vixia hf s200+mxp+24f=what settings in final cut?
 

a friend of mine is shooting with a canon vixia hf s200.

she is using the footage in a long term presentation in her masters program.

i am not familiar with this camera or this format.

is this a canon flavor of hdv?

she has told me she is shooting mxp/24f.

(i'm not sure why she is shooting 24f, and i'm not sure she knows!-any thoughts?)

she is looking to distribute on the web and via dvd.

care to suggest alternate camera settings?

care to share your thoughts as to her settings in final cut pro?

thanks in advance to those who are kind enough to share.

be well

rob

AVCHD and FCP
 

I don't think there is a strong objective reason for going 24p. If the target medium is web and DVD (i.e. standard definition), shooting 30p will make it easier to work with.

Canon's HF camcorders record using AVCHD, which is entirely different from HDV (AVCHD uses a flavour of MPEG-4, while HDV uses MPEG-2).

Since AVCHD puts heavy demands on computer processors for editing, most people prefer to use Apple's suggested method, which is to use 'Log and Transfer' feature of FCP to transcode all AVCHD material into either AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec), or Apple ProRes 422. Either way, the video will be much easier to edit, but will take up significantly more space on the hard drive (about 60-80GB per 1 hour).

Canon captures all progressive frame rates inside an interlaced 60i stream. If the original frame rate was 30p, it is easy to edit. Final Cut will edit as if it were 60i. When it is time to export, FCP can de-interlace the stream into true, progressive 30p output for the DVD and the web.

predrag-

thank you for the thoughtful explanation.

as a follow-up, can 24f footage be "mixed" with 30p footage w/o too much of a difference?

the material shot are talking head interviews, not footage with much motion.

lastly, would 24f offer nominally better performance in low light than 30p?

thanks again for sharing.

be well

rob

Mixing 24p and 30p
 

Normally, mixing 24p and 30p doesn't yield good results. The obvious reason is, if you edit on a 30p timeline, when 24p footage needs to fit onto 30p timeline, every fourth frame of that 24p footage will have to be repeated, in order to make up for the difference. This will produce very obvious motion problems. However, since your material will be mostly talking heads, you may be able to get away with it.

As for the low light, if I remember well, with Canon's Vixias, low light testing yielded marginally better results. I don't think the difference is really worth the hassle of stretching that 24p over a 30p timeline.