30f for web advice?
 

I'm looking for some advice on a project I'll be starting in a few days. It will be a long series of strength and conditioning videos for a university athletics site. Whenever I shoot sports, I always shoot 60i as the end destination is television and dvd. This project however, is destined for the web and therefore viewed back on computer monitors. Because of this I want to do it in 30f, but quite honestly I have never worked with that frame rate before. I know that 24f would be awful for something like this due to high motion and lots of panning. Would 30f be a good option for this project? Also does anyone have a tried and true workflow for 30f to web? As far as software I use Premier Pro 2.0, After Effects, etc., and I also have Vegas 6 and 8. Thanks for any help or advice you can give!

Since your final product will be 30p, it makes sense to shoot it that way. The only reason I can think of to shoot 60i is if you are going to have a lot of slomo shots. 60i will give you better options there.

Although I've not shot 30p much as of yet, the only real difference in the workflow is how you shoot. The cadence of your pans might need to change to mitigate the stuttering that can occur.

In my opinion a lot of panning is bad no matter what the frame rate.

Out of curiosity, how can there be a lot of panning in strength and conditioning videos? Are you panning between people non-stop? Are you panning across extending limbs? Are you panning across scenery to add interest to long talking head explanations?

30 works good for the web because it can be cut in half to 15 for easier streaming on slow connections.

No matter what frame rate, a lot of panning for web video will probably be a problem due to encoding issues. Panning is going to look like a scramble anyway.

Shooting as static as reasonable with solid colors will help out in the long run.

Try and do a test shoot so you can get a feel for what it looks like. If you dont have time I would say stick with 60i and deinterlace. Either way as long as its made progressive it will look much better on the computer screen.

For what it is worth I shoot the same subjects in 60i and then simply deinterlace for the web. Works out great and I don't have to worry as much with the faster pans but you may not be doing those. All of the sports videos on my site (linked below) are shot in 60i via my XH-A1 or my new XL-H1A

Yeah recently I uploaded a 60i commercial to vimeo and I hated the way it looked. There were interlace lines throughout it and deinterlacing in Premiere made very little difference for some reason. The 24f stuff always looks great in comparison. I'm kind of trying to get the best of both worlds with 30f for this project.


Some of the movements will be of the athlete standing in one place while others will involve speed drills and agility ladders. I kind of pictured tracking the athlete through these movements but perhaps I could capture that in a wide shot or even just in a vertical line of sight. I also figured 30f would be a good choice because computer monitors are progressive. I am just hoping it handles motion more like 60i rather than 24f.


Yeah I think I might try a dry run by getting my son to do some running around outside. I'd like to stick to 60i and just deinterlace but I've had little luck with doing that and having it turn out well. That's the reason I wanted to try for the same results in camera. What software do you use for that? Thanks for the link Josh, you're videos look great. That's the same type of videos I usually do for Queen's University here.

Thanks for your replies and advice guys, I appreciate it!

I have used Premiere's built in de-interlacer. Its the check box on the encoder. But most of the time I use either FFMPEG or Sorenson Squeeze.

Following somebody in motion is different from panning across the scene.

Keeping the camera on someone moving should turn out fine.

Panning across a scene will not look good. Even slow pans in Hollywood movies don't look good.

On the other hand, filming dancers or action stars looks very good in 24p.

Most all of what I shoot goes to the web, and I do everything at 24F and keep it that way through the final compression to Flash. I know lots of people shoot 30F and do 15 fps compressions, but strobe motion when it's not intended for an effect makes me curse, so I keep everything 24 fps. I'll sacrifice a little bit of size or data rate for proper motion when I have to.