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What format do you film in?

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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
Hey guys,

I just got a Panasonic HMC-40 and am pretty stoked about it.
I'm not really sure whether to record in 1080-60i/30p or 720-60p...

So what do you guys film in for:

1. the Web (almost 100% of my videos go on vimeo)
2. DVDs (making a video for a contest soon that needs to be sent in on a dvd)

Is there any point in shooting in 1080 if I am just going to have to compress it for the web anyway?

Thanks
R
Dec 6 2009 4:59PM
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Jwenz
Posts: 8893 - Karma: 7,633
well i have hvx. i shoot 720pn30p or 720pn60p...i have never filmed 1080 before. i put all online
Dec 6 2009 5:11PM
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horner
Posts: 2439 - Karma: 1,578
shoot 1080 24p.  30p looks like barf in my opinion.
Dec 6 2009 5:16PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
Really?
I've heard alot of bad things about 24p, especially for shooting sports... (would it be good for a video of someone playing the piano? its for a contest)

I will shoot in 60i for slomo, but I figured 30p would be the best for everything else...

and how is 1080 vs 720 for the web?
Dec 6 2009 5:24PM
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horner
Posts: 2439 - Karma: 1,578
Yes, really, 24p is great.
Dec 6 2009 5:27PM
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Jwenz
Posts: 8893 - Karma: 7,633
why would you shoot 60i for slowmo unless you wanted to slow down in post. 60p in camera filming is nice for dope slow mo. IMO. never filmed 1080 but i can't imagine the quality is noticable online
Dec 6 2009 5:34PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
yea thats what I was thinking

I was planning on using JES deinterlacer to convert the 60i footage to 60p (it uses the bob algorithm)

I think I will just stick with 720p for now though
Dec 6 2009 5:43PM
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thisandthatfilms
Posts: 7714 - Karma: 526
use interlaced for lowmo


30p looks great for sports but getsreall shotty when you slow it down

24p looks even worse slowed down but you get that "filmy" look so a lot of people like it for shorts or indie films
Dec 6 2009 6:22PM
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eheath
Posts: 61603 - Karma: 123,049
Why would you do anything with 60i when you can shoot 60p?


Now that i have 48gbs of p2s, i only shoot 720p60p. Shooting 1080 is not needed, 720 is enough for the web and dvds. DO NOT shoot 60i if you can shoot 60p.


As for horners suggestion of 24p, please dont do it, horner you are a very advanced filmer and do alot more filming than skiing, 24p is not meant for action.
Dec 6 2009 6:25PM
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horner
Posts: 2439 - Karma: 1,578
24p can handle action just fine, you just have to be a little more aware of your camera movements.  It's worth messing around with at least.
Dec 6 2009 6:39PM
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eheath
Posts: 61603 - Karma: 123,049
This guy seems like he's not very experienced, telling him to shoot 24p is unreasonable.
Dec 6 2009 7:00PM
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eheath
Posts: 61603 - Karma: 123,049
Also, you basically eliminate any slowmo opportunities shooting in 24p.
Dec 6 2009 7:00PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
Alright, It sounds like I will be shooting in 60p720 for now at least...

Horner, I might mess around with 24p eventually, but it does not make sense to me why one would want to shoot in 24p which is less fps than 60p for slomo shots.
It might look good for the piano, but again I think that 60p is a safer bet for now.

Thanks eheath, horner, Jwenz and thisandthat...
Dec 6 2009 7:19PM
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horner
Posts: 2439 - Karma: 1,578
Not really unreasonable.  You don't have to be some expert shooter to shoot 24p.  Telling someone not to shoot 24p because they don't have much experience doesn't make sense.  It's worth messing around with.

Play around with it ReedSkis.  If it works for you, great, if not, don't use it.  Experiment and see what you come up with.  If anything you'll become a better shooter by trying new things. 
Dec 6 2009 7:33PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
Yea for sure Horner, my philosophy as always been to try new things... I'll definitely try it eventually, I just really can't mess up this video I am making of my brother playing the piano, since it is kind of a one time deal.
Dec 6 2009 7:36PM
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dergblerp
Posts: 1303 - Karma: 77
First of all, eheath is absolutely right about 60i vs 60p, but I do also agree with horner about 24p.  I own an XHA1 which doesn't do 60p, but sometimes I shoot with either an Ex3 or HPX/HMC and I usually do 24p for normal speed footage and 60p for slow mo.  Slowing 60p down to 24p means it's 40% of the original speed as opposed to slowing it down to 30p making it 50% of it's original speed, basically meaning the footage is slower in 24p but still looks smooth.  You can't really go wrong with 30p or 24p though for normal speed.  I don't really film skiing that often, so I am more with Horner and prefer 24p.  Bottom line is don't shoot in 60i.
Dec 6 2009 7:49PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
alright, so I just shot some random stuff in 720/60p.

My shutterspeed was 1/60 and i had auto iris and auto focus on

I imported the footage to final cut using log and transfer, placed the footage on the timeline and then watched and... It looked terrible, the quality did not seem nearly up to par with my canon hf10, it all looked very grainy and fuzzy.

What did I do wrong? I tried shooting in auto mode, same result.

I am using a kingston 32gb sdhc card if that makes a difference...

HELP!
Dec 6 2009 8:36PM
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Mooserz
Posts: 2945 - Karma: 32
I cant shoot 60p and have to shoot 60i/ converting wont kill me will it?
Dec 6 2009 9:11PM
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skiierrrrrrr
Posts: 998 - Karma: 694
For a dvx, would you recommend filming in 24p or 30p? Cant you "overcrank" 60i into 24p for slowmo too?
Dec 6 2009 9:18PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
^^^ Disregard my comment about the footage looking terribly grainy, I figured it out

All I had too do was play with the Iris a little bit and when putting it on my fce timeline click OK when it asks to change the settings of the timeline to match the clip.

I tried filming in both 1080/30p and 720/60p.
The 1080 looked slightly better than the 720, but I figure that the 720 is alot better for slomo right?
Dec 6 2009 9:36PM
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ILoveOhio
Posts: 1793 - Karma: 253
It depends the look you are going for.  I have been filming 30p/Squeeze lately and uprezzing to HD.
Dec 6 2009 10:25PM
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skiierrrrrrr
Posts: 998 - Karma: 694
can I see footy, and exactly how do you do that
Dec 6 2009 11:24PM
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eheath
Posts: 61603 - Karma: 123,049
I would recommend a higher shutter if you ever film action. Also, dont trust auto iris, it can fuck up shots sometimes. Set an exposure and if the light changes, change it manually.
Dec 6 2009 11:43PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
^yeah, i would never shoot action at 1/60, I was shooting inside at 9:00 pm so it was pretty dark and i needed some more light
Dec 7 2009 12:32AM
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DedicatedPicturs
Posts: 358 - Karma: 2,515
I didn´t read the entire thread but still.

If you have 720p vs. 1080i (interlaced isn´t just about framerate) I would go with 720. It´s going to be compressed to 720 anyways when you put it online, and even more on a DVD. 1080p would be dope though if you have the HDD space available for it.

If we are to talk framerate, there is very little reason for shooting 60i when you have the possibility of shooting 60p as mentioned above. However, de-interlacing in FCP is real easy (just check of the right settings when exporting) and completly harmless (at least I´ve not had experienced any visual loss). However, if you shoot 60p and want to get a slowmotion effect out of it, simply dropping it into a 30fps timeline isn´t enough. This will just make FCP ditch half of you frames and shooting in 60fps has been completly worthless. You have to go to Cinema Tools or something and change it to a 30fps shot. However, by doing so, you permanently change the speed of the clip to 50%. I´ve never had the chance to shoot 60p, but this is what I´ve read (at Dan Carrs blog). I don´t see why you would shoot 24p, allthough I`ve experimented with exporting at 24fps, when you´ll be doing slowmo stuff. However, if you have Motion (included in FCS), this can pretty much save you, no matter what framerate you´ve used. It´s optical flow retiming feature is simply amazing, and easy to acess via FCP.
Dec 7 2009 8:19AM
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DedicatedPicturs
Posts: 358 - Karma: 2,515
Okay, NOW I read the whole thread. Looks like the most of what I said had been covered, except for the Motion part, wich is pure genious.

When it comes to shutter it seems like you´ve got that pretty mutch covered. I´ve been hearing a lot of good things about 1/150 though, just a tip. Works fine for me!
Dec 7 2009 8:25AM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
^ I have final cut express, so not motion :(

But I do have after effects...

So if I were to drop 60p footage into a fce timeline and set the speed to 50% would the result of that be good enough? or is there a better method in after effects?
Dec 7 2009 9:41AM
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eheath
Posts: 61603 - Karma: 123,049
Im assuming you're shooting with an hvx? maybe hmc, but with hvx files (DVCPROHD) final cut has a tool that will convert your 60p shots and create a whole new clip of your shot in 60/30p aka overcranked aka 50% speed. But, ive had decent experience just slowing it down in final cut but ive never gone below 60%. In after effects, you could probably produce a better product.
Dec 7 2009 10:49AM
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DedicatedPicturs
Posts: 358 - Karma: 2,515
Nah that´s what I'm sayin and thats what eheath said too, if you just drop a 60p shot into a 30fps timeline, FC will just ignore 50% of your frames, doesn´t matter if you slowmo or not. That tool he mentioned should solve it for you though, hopefully it´s easy to use.
Dec 7 2009 2:11PM
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eheath
Posts: 61603 - Karma: 123,049
Well if you use a 720p60p timeline you can just slow it down and it works decently.

As for the dvcprohd frame rate converter (full name) its kinda tricky but when you figure it out, its butter. I did all of my slowmo in fuck! trip! and dirt! using it.
Dec 7 2009 2:20PM
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Trent_Palmer
Posts: 226 - Karma: 936
Eheath, I dont mean to be rude or anything but this is wrong, and telling this kid all this stuff is setting him up for bad results.

As a general rule we try to make everything as filmic as possible, simply because film still does look better than video. You wont see anyone taking their film camera and speeding it up to 30fps and shooting a really tight shutter. Likewise you should not do it with your video camera, people who are having issues with 24p are most likely shooting too fast of a shutter speed. To make your footage look right you should follow the rule of having your shutter speed be exactly 1/2 of your frame rate, so at 24fps you should have a shutter of 1/48th of a second, at 60fps you should have a shutter of 1/120th and so on. That will yield the right amount of motion blur to make your video not look choppy.

The only reason I would ever shoot a higher shutter speed is if I plan on doing some compositing on a shot and need to be able to keep the motion blur down for tracking or for pulling stills out of the shot, and even in that case I would add motion blur back in on the last shot during post.

The 24p vs 30p is just a style choice, I shoot everything in 24p because I hate how 30p looks, that goes even for action footage. And 60p slows down by 40% perfectly into 24p, or 2.5x slower which has worked great for me.


Dec 7 2009 2:28PM
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eheath
Posts: 61603 - Karma: 123,049
That's all in your opinion, personally i hate motion blur and like high contrast so i shoot at a higher shutter speed. its all about personal preference and yes for what you said is the best for "film like" video.
Dec 7 2009 2:51PM
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Trent_Palmer
Posts: 226 - Karma: 936
For sure, its all opinion. Not sure I understand your taste when it comes to this but whatever floats your boat!

Dec 7 2009 3:01PM
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ILoveOhio
Posts: 1793 - Karma: 253

All 30p.

All Squeeze Mode.

All Exported out of Sony Vegas 8 Pro to 1280x720 "HD".

Looks alright I'd say.

The first video has a few 24p shots mixed in though.

Lake Vacation from Fresh Perspective Films/ Steve N on Vimeo.


Dan's House -> Night Sesh from Fresh Perspective Films/ Steve N on Vimeo.


Michael Rosenberg Throwaway (Aurora Skatepark) from Fresh Perspective Films/ Steve N on Vimeo.


Black Friday Minute at Brad's from Fresh Perspective Films/ Steve N on Vimeo.






Dec 7 2009 3:04PM
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eheath
Posts: 61603 - Karma: 123,049
Well watch any of my edits from the past year, and you'll see how my footage comes out.
Dec 7 2009 3:12PM
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ILoveOhio
Posts: 1793 - Karma: 253
Maybe that doesn't look good in his eyes.

I'm not saying it does or doesn't.  It's all personal taste.  It's obvious when something looks like shit though (like vx1k MK1).

Some people like soft footage with a shallow DOF and others like high contrast digital looking footage.
Dec 7 2009 3:29PM
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Trent_Palmer
Posts: 226 - Karma: 936
I have, and I understand what you mean and I see how it looks, I guess I just dont agree with that being a desirable look. Again, this is just my opinion, thats all.
Dec 7 2009 3:30PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
I just got an hmc40, so I have to use final cut's log and transfer tool to convert the avchd footage to apple's pro-res format.

When you guys say to drop 60p onto a 30p timeline, what does that mean? how do I change the settings of the timeline in final cut? and what is the difference between doing that, and just placing it onto a 60p timeline and slowing it down to 50% (or whatever % is desired)?
Dec 7 2009 7:33PM
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icantskiiFILM
Posts: 2113 - Karma: 140
go 1080 60i. its your best bet even when not filming sports. 30p looks very choppy a lot of times. the 60 frames helps make everything including the piano smoother. files will be big if its HD so i wouldnt really worrya bout 1080 or 720 it all will be a few GBs so whatever.
Dec 7 2009 7:51PM
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ILoveOhio
Posts: 1793 - Karma: 253
Going to disagree.

"Choppy" shots happen when filming progressive IF the cinematographer doesn't use proper filming techniques required for 24p/30p.

For Piano.  Shoot 24pA.  It looks clean as fuck.  60i is gross.
Dec 7 2009 8:22PM
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family_vacation
Posts: 6200 - Karma: 7,840
anyone have any edits filmed in 24p they could post here?
Dec 7 2009 8:43PM
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Jwenz
Posts: 8893 - Karma: 7,633

UCONN In the Fall from Jeffrey Wenzel on Vimeo.


Dec 7 2009 8:48PM
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eheath
Posts: 61603 - Karma: 123,049
Dude, no.
Dec 7 2009 9:06PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
how do I change the timeline in fce?
Dec 7 2009 9:08PM
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Trent_Palmer
Posts: 226 - Karma: 936
If you drag a clip onto the timeline when its empty it will ask you if you want to match the clip settings, otherwise hit comand+0 (thats a zero, not an O)
Dec 7 2009 9:36PM
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ILoveOhio
Posts: 1793 - Karma: 253
There's a few 30p shots in here but they look like shit because I mized them in a 24p timeline.

skate. from Fresh Perspective Films/ Steve N on Vimeo.



It handled skating decently well, the shots that were choppy were probably 30p.

24p is cleaner than 60i.  Especially for something like piano shit.
Dec 7 2009 9:43PM
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Trent_Palmer
Posts: 226 - Karma: 936
I do EVERYTHING in 24, slow mo is 60p brought down to 24.



Team Moment JPI.5 Entry from Stonebroke Films on Vimeo.



Dec 7 2009 9:47PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
So wait, let me get this straight.

You will film everything in 24p except for shots you want to use for slow mo which you shoot in 60p. Then you add the 24p shots to the timeline and change the timeline settings for 24p, do some editing, and when it comes time to add one of your 60p shots you want for slow mo, you just add it too the timeline, don't check the change settings box (so it gets put on the 24p timeline) and it will automatically be 40% speed?

And you said for 24p you shoot with a 1/48 shutter speed. my camera doesnt have that option, but has 1/50, 1/60 etc. so what would you recommend I set the shutter speed to?

Thanks
Dec 7 2009 10:23PM
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Octopus
Posts: 1175 - Karma: 55
1/48 and 1/50 shutter speed is a tiny difference.

Dec 7 2009 10:57PM
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ReedSkis~
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 98
alright, so I just found out that FCE doesn't support 24p, so for now I think I'll stick to 60p

does anyone have any good methods for slow mo besides what eheath mentioned (since that won't work with avchd) and just reducing the speed? maybe something in after effects?

Thanks
Dec 7 2009 11:16PM
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Trent_Palmer
Posts: 226 - Karma: 936
Yeah, FCP doesnt automatically change 60p to 24, if you drag a 60p shot into a 24p timeline it will just drop the unnecessary frames and it will play as a 24p shot, I used to just shoot everything in 60p with a 1/120 shutter but then I found that the footage looked weird once dropped into a 24p timeline with no speed change, the reason was the shutter speed not matching.

For slow motion I use cinema tools, just open the clip and hit the conform to 24 button pretty much.

I honestly think FCE should have 24p, unless it is a super old version. What you should try is setting up a timeline before dropping a clip in and see if you have the option. Just do comand+N for a new timeline and go into your sequence settings by clicking in the timeline (to make sure its selected) and hit comand+0 and make it a apple prores compression and click on the settings tab to see if you can change it to 24p.

PM me if you need any other help.
Dec 7 2009 11:28PM
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