Wot's the best: 25P or 50i?

J

johnnyspack

Active member
I'm shooting a short film on my XH baby w/ a brevis. Stylistically it's very Diane Arbus still type shots...an occaisional pan, but pretty static. I want to know; should I shoot 25p or 50i (Pal) considering my workflow is G4 15">fcp 6.0.3> HDV>Prores>SD DVD Output. Any suggestions would be great.....


Dman
 
In this case, it all depends on how you want it to look. 25p will give more of a film-like look, whereas 50i would be more of a news-style look. In this case, the choice should be stylistic, because it will have almost no effect on your workflow. Your 25p footage could be edited in a 50i timeline, and your 50i footage could be edited in a 25p timeline. It's all stored as 50i, anyways.
 
When you shoot 50i, the stream recorded to tape is, obviously, 50i.

However, when you shoot 25p, that progressive frame, say 1080 lines, is split in to 2 fields of 540 lines each, and put into a 50i stream. When you edit the video in a 25p timeline, your NLE will take each field, or each part, of the segmented frame and reconstruct it back to 25p. However, you could choose to edit the video in a 50i timeline and there would be little discernable difference.

However, there is a discernable difference between footage shot at 25p and 50i, as mentioned above. Choose whichever one you think works best in terms of style.
 
If you've gone through the pain of obtaining a 35mm adaptor, you probably want 25p, since 35mm film is always progressive.
 
Aroon_Narayanan said:
However, when you shoot 25p, that progressive frame, say 1080 lines, is split in to 2 fields of 540 lines each, and put into a 50i stream. When you edit the video in a 25p timeline, your NLE will take each field, or each part, of the segmented frame and reconstruct it back to 25p. However, you could choose to edit the video in a 50i timeline and there would be little discernable difference.
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As far as I know, the XH-A1 25F output is not streamed as 50i. That's why only a Canon camcorder can be used for XH-A1 25F footage capture. But anyway you are correct in saying that you can still edit it in a 50i timeline.

Richard
 
i choose shooting mode depending what i need to shoot.stuff what have less mooving and pans its quiet good to shoot in 25f mode.weddings etc.25 F mode have little bit better lowlight performance too.50i mode preferred for sports events and so.from 50i footage you got better slowmo too.

R
 
Raul Rooma said:
i choose shooting mode depending what i need to shoot.stuff what have less mooving and pans its quiet good to shoot in 25f mode.weddings etc.25 F mode have little bit better lowlight performance too.50i mode preferred for sports events and so.from 50i footage you got better slowmo too.

R
Click to expand...


This was helpful info. If shooting with greenscreen, I am assuming 50i for me 60i would be best. Even if I wanted 24P as finished result, it would be best to record at 60i for fast motion and maybe quality against greenscreen?
 
You don't want to shoot fast motion against a green screen. Motion blur doesn't key well. I'm not sure if interlacing affects the quality of keys, but i would go for progressive if available.
 
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