This Elusive 24p & Video...
 

I am trying get myself to use 24p more now that I have progessive cameras but I am still unsure about how it will turn out.

I see such a variation in how 24p looks on television that I wonder how do they make it look good and how do they make it look bad?

My area is not for film use, so everything I would shoot winds up on DVD or Blu-ray.

I was flipping through channels last night and stopped at a Kevin Neelen comedy standup show on Showtime HD.

It had a real jittery look to it whenever he moved even slightly on stage. When he was still the footgae looked good.

It almost looked like fields were fighting to render the movement.

I think to myself, this is not the "film look", this looks horrible.

Then over to high level HD drama shows that probably are a mix of film or video productions that look great. Smooth frames even when they pan faster then the framerate can handle.

So if one shoots in 24p (using video cameras), what is the secret to avoiding the jittery video look?

Thanks

You basically said it, don't pan fast. Or shoot so the subject's not moving so quickly across the image. Use a shutter of 1/48 etc. Personally, I prefer the motion signature of 60i/60p converted to 24P, much more pleasing to me.

Well what I am searching for is a little deeper than not just panning slowly.

When a 24p broadcasted show that looks bad to me, it looks jittery upon subject movement, not camera movement. The overall look is jittery outside of any camera movement.

Could this be related to progressive production broadcast over an interlaced medium? Is HD broadcast always interlaced like most DVD?

As opposed to good looking 24p shows where they seem to be able to get away with even fast camera movement and still looks smooth frame to frame.

Seems kind of odd to me that there isn't a 48i (or 48p) option on a lot of the newer 24p (and 60p)-capable cameras; I'd think that that would fix the jitter issue real quick...

There are many factors that effect the perception of motion jitter or judddddder.

A high contrast image will appear more juddery than a low contrast one.

An image that is sharper will make judder more apparent than a softer or lower resolution image.

Judder is less apparent on images with shallow depth of field, largely because of the softening effect on the background.

The above are related to the way our eyes/brain process images

If the programme was shot 24P and is being played back at 60i there will be extra frames added which makes any motion uneven.

If a 60i programme is being viewed on an LCD then there may be added issues with the way the TV de-interlaces the signal.

Most high end productions have a shallow depth of field and the lighting is tightly controlled. Less use is made of detail correction (if any) and often diffusion is added. The overall softening and lack of hard edges gives the eye less to latch onto and as a result motion looks smoother. A lot of lower end productions seem to use lots of detail correction and this really makes judder more visually distracting.

Thanks for your reply Alister.

I need to just try 24p shooting more and just get used to it knowing the restraints.