24P Wedding, client hates it...
 

Hi,
So I have made one of the biggest mistake in my video career...
I was to shoot my ex-boss' cousin's wedding for discount price and it was my first shoot with my xh-a1. I always wanted to make 24p wedding as I saw on some wedding videos and looked great...So.. I shot the whole thing in 24P...
Well, I finished the video and reviewed with the couple a couple days ago, and bride really liked how I edited and stuff, but groom asked how the video is extremely choppy, especially on the slow motions. So I said, well this is 24p and it gives more of film look. Then he asked if there is anyway that I can smooth it out because he absolutely hates it. Well, I was heart-broken to hear that, but it was one camera shoot (because they were looking for someone cheap, didn't want any fancy multi cam due to their budget), and it was challenging to capture everything... so some of shots were shaky which made even worse.
Anyway, long story short, I use Adobe Encore and Premiere CS3, and have tried to export in different mpeg2-dvd file, tried to burn in different rate (24 and 30) on DVD setup, but it is pretty choppy sometime even to me... I know it's pretty impossible to fix it at this point, but is there anyway software or trick to make 24 p smoother looking?
You can see the preview of the intro of wedding here:
Wedding Intro (Prep) on Vimeo
Thank you so much ahead for all your advice and help, everyone.

JJ

Don't know what the fuss is about? Looks great! Defiantly more filmic! Doesn't feel choppy IMO. If the groom hates that he's not looking at his bride. I did noticed a choppy part on the dress slow down, as a general guide I don't shoot 24P for weddings because I'm very liberal on the slow downs however there is a way slow down 24P in After Effects that allow for superb slows by placing in extra frames not sure about the entire process. No reason to be heart-broken that short clip is completely up to professional standard. I switch between modes for shots I feels I won't slow down I'd shoot 24P however 60i is more forgiving.

sorry I cant really give advice about how to best convert to 60i or 30p but I thought you did a good job with a new camera.The guy sounds ungratefull Ive seen worse multi camera weddings done for lots of money looking horrible. For a cheap wedding video the guy got a bargain, he should be gratefull and you should be pleased.
Only thing I can think of is that some displays and players handle 24p better or differently to others but end of the day progressive is supposed to look different and does also I suppose some people like 24p and others hate it.
Perhaps someone can advise on better software to convert it but im not convinced it would do that good a job.
cheers john

Thanks, Nocholas: I thought it looked OK, too, but just like dress part, some other slow mo looks pretty bad, I am going to AE to find out what I can use (I am a rookie at AE...) i think it was called time wrap or something?
I would never shoot 24p for wedding.. learned it in hard way...

Thanks, John: bride is pleased with whole video, but for groom, he liked how I edited except (!) the 24P part... I actually had unmanned HV30 as 2nd cam on the back during the ceremony, and the groom told me, "wow, that 2nd camera looks truly HD to me, but the handheld one, what kinda camera did you use? It's very choppy" Well, I told him they are both HDV and actually A1 is better cam than HV30... I mean that's how unpleased the groom was with my footage...

JJ

simply interpolate de missing picture, it work very nice usually.

I thought it looked good.
I have been shooting my most recent weddings in 25f on my xha1 and personally i just love it.
Without going too much into the semantics of p vs i, lets be honest, all things considered, including unwanted choppiness, lack of res, etc. prgressive still looks better.

Sometimes when you are a professional, you encounter clients who come from a business background and understand that in order to accumulate "more" from a service provider, the initial element required is to find fault.
Fortunately so far, for me, I haven't run into many. But as all pros will agree, they are out there.
The fact that there seems to have been an initial tendency from this client to negotiate a deal prior to the wedding, I wouldn't be surprised if that was his angle.

In my opinion- Stand by your work. Give him nothing more that the initial deal. Tell him that is the way it has been filmed and there is nothing that can be done about it. If he wants you can take out the slowmo shots. They were an 'extra' anyway.
And then move on. Don't give it a second thought.

I think you have been unlucky with who your first client has been. Dont let this deter you from anything, including 24p.

Edit- maybe there is something that can be done (thanks Giroud) but I still think the same approach to this guy should be carried out.

So do I just drop the whole avi file to AE and interpolate? I am a rookie to AE, and I googled "interpolation After Effect" and showed the manual of AE, but I am kind of lost in this.

Ger: Thank you, and yes, i was unlucky to have him as my 1st client, but I learned it in hard way, I guess, but I would rather use 60i and deinterlace in exporting to get rid of interlace fell... I would love 24p for concert and interviews but maybe not too often in wedding... I am who I am , yeh!!!

J.J. -
Interesting Article - Do not shudder at the judder.

do not shudder at the judder

Very interesting article... Thank you!

JJ

I think that it's rather fluid - could it be that 'choppy' is just a word to use when he just means different? I'm thinking when faster frame speeds came out and racing cars stopped being blurred as they past by - people said they juddered - they didn't, they just didn't blur? Same thing, maybe?

I don't think you made a mistake at all shooting in 24p. The video looks great, and probably in the top 80th percentile for the wedding videos that I've seen. I wouldn't take it to heart, you are the expert in the this field, not the client. The client trusted you to do your job and you did it. If the client is unhappy with your work then you should make the changes requested, but you are not going to get a better looking framerate without re-capturing without the 2:4:4:2 pulldown or whatever the pull down is (but it will still probably look weird becuase of duplicated frames). Because you are happy with the results, and everyone else appears to agree, then you should tell the client that you will try to re-capture and re-edit the video but it will cost extra.

From what I've learn for working at a video production company for the past three years is that any style issues that a client wishes to change that are don't have any significant meaning should be charged as extra. If you ask 100 different people their opinions about the video you will get 100 different answers.

I always have been shooting in 50i with my SD cams even with my trusty dvx100b and only recently I switched to HD with the xh-a1, last saturday I decided to bite the bullet and go 25f at a wedding to see what all the fuzz was about.

I already read here that slow motion was not really an option with 25f but that's something I almost never use, during daytime I used the AC PREF1 preset from Alister Chapman and in the evening no preset and mostly filmed at 1/25th shutter and 6 db gain at a very dark reception with the use of a additional swit light on the camera.

About the stuttering motion, I did quite some testing before I took the camera to the wedding and noticed real quick that when you had quite some detail in the background and panned to quick it looked real bad so at the wedding it was me doing all the slowmotion moves instead of applying it in post :) and it worked out well. On my crt and on a friends large lcd it looked really great, yes you do see minor stuttering and in the evening I also saw some "smearing" from the /25th shutter but again it was acceptable.

You can see the demo here on vimeo, there the stuttering is a bit more noticeable then what I saw on tv.:
Teresa on Vimeo but that could be due to wrong export settings I used in premiere CS3.

I took particular care of the way I filmed by following my subjects and doing real slow panning or tilting, if I had too move a bigger distance much quicker I just did a very fast pan and then the stuttering is not such a problem.

When I see your film I honestly can't see what's wrong with it and it must be that most people are not used to look at progressive material, if my clients react positive on their film I will continue to use 25f for weddings, but maybe I will have to come back here with the same comment as you have :)

Thank you, Wes: I can't really charge them again... just because they were not a real customer... more like a favor of my ex-boss.
Well, I opened up new project on 60i, and dropped the timeline on new timeline and it actually looked a little better.. we will see if that makes any difference on DVD, but I can only have my fingers crossed. But you are right, Wes, if they have seen my work before and that's what they asked for, then later they said they don't want it, yeh, I will ask them to pay me for whole process and will make new video, but they were sort of my first one, and I do not want to make them disappointed... They saw what I did with sony Z1in 60i mode, not 24P with XH-A1, so it was kinda up to me what format to use, and I went for 24P because, as you have seen, some of other wedding video in 24p looked absolutely beautiful to my eyes. Maybe this moving 60i timeline will make it look so much better and smoother.
14 minutes to go for 1st passing on rendering... I will update you all when DVD is done.
Thank you for your compliments!

JJ

Noa: Thank you. I honestly don't see much problem with my edit, either. Thank you. I do have a couple questions, though, with your video. First of all, it looked great and I liked it. My questions are 1. the preset AC PREF1, its main difference from default preset is what? Is this for low light situation? or the color saturation boost like VividRGB or Panaloook?
2. When you start the project on PPCS3 (I am so glad that you are using same system as I am, so I can ask you a bunch of questions!!! :-) ) what kind of project setting do you start with? DV 25 ? DV widescreen 50? or HDV project to downconvert at the end?

Try this...

Export timeline to one file.
Import into new project on timeline 1.
Import same file into timeline 2
reduce opacity to 50% on timeline 2
Offset timeline 2 by one frame, try to the right first, then to the left.

See if that makes any difference.