Shutter speed choice for C100 PF

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by John Armando

Thank you all but I'm a bit confused. So should I shoot 24p for 24fp??

You should *never* shoot 24PF, there is absolutely no reason to ever do such a thing. Shoot 24p only.

I believe the editor still uses slow motion. Would that be a problem.

Depends on what you mean by "slow motion." There are two types. The first is just a post slow motion, where the shot being in slow motion was never anticipated. You would have seen this a lot back in the 90s when video cameras had no hope of shooting any framerate other than 60i. It's strobe-y and jerky.

Then there is smoother slow motion, shot at higher framerates. Unless you are specifically shooting entire weddings at, say, 60p, then you would be using option one. But if you specifically plan out your slow motion shots in advance, then you could shoot 24p for everything except the slow motion. Unfortunately, the C100 does not have a 60p mode, so you are left with 60i. And that depends on the editor knowing how to deinterlace 60i to p and then turning that into slow motion (with a resolution hit). In my experience, they often don't know how to do that (I either get interlaced slow motion or, even worse, no slow motion at all, just the full 59.94 motion).

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Matt Davis

Thanks Gary - I stand corrected! :-)

No problem, there is a lot of confusion surrounding this! Still seeing the typical 50i to 25p fix posted in my circles that doesn't work for 24p, which is what nearly everyone shoots at. The differences between PAL and NTSC easily escape people.

Plus, not sure why Canon put 24PF in the camera. There is no reason for either 24PF or 30PF and I wish a firmware update would remove it and just shoot 24P 30P and 60i all native.

[John Armando]

Thanks Gary. Can I pick your brain a bit more.......?

The current lens I'm using with my c100 is the canon 24-105 f4 is. I've been doing tons of sample shots in my house filming my daughter etc. I can't seem to figure what my ISO safety zone is in terms of when the grain (noise) comes in. I can't really tell on the LCD. What ISO level do you recommend not going over. Also, I can't seem to find where the noise reduction settings are in the cameras menu. If its any consolation, I'm shooting in Wide DR mode.

Thanks again Gary.

[Gary Huff]

Noise reduction setting will be in the Picture Profile option, not the Camera menu. It really depends on what level of noise you find acceptable. The best way to do that is to test shots at different ISOs and see where you feel the NR starts to unacceptable strip out the detail. I have shot as low as 400 and as high as 12,800.

[Daniel Epstein]

Originally Posted by Darren Levine

more times than not i stick to 1/60 when shooting 24frames, it's not significantly different in motion, but can keep flickering away and also makes it a fraction easier to pull stills from video

I also shoot at 1/60 with 24 frames for the reasons Darren explained.

[Darren Levine]

12,800 is indeed a good marker. while 16K and 20K look respectable for what they are, if you do a lens cap on test, you'll see a pretty significant shift in the image when you go past 12,800, but up until there is rather remarkable.

the manual also suggests a black balance after changing iso, which many find to be a bit excessive to do all the time, but if you do want to use a high iso and want to be sure you're getting as clean as possible, do a black balance.

the in camera noise reduction is also something that's been a debate, since it's a process you can take care of in post, some prefer to handle it themselves instead of having the camera do it. and considering how good it already looks, my preference is indeed to leave off in camera iso reduction, and even so i rarely do noise reduction in post.

But like Gary pointed out, your eye is the one you ultimately have to satisfy, so take some time to set your own personal limits. You mention not being able to tell on the LCD, which is why you should be seeing how what you see on the LCD relates to what you see on the computer. one thing you can do to help judge on set with just the lcd is the 2x focus zoom in. It will help you see the grain structure closer but keep in mind it's a digital punch in, so there's another layer of degradation you're looking at.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Darren Levine

one thing you can do to help judge on set with just the lcd is the 2x focus zoom in. It will help you see the grain structure closer but keep in mind it's a digital punch in, so there's another layer of degradation you're looking at.

That's exactly what I did last time I was shooting at 10,000 ISO. I punched in, then changed the NR settings until I found the acceptable tradeoff between loss of detail and amount of noise. And that level will change between different people. Some may want less or more NR or less or more detail.

[John Armando]

Thank you gentlemen! You guys have helped me out big time with this. I will definitely use the magnification option to see the noise and not go above 12,800iso. I don't want to use a top light if I don't have to. I hate the look of it. Hopefully I'm not being greedy here by asking more questions.....

Workflow Question:

I am not an editor myself and my editor is a bit old school so I want to make things as easy as I can for him... What is the best post production workflow transfer method from the c100's "private" folder directly to Final Cut Pro 7??? I've read that if you don't change the directory structure on the sd card (I don't know why anyone would) then you may be okay to use the log and transfer method in FCP 7. But if you changed the structure then you need to use a 3rd party software (brorsoft) to convert the .mts files to Apply ProRes .mov Did I get this right??? Has canon come out with a plug in for FCP yet?? I just want the easiest way without sacrificing any quality (obviously). Even if it means that I convert the files for my editor on my PC before I give him the project.

Again much appreciated. I love the help I'm receiving from everyone!

[Saf Suleyman]

someone correct me if i'm wrong but i think the best thing to do is to use clipwrap to re-wrap the contents of the 'private' folder in to.. well any codec you want?

[Gary Huff]

ClipWrap is a wonderful utility and worth having, but for the same price I would instead recommend 5DtoRGB Batch from the App Store and transcode all of your AVCHD footage to ProRes LT. It will do a better job than just Log and Transfer. L&T has corrupted clips on me before, but 5DtoRGB was solid in the time I used it.

If you want to save time, you can always invest in a used Ninja-2 system and shoot straight to ProRes on SSD drives. That saves you the transcoding step and you get better quality in the end as well. Not something you might particularly need at this point, but keep it in mind in case you ever end up in a time crunch. I shoot plenty of projects with it when AVCHD would be more than good enough for the edit, but the clients love the fact that they can pop the footage right into FCP7 and start editing without having to wait for the transcoded clips.

[Jeffrey Butler]

As I sit and stare at a bin full of clips 29.97fps of my brand new C100 test footage, I'll admit, I'm a little stunned - at just how stupid 24PF is...I'm glad to have my gut confirmed. Not that big of a deal; that's what testing is all about, but wholly crap, this feels worse than an Amway setup with new "friends"...

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Butler

As I sit and stare at a bin full of clips 29.97fps of my brand new C100 test footage, I'll admit, I'm a little stunned - at just how stupid 24PF is...I'm glad to have my gut confirmed.

Whatever you do, don't deinterlace that footage, remove 3:2 pulldown instead. If you deinterlace, it will screw up your footage.

[Jeffrey Butler]

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

Whatever you do, don't deinterlace that footage, remove 3:2 pulldown instead. If you deinterlace, it will screw up your footage.

I probably won't do anything with it, actually. FCP X will just make the timeline conform to the video; I have already used a sharpie to black out PF24 on the LCD to make sure I never, ever choose that again!

I'm more interested in the mic and wide cinema gamma stuff.

Funny thing about this whole PF24 and 24P nonsense is that the manual is pretty quiet about the whole thing. It simply adds a note "Shooting at 24 frames per second, progressive, recorded as 60i" ... which is probably really helpful. To someone.