What mode are you shooting in????

[ChrisHarding]

Hi All

It would be interesting to know who favours which mode on the HMC40 and 80. I replaced by HMC70's in February with 80's and as you know the 70's only shoot interlaced.

Each cam has done around 50+ hours BUT so far I stuck to 1080 i until my wedding season was over. Now I have some free weekends I need to establish which progressive modes I should be using for events like weddings.

Is there any advantage using 1080 30P or do you find 720 30P is good enough (Actually being in PAL country mine are 25p and 50p ) Unless I'm doing a lot of slomo is 720 60P worth using??? Wedding have very little fast motion so I was figuring that 720 30P (25P for me) would be good enough or is there a reason I should be shooting at 1080 ??? Apart from the ceremony vows the lens is pretty much at full wide but I do zoom in for the vows probably 3X maximum.

Would 720 30P give the camera enough crop factor on semi-zoomed shots????

Your input would be much appreciated

Chris

 

[Greg Smith]

I use a few different modes depending on the ultimate use of the video.

My "go to" mode for most high quality video work is 1080/30p. Progressive modes play best on the web and when you distribute video files for viewing on a computer. Over-the air broadcasters and most Blu-Ray players prefer 1080/60i, but you can convert 1080/30p to that format with little loss of visual quality (and maybe none at all, since many HD monitors de-interlace internally and play back both fields simultaneously).

If the subject is sports or other kinds of fast action, I prefer 720/60p, which works universally for the web and Blu-Ray, downconverts OK to SD for DVD distribution, and does a better job of capturing motion, at the obvious cost in raw resolution. Broadcast networks and local stations are kind of evenly split between preferring 1080/60i and 720/60p in this country, but will usually accept either one.

If shooting for broadcast and absolutely pressed, I will record at 1080/60i initially, but I really think that getting rid of interlace is one of the major advantages of HD, and try to avoid this unless the user will accept nothing else.

I'm not a fan of the 24p formats, whose purpose, to my mind, is to simulate the look of film at the expense of rendering motion less realistically. I know many people prefer that look, but I tend to think of that as nostalgia, not pragmatic image-making. (There. I finally said it.)

This is all in the USA, of course -- I'd probably shoot 1080/25p most often if working in a PAL country. What I'd really love, of course, would be a universally standardized 1080/60p format, but I suspect that is a few years from gaining widespread acceptance.

Would 720 30P give the camera enough crop factor on semi-zoomed shots????

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. The cameras I'm familiar with all use the full sensor area and downscale it internally to 720 lines when shooting in that format. There is no cropping, and lenses give the same angle of view at the same focal length regardless of format.

- Greg

 

[ChrisHarding]

Thank Greg

Ignore the crop factor question.. yes my cams downsize internally if the mode is 720!! Just doing a few local tests at both 720 25P and 50P I seem to find that if you render this out to SD the end result seems to be a lot sharper than using 1080 footage ... Maybe 720 downsizes better in the NLE???? I have so far been shooting 1080i then transcoding (and stripping interlacing too) down to HDV so my computer can handle the file. The transcoded file is pristine and almost as good as the MTS file during editing but downsizing gives quite a soft result (I expect soft but not that much!!) Doing the same with 720 just seems to make a "less soft" SD MPEG2 file for the DVD (Our brides can't even spell BluRay!!! let alone own a player!!) so all content sadly is SD!!

Thanks for the informative feedback

Chris