not really because of the interlace, but because of the increased temporal resolution which doesn't look like film. if you shoot film at 60 fps and project it the same speed it starts to look a lot like video, go figure.
 
stupid example: if you have a cup of coffee every 5 hours around the clock you're drinking 4.8 cups per day, even though you're never having a fraction of a cup. while 23.98 might seem arbitrary it's really no more random than 24, 12 or 15, since there's an infinite number of frame rates to choose from.
 
thanks for helping further, because as die-hard filmmaker I couldn't understand what the fractions were all about. So here is the most important question I have about this whole video technology with respect to myself as a filmmaker:

my 35mm features are shot in 24 frames per second and I'd like to edit them in FCP (I have the FCP 5.04 Studio and a G5) -- if I have them telecined as 24 frames per second, they will give them to me as 23.98, right?

and then when I finish editing the movies in the 23.98 timeline, when I go to export a List for negative cutting (which I do myself BTW), will the 23.98 frame count match my 35mm frame count exactly?

Ok, that is the most important question, because the first time I had my 35mm movie (Butterflies in the Wind) telecined, I didn't know much about digital editing. I had was just learning FCP. So I asked the telecine operator, "What is the frame rate going to be?" He said 29.97.

I kept asking everyone on the user group until I had everyone irritated and I still didn't know this:

After finishing the edit of my feature film in the 29.97 timeline, will I be able to get rid of the "extra frames" and end up with a 24fps movie (or even a 23.98 fps movie -- that would be okay too)? I was told many things that I didn't understand ... and still don't. They said, "Use reverse telecine.)

Ok, but will I end up with the original 24 frames? Here is when nobody could tell me and they were mad at me. LOL I don't understand.
 
filmman said:
oh, that's where the mystery was! Video cannot display video in 24 frames per second; it's technically slow. So the D90 shoots 24 whole frames anyway and that is the 24p that causes so much excitement
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Video can display a multitude of frame rates, as can celluloid film. In theory, video is not limited to any frame rate. Early film cameras, however, were limited to low frame rates, and the standard became 24 frames per second. This frame rate is adjusted when transferred for television broadcast. The 24 frame rate is exciting to some people because it replicates the standard film frame rate. The video look is partly - only partly - due to higher per-second frame rates. Some people were disappointed when the Canon 5D was released because the camera's native capture was 30 frames a second - which is something of a standard for NTSC (mainly North America) video.

The decimal-point frame rates being discussed are relevant when it comes frame rate adjustment for display or broadcast. The frame rate you will need for adequate viewing will differ depending on whether the final medium is a projection screen, a US television, a European television, or a computer monitor. Such frame rates can be created in post production, and this is often a complex process.
 
filmman said:
After finishing the edit of my feature film in the 29.97 timeline, will I be able to get rid of the "extra frames" and end up with a 24fps movie (or even a 23.98 fps movie -- that would be okay too)? I was told many things that I didn't understand ... and still don't. They said, "Use reverse telecine.)

Ok, but will I end up with the original 24 frames? Here is when nobody could tell me and they were mad at me. LOL I don't understand.
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If I understand you correctly, the following will apply:

29.97 is the NTSC standard frame rate, but you should decide what you want according to where your film will be broadcast (and of course you can have more than one frame rate for different media).

You can alter the frame rate from this footage even if you have no celluloid master. You need to understand how the 29.97 frame rate is assembled before you can attempt to pull it back down to 24 fps.

The telecine is a machine process that copies film frames to video. That's what it does, and it can transfer x film frames to x video frames. If you want 24, you can get it. If you want 29.97, you can get it. Your adviser is telling you to undo the telecine process that was applied to arrive at 29.97 fps. This is not particularly complex. Note that you have not lost frames - the telecine will extract your original frames out of those that have been reproduced.
 
So I guess the answer is yes, I can recover the 24 frames per second of my original feature shot in 35mm. I will attempt to do this with a short clip from my movie. Thanks for the help.

Also, with respect to the digital video that I will be shooting with my Sony Z1U camera. I'm going to see if I can reduce the number of frames from 60i to 24p. I'm using Compressor 2 in FCP 5.04.

Wish me luck :)
 
> my 35mm features are shot in 24 frames per second and I'd like to edit them in FCP
> if I have them telecined as 24 frames per second, they will give them to me as 23.98, right?

Someone will have to slow it down to 23.98, either the telecine guys or you. On the other hand, 24.00 and 60.00 are legit for HDTV, but it seems that no one actually uses these rates for broadcast.

> and then when I finish editing the movies in the 23.98 timeline,
> when I go to export a List for negative cutting (which I do myself BTW),
> will the 23.98 frame count match my 35mm frame count exactly?

If you goal is filmout, you don't need to slow down to 23.98, this is a TV rate.

> the first time I had my 35mm movie (Butterflies in the Wind) telecined,
> I asked the telecine operator, "What is the frame rate going to be?" He said 29.97.

He meant 29.97 interlaced. They transfer it to interlaced video with 2-3 pulldown, not to progressive nor to PsF. This is old tech. Not recommended.

> After finishing the edit of my feature film in the 29.97 timeline,
> will I be able to get rid of the "extra frames" and end up with
> a 24fps movie (or even a 23.98 fps movie -- that would be okay too)?
> I was told many things that I didn't understand ... and still don't.
> They said, "Use reverse telecine.)

You can reverse telecine, but it will suck. When you edit in 29.97 interlaced -- that is, in regular 60i -- you cut and paste, so you lose 2-3 cadence. Your movie will be a mess of 2-3 clips, so at the very best, when you reverse telecine to 24p, you will have cadence breaks at cut points, and you will have image artifacts like blurring or combing, and loss of resolution. This is oldschool approach.

You need to edit the whole thing at 24p and export it as 24p.

Get your film telecined into either native progressive or into PsF (24.00 or 23.98, does not matter). Edit in progressive, deliver as progressive. If they are so stone-aged, get the movie telecined into 60i, then reverse telecine BEFORE EDITING and edit in progressive.

Do not edit in 60i timeline, the result will suffer. You can deliver as 60i, but progressive-scan player will choke on cuts and the image will suffer because of cadence breakups. The more cuts, the more defects.

> Also, with respect to the digital video that I will be shooting with my Sony Z1U camera.
> I'm going to see if I can reduce the number of frames from 60i to 24p.

This will not look good. The Z1 has CineFrame24, which is artificial 24p method, it sucks. You lose resolution and the cadence is not smooth. Converting native 60i to 24p with a really good converter can deliver better results than using Cineframe, but still this will not look as good as shooting in proper progressive. I watched Genghis Blues recently, it is a nice film shot with Digital8 cameras. I cannot help noticing interlace artifacts here and there whenever there was movement on the screen. Do not shoot with the Z1 if you want the best image.

Slowing down / speeding up between 24.00 and 23.98 is the least of your worries.

http://www.adamwilt.com/HDV/cineframe.html
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_7_4/dvd-benchmark-part-5-progressive-10-2000.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine
 
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filmman said:
So I guess the answer is yes, I can recover the 24 frames per second of my original feature shot in 35mm
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yes but what for? sounds like you have a one light tape and i wouldn't use that for anything but offline editing, for which pulldown 29.97 works just fine. ask the telecine house for the punch frame keycode and use something like cinema tools to create a cutlist (or give the post house the edl and have them do it), which you can then use to do a "real" 24p telecine from the neg, or cut the neg and strike a print.
 
Cranky said:
Do not edit in 60i timeline, the result will suffer
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*editing* in 60i is usually reversible if you've logged your footage properly using cinema tools or similar. you don't necessarily have to deliver 60i just because that's how you edited. most films between 1996 and 2006 or so were edited in 60i (before that it was mostly film, after probably 24p) and still delivered as the usual 24fps film print.
 
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