Pal Users-frame Rate Advice
 

I looking at oage 38 of the manual and it's really not giving me any background as to the what why and whens of shooting on either 50i mode and 25F Mode.

Could somebody write a description of the advantages/dis-advantages of these settings and which are either better suited to certain applications.

I'm pretty confused by this.

Hello Alastair,

UIAM you can select from frame modes of 50i or 25F with the 25F cine mode giving a cine-quality look and feel.

Neil

50i
- good for 'reality' look, news and sports as motion is smoother

25f
- use this for a 'cine' look as this is very close to film's 24fps cadence. Be careful with pans (make 'em slow) as there is a stutter to this look. This mode mimics progressive scan, but suffers a 10-20% horizontal resolution loss (which is pretty hard to notice).

People doing indie film work definitely prefer the 25f mode, no question, and there are some users on this board who use it exclusively. But get a feel for both styles and figure out your own preference.

Try both modes, then freeze some frames once you've recorded them in your NLE. You will be able to see the difference clearly. The 50i frames will be composed of two separate fields (frame grabs look nasty where motion is present) blended together, whereas the 25p frames will appear as one complete image. Also try some quick pans in both modes as well as some shot of cars or people passing quicky. You'll soon see the difference in motion, one smooth, the other with a stutter.

Thanks for the replies.

I'm going to be shooting mainly weddings, so would I be right in saying that the cinematic feel of 25f would be better suited?

Alastair,

Have a look at Joe Simon's thread http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=81810

From what I can gather he films weddings in Louisiana, though he tends to use 24f.

I would suggest having a good play around with the A1. Film the same scenes using different presets/customs and talk into the mic to remind yourself of the camera set-up for each scene, e.g. 50i, 25f, 24f.

Good luck
Neil

Personally I shoot almost everything in 25F. We're so used to seeing progressive used on TV in the PAL world that there is less and less being shot at 50i.

Of course it's subjective, but I prefer the aesthetic quality of 25F. And as long as you keep your shutter speed at 1/50 you're not really going to have problems with stutter on pans. Stutter is mostly an artefact of pulldown from 24p to 60i.

I second that, Alex; in fact even with shutter at 1/25th I don't find the stutter to be very annoying, and this gives a lot better lowlight performace!

Here are very good presentation,

60i, or you can think it is 50i
http://stage6.divx.com/content/show/1107288

24F, or you can think it is 25F
http://stage6.divx.com/content/show/1107257