30f or 60i?
 

Hello,
I'm shooting/editing a 10 minute promo video for local the JC's tech academy. Will be using my Canon XH-A1 in HDV mode. Using the school's MacPro FCP 6 syystem with Blackmagic Multibridge Pro. End result will be distributed on DVD in SD or HD as called for.
I'm having a hard time deciding what frame rate to shoot. I've never shot anything other than 60i.
Are there key things to condier if I shoot 30f?

I always shoot in 30F. Used to do Frame mode in GL2. It has the rich expensive semi film look but you don't have to deal with 24p pan stuttering. 60i is very much "home video" like that I personally don't like.

Just did a little test shooting in 30f. Seems to have a lot of jutter or stutter when viewing direct from camera to the point of distraction. Does that go away when ingested and viewed from timeline?

You have to pan slowly. If you have a lot of high motion scenes or you plan to do a lot of slow mo, stick with 60i

I shoot everything 24F. It does strobe in the camera viewfinder and LCD, but the strobing is not really there. When you play it back it will look fine. Keep in mind that if you shoot 24 or 30F with the Canon, you can't play back the footage on anything but a Canon HDV camera.

I will have my camera or a Canon HV20 for playback.

So I take it that what seems to me to be excessive jutter, stutter, strobing etc., in viewfinder while shooting in 30f, even with very slow camera movement, is really not there? Seems very strange to me. I'd like to shoot the project at 30f but I'm a little paranoid.

Hi Martin,

Nice to see someone close to me that is working with the same combo of A1 and HV20. Since I use the HV20 as my second cam I either shoot 60i or 24F. I just finished shooting a Show Choir fetival where I shot all the daytime events (solo perfomances with judges critiques, judges clinics and misc footage) using 60i and as I usually do, I shot the evening showcase in 24F.

I also noticed that watching 24F or 30F from the cam seems exhibit stutter. But, once I download and convert to AVI (I use Vegas and Cineform) the footage turns out great. You do have to take care with pans but I haven't had too many botched clips.

If you have any doubts or are uncomfortable about the final outcome I'd suggest doing some test runs. Take alittle 2 minute test shot in 30F and bring it all the way through to the end produect of a DVD. Then watch it on a few different TV's.

One thing nice about shooting 24F or 30F, if you're going to DVD or the web, is that you don't have to deinterlace the footage (since it's progressive) and you don't get those nasty deinterlace artifacts. And if you shoot 24f and edit in a 24P (23.98 actually) timeline, you'll see that 24 is less than 30 (duhh), which means you're using 20% less data, which can be significant when doing web compressions.

Wouldn't it only be 23.98 if drop frame is enabled on your camera? NDF should be an even 24 fps I think.

Wish I had time for test but I start shooting tomorrow. It's going to end up on DVD so I think I'll go with the 30f.
BTW proper shutter for 30f is 60, right?

Garrett, likewise!

Thanks all for your help!

Yeah, 1/60 for 30fps, 1/48 for 24fps.

Re: 24 or 23.98...I dunno...FCP (6.0.3) automatically brings up a 23.98 timeline when you use the HDV 1080p24 capture, so that's what I've been doing.

There are all the technical considerations others have brought up, and then there's the aesthetic considerations to shooting 30F/30P versus 60i, which is also important. The qualities/advantages of 24P/30P/60i have been discussed in great detail on the dvinfo boards and one is not "better" than the others so much as "better for a given purpose". Let the needs of your project make that call, because you can make it work either way.