Someone tell me if I"m wrong or not? (LONG)

[reflex]

This started a while back on another message board. Now i'm all confused and sh*te and want to get the info straight.

I'll post what I wrote in blue and what other people wrote in yellow.

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Someone posted a way to author a DVD using 24p footage without adding a pulldown. So he posted this small tutorial. Then here's some of the first posts....


Wow, thanks! I'll have to give this a try! I've never really messed with 24p footage much, mainly because I wasn't sure how much of a diference it made. Anywho, thanks for the input!
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yea, when i shot 24p, i think it looks so much better. 60i looks horribly videoy no matter what you do to it. 30p is the best bet if you want a filmy look, but still 24p is 4/5 the number of frames of 30p, so there is no comparison. 24p has the jitter of film and looks almost just like it if you put the right filters on it.
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Getting the correct algorithm to seamlessly morph it from 24-30 is the real test.
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? why would you want to convert it back to 30? if you are making a dvd, its best jsut to leave it at 24 from what i have experienced.
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Unless you happen to have a television that can play 24fps, you'll have to change it. And I've never seen a television able to do that. The average television runs NTSC (30fps) or PAL (25fps).------------------

Now here's where the discussion starts............

What do you mean ' it's best just to leave it at 24 from what you have experienced ' ?? It doesn't matter what the frame rate of the footage is.
Televisions don't 'run' at any frame rate. The speed of VIDEO is 30 frames per second, the speed film runs at is 24 fps, ( although now a lot of the video cams are coming with a 24fps option ) PAL is just a different format for there sh*t over there. Since their broacast standards are a little different than here, but that has to do with resolution, not fps.

TV's will play any frame rate from 1 to one billion. The speed that you record something is just personal preference. The only reason to encode a DVD with true 24p footage is for space saving purposes. If you really don't need the extra frames and are trying to fit a lot on there then it would make sense, otherwise 24 and 30 frame footage is identical. You will not tell the difference.

I always seem to get into battles over this LOL but I'm going to chime in again...

24p makes no difference as far as getting the film look. The 'look' of film and the 'look' of video are different because they are totally different processes. Film is a chemical process and video, and electronic process. Frame rate and jitter and all that sh*t doesn't make it more film like. Do you see any major motion pictures that looks jittery and studdered? The reason that the 24p cameras look more 'filmic' is because of the 'P' in 24p. Progressive mode. It takes full frames instead of shooting two half fields. The little difference in frames will not make your video look like film. Another reason for the 'filmic' look is the gamma and light settings on the cameras. Most of the 24p camera have advances gamma curve settings and ways to control the light entering the camera, much the way a more expensive film camera would. So that helps a lot.

Another thing that helps too is that on bigger films, they use super nice lenses. AND they switch them up for different shots. i.e. wide angles ( that need little focusing if any at all ) zoom lenses, etc... But most of the time the lenses have a MUCH shorter depth of field than our smaller prosumer/professional camcorders. PLUS ever watch behind the scenes on DVD's? and sometimes they put the deleted scenes on there ( some of the ones where they didn't do any post work on them ) and they look like sh*t. They do a lot of work in post to color correct and adjust to get it to look good.

I mean, jitter and all that is ok if you're going for that look for artistic purposes or you are trying to make a movie from the 1930's... other than that you can have it. I'm not trying to come down on you or anyone for liking 24p but I just dont believe that it's ' gods gift ' to people that can't shoot on film for whatever reason. In the future , maybe advances can be made to make video totally emulate the look of film but for right now, it's just not quite there.
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Film something (anything, but preferably a hand held shot with lots of stuff going on) for about 5 seconds. Plonk it twice in to an editing program and make one 24p (leaving one 30i). Stick it on a loop and watch it on TV.

If you think the 24p doesn't look any more like film, well you're blind.

I agree that grading, colour curves, levels, etc are all essential for getting a film look, the very first step would be to make it 24p.

At the end of the day, film is shot at 24p, so anything else wouldn't look like film.

Plus in this day and age, colouring on decent video formats can rival film so there's no need to add any filters (especially in PAL, not Never Twice the Same Colour)

Going back to the first question, I've found that Sony Vegas can do an amazing automatic job with all pull downs.

On a side note, most of the above is irrelivant for me because I use 25fps PAL, and all film is shot at or sped up to 25fps
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im sorry reflex, but i agree with the last guy. a few things i want to say on this topic again. first of all. 24p DOES look more filmic. it DOES NOT look EXACTLY like film, becaues like you said, it is a different process. this is true... but, i have been studying this for a couple years, and this is what i will say.

film cameras shoot pictures almost exactly like a still camera (only it uses rotating shutter) so, you get individual, full frame (progressive) shots. the frame rate of the regular film camera is 24fps. unless they do slow motion, which they have 1000fps cameras and i think i've seen 15,000fps cameras for recording bullets or the like.

so... to say 24p does not look like film any more than 30p or 60i is very untrue. and YES if you actually watch a movie and pay attention, IT IS VERY STUTTERY! you can't usually tell because in movies almost everything is dollied or steadicamed, and the number of pans you see is very small. however, if you watch a pan, or a camera following a person, watch the background carefully, and you will deffinately see a signifigant jitter compared to 30p or 60i footage. so, this does add to the filmic look.

yes lighting and coloring have a lot to do with it. also, DOF plays a big factor, because it is shot with film lenses and 35mm film, not 1/3 inch ccds. PLUS film has MUCH higher quality and detail than the average xl-2 or similar cameras.

so that being said, 24p will deffinately give you a much more filmic look with the right framing, camera movements, lighting, DOF, makeup, sound, etc.

as far as making a 24p dvd. VERY USEFUL! IT DOES MATTER WAT THE FOOTAGE FRAMRATE IS! if you shot 24p, exporting with pulldown will have artifacting through 2/5 of the video, which is very very noticeable. so if you shoot 24p, burn 23.976 dvd, to keep the original framerate, and to save disc space. and yes epsilon, 23.976 dvds do exist, it is also an ntsc standard. (open a dvd in windvd and count how many frames you go through by stepping frame by frame in one second. you will find it is 24.
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I have done before that and do see a little bit of difference. But not a film like difference. The reason that film looks the way it does is because of WHAT it is and the way it deals with light. It is rediculous to think that 24 frames per second is the reason that film looks the way it does. If it did matter then when they shot the uber slow motion stuff ( i.e. the Matrix fights ) it would change the look totally. Since they were shooting at like 160 fps.


The reason film is at 24 fps is because of the cost and use of the material. 24 frames per second is the smallest amount of frames that can go buy for the eye not to notice the jitteryness too much. A long time ago they started to use this so they weren't wasting more film than they needed to.

I'm telling you shooting non interlaced is what the main difference is and not the frames.----------------------------
When you author a DVD it doesn't automatically transfer the footage to 24 fps.
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CONTINUED NEXT POST....

 

[reflex]

yes, i know authoring a dvd will not make it 24p. you have to shoot the footage as 24p which is what i was saying before. however. 24fps has a huge roll in the film look. there are key points to getting cinematic looks.

-lighting. they use thousands of watts of lights to film their scenes and they know how to place them and light up the area so that it looks how they want it to.
-smooth motion. dolly tracks, steadicams. even in "handheld" shots, it is not "jittery" like a minidv camera would be, becasue film cameras are much heavier, therefor it is harder to jerk it around.
-coloration
-24fps
-DOF. this one is huge. without a mini35 adapter, getting a real filmic look is very hard.

now, with these points, getting a filmic look isn't impossible with dv. i've seen it done before and i would not have been able to tell the difference. and btw reflexive, 24fps plays a huge role. and you are wrong to say that filming the matrix at 160fps would look different than the rest of the film, because it takes those 160 frames and plays them back at 24fps, so the jitteryness is the same. and 24fps is VERY noticable with the naked eye. if you were to watch a 1000fps, it wolud look so much different than 24fps. this DOES play a big role in getting a filmic look. remember it is 4/5 the fps of dv, which is quite a difference.


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some reason i have a feeling you are not 100% sure you know what you are talking about. if you want to get into technicalities, yes tvs DO "run" at 29.97 fps. they do not play from 1 to 1 billion. *i belive for playing 24fps they add pulldown, which you can figure out wat that is on your own, but i am not positive. all i know is that ntsc standards are both 29.97 and 23.98 what that means is that every second, 30 frames (in the case of 29.97) show, no matter what. you cannot make a tv play 1000000 frames in one second. a tv is simply a laser that uses electrmagnets to ponit it back and forth across the screen. it does this regardless the fps of the footage. now for 24fps i believe it is actually the dvd player that inserts the pulldown and sends that info to the tv. the reason for film being 24 could very well have originally been for space saving purposes, but it has been that way for almost a century, and it is in our heads, that that "looks good", most likely because it is less lifelike. where as video was made at 30fps because it is so much easier not having to worry about format issues. however, it looks cleaner, and more life-like.

So am i totally wrong here? If frame rates were the reason for the look of film then if you took a frame of video and a frame of film they would look exactly the same. And whats all this talk of jitteryness? I never see any jitteryness to movies... Do Tvs run at a frame rate? And if a movie is shot on 35mm and then put to DVD does that footage then have a pulldown to make it 29.97?

Some one tell me why film runs at 24 fps? What is the real original reason for that? And why has it been kept there?

I'm just tired of people thinking that 24p is gods gift to videographers. I believe that the reason cameras like the DVX look much better/ more professional etc... is because of the electronics and the way the camera handles the light entering it. Becuase I have seen people shoot 24p and it still looks like video. But then I have seen other people shoot in that mode and it looks awesome.

 

[khmuse]

So am i totally wrong here? If frame rates were the reason for the look of film then if you took a frame of video and a frame of film they would look exactly the same.

If you are speaking of progressive video and not interlaced video, you would expect that any two frames would have similar characteristics, however if you look at a single field of video (interlaced) then it is very different from a frame of film. A field has only 1/2 of the frames content (either only the odd or only the even lines of the full frame). Also, between any two fields, there is a temporal (time) difference so if motion has occurred, you will see the offset.

And whats all this talk of jitteryness? I never see any bitterness to movies... Do TVs run at a frame rate? And if a movie is shot on MM and then put to DVD does that footage then have a pulldown to make it 29.97?

NTSC Television runs at a rate of 29.97 frames/second. These frames are broken into two fields (each containing 1/2 the information) and are presented at twice the frame rate or 59.94 fields/second. Any source material (film or progressive video) that originates at anything other than 29.97 frames/second has to be made to comply with the requirements of NTSC video in order to be carried on video. This involves pulldown being applied.

Some one tell me why film runs at 24 fps? What is the real original reason for that? And why has it been kept there?

The exact reasons for the standardization to a 24 fps rate is a subject of some debate, but suffice to say that it is a standard and it is very much a part of what the established look is (at least how motion is perceived).

I'm just tired of people thinking that 24p is gods gift to videographers. I believe that the reason cameras like the DVX look much better/ more professional etc... is because of the electronics and the way the camera handles the light entering it. Becuase I have seen people shoot 24p and it still looks like video. But then I have seen other people shoot in that mode and it looks awesome.

Progressive capable video cameras are fairly close to a gift as without them, there would be considerably less interest in video as a format for film makers.

 

[Focus This!]

If you compare a frame of dv versus a frame of 35mm there WILL BE A DIFFERENCE in quality as the film resolution is higher...hence the cost of 2k telecine machines!

That is where the difference in film verus dv comes into play...you're right there.

However, 24p "tricks" our minds into 'thinking' film because it has the 'jitteriness' of film...that we've ALL grown up watching and knowing it's film 'when we see it'. While you may have seen '24p' that looked awful, it was very likely that what you saw was 60i and inadverntantly the shooter forget to set the DVX to 24p mode. (Who's not guilty of this? Who just lied on answering the last question!)

If it were just the electronics and light handling abilities of the camera, then my Canon LX200 should BLOW the doors off my 3 chip Panny Gs-120, and almost blow away the DVX-100a, until you factor in that it is analog electronics, Hi-8 tapes, 20 year old technology...

 

[David Jimerson]

What do you mean ' it's best just to leave it at 24 from what you have experienced ' ?? It doesn't matter what the frame rate of the footage is.
Televisions don't 'run' at any frame rate. The speed of VIDEO is 30 frames per second, the speed film runs at is 24 fps, ( although now a lot of the video cams are coming with a 24fps option ) PAL is just a different format for there sh*t over there. Since their broacast standards are a little different than here, but that has to do with resolution, not fps.

This is wrong.

NTSC televisions run at 60hz. That's 60i in DVX terms -- 60 interlace fields per second.

PAL TVs run at 50i -- 50 interlaced fields per second.

As for framerate, that's the equivalent of 29.97 (appx) frames per second (NTSC) and 25 frames per second (PAL).

So, obviously, this, too is wrong:

TV's will play any frame rate from 1 to one billion.

The speed that you record something is just personal preference.

This is true to an extent. You have a personal preference as to what you want the motion characteristics and overall sharpness to be -- do you want it to look like a soap opera or a game show (60i), or do you want it to look more like cinematic film (24p)?

But to say there is no difference between the two is ludicrous.

The only reason to encode a DVD with true 24p footage is for space saving purposes. If you really don't need the extra frames and are trying to fit a lot on there then it would make sense, otherwise 24 and 30 frame footage is identical. You will not tell the difference.

That depends on how it's shot. If it's shot in 60i, then you don't really have the option of 24p encoding. Sure, you can convert to 24p, but then it wouldn't look like 60i anymore, and if that's what you're going for, then you shouldn't do it.

If you shot in 24p, then encode in 29.97 with pulldown, you'll still retain the 24p look.

But why go through that compression step? If your footage is 24p, leave it 24p -- unless you can't edit IN 24p, in which case you won't be making a 24p DVD anyway.

24p makes no difference as far as getting the film look. The 'look' of film and the 'look' of video are different because they are totally different processes. Film is a chemical process and video, and electronic process. Frame rate and jitter and all that sh*t doesn't make it more film like.

That's just silly. When you shoot in 24p or 24 fps film, you're recording 24 pictures, 24 moments in time, per second. When you shoot 60i, you're recording 60 moments in time. The motion characteristics are entirely different. 24p or 24 fps film is more surreal, more dramatic, because it's much slower than the human eye, and in my opinion, it's more pleasing to the eye if you're going for narrative film. 60i is very realistic, very real-world, very . . . harsh. And it's because of the motion.

Do you see any major motion pictures that looks jittery and studdered?

Yeah, I do. Barry G pointed out "Sahara" not long ago, and it's a good example. Furthermore, if you check out Hollywood films where the camera quickly pans, following a character, you'll see the stutter in the fast-moving background, just like you would in 24p.

But cinematographers have been working with 24 fps film for 80 years; they've learned to work WITH the motion characteristics of the frame rate to maximize dramatic effect and to minimize its limitations.

Bad stutter with 24p video is the mark of someone who does not yet know how to shoot with 24p and thinks it's the same as shooting 60i. It's not.

The reason that the 24p cameras look more 'filmic' is because of the 'P' in 24p. Progressive mode. It takes full frames instead of shooting two half fields.

This is the other part of the equation, but only PART.

The little difference in frames will not make your video look like film. Another reason for the 'filmic' look is the gamma and light settings on the cameras. Most of the 24p camera have advances gamma curve settings and ways to control the light entering the camera, much the way a more expensive film camera would. So that helps a lot.

But you can put in all the lighting, gamma curves, etc., using 60i, and it will still look like video, not film.

As I said above, 60i is 60 moments in time, per second. 24p has only 40% of the temporal (movement) information.

I mean, jitter and all that is ok if you're going for that look for artistic purposes or you are trying to make a movie from the 1930's... other than that you can have it.

You won't have the "jitter" if you shoot properly. Or, at least, you will have effectively minimized it.

In fact, many of the camera techniques we've come to think of as "cinematic" were actually developed because film was shot at 24fps. If you're shooting for 24p correctly, you're already using cinematic techniques and are already a long way toward achieving the "film look."

Hollywood DVDs are all encoded in 24p -- at least the movie portions are. The DVD player then either adds a 2:3 pulldown for display on a standard TV, or plays at native 24p on a display capable of displaying it.

(As you'll find elsewhere on the site, 24fps was developed because it's the slowest rate which gave good sound sync. It was a film saver. But it was retained for its aesthetic qualities.)

So, to answer your question, yeah, you're way off base here.

 

[reflex]

ok. Thanks for setting me straight guys

:cheers:

 

[Joe_Kras]

If it makes you feel any better, I agree that there are a variety of things that comprise the "film look". 24p is (a major) one, but proper lighting (to make the most of videos limited dynamic range) and color correction (to emulate different film stocks) also help achieve this look.

Finally, I think some of what we are trying to achieve when we want our projects to look like film have nothing to do with acheiving a film look. Instead, it involves us wanting our projects to look professional. This involves things like good composition, excellent audio, and a great performance of a great story.

 

[reflex]

Yeah I definately agree. I guess I just had all the technical stuff completely backwards. I feel like an ass now. But now I learned something new, and thats what counts I guess