24P Usage in Corporate and TV Video Work?
 

Hi Everyone,

I do a good bit of corporate video, and I always shoot 29.97 interlaced because my feeling is that when I hand over tapes to the client, I want them to be able to work with the footage as easily as possible.

However, a lot of the camera guys I work with want to shoot 24P but I won't let them. I figure that if the camera is moving around a lot we may have trouble with the motion quality, and generally the average client won't know what to do with 24P footage and won't realize much benefit from it considering we are usually shooting in uncontrolled environments.

They always say 24P is more "filmic" to which I reply: "We're shooting video, not a movie".

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What do you guys think? Am I making the right call? Do you use 24P for shooting events and other standard corporate projects?

And I am just wondering, overall, what percentage of TV shows, like reality TV, documentary style programs (Science channel, Discovery, History Channel etc.), shows that have to shot impromptu action, use 24P?

What about sitcoms, or dramas like Law and Order?

I'm just wondering because this conversation comes up all the time and I would like to know from where I speak.

Thanks,

Ken

There is no easy answer to this question. Much reality-based programming is shot in 60i or 60P for the live look. One can always go from 60i or 60P to 24P if need be (granted you'll loose some resolution), but you can't go the other way. However, for the last few years virtually everything I do is primarily for the web. You can not show interlaced video on the web. Why shoot two fields when you end up having to throw one out anyways? I've arrived at shooting 30P because it can mix with 60i footage. You have more freedom to move than with 24P. Just my two cents.

24 FPS was Hollywood's compromise to get an acceptable reproduction of the illusion of motion with the least amount of film. It's the only reason why that frame rate was established. If money were no object, a higher frame rate would have been chosen. For some specialty venues, it was. For example, IMax was 48 FPS and Showscan used 60 for fluidity of motion and greater realism.

I doubt many can tell the difference between 24p and 30p. But 30p will integrate nicely with American TV standards without having to resort to pulldown and other additional techniques. For me, it makes no sense to shoot 24 when final delivery framerate is a multiple of 30 (or 29.92).

With more frames per second, 30 is better if you're going to make any speed ramps or if you're planning to do any kind of motion tracking or stabilization. You can always convert 30 to 24 with good results. But interpolating 24 to 30 might not.

When Doing Corporate My Primiary Concern is the Client...
 

Hi Brett,

I appreciate the feedback. I never really got into 30p but I have seen some really nice looking 30P footage. I don't know the drawbacks or pitfalls of 30P if there are any. In my experience the pitfalls of shooting 24P in an uncontrolled environment are many; and then the editor needs to understand they are working with 24P footage.

Again, when shooting corporate, my feeling is that if the client wants to view or edit the footage in-house, then they will most likely be able to deal with standard 29.97 interlaced DV footage, but may be at a loss with how to deal with something else. In my experience, if a client has trouble editing footage, or the footage looks funky because they didn't put it on the right type of timeline, or export it a certain way, then that quickly becomes an ex-client.

If I know I am going to have control over the shooting environment and the post process, I might make a different choice, but probably not. In regard to losing resolution going from 29.97 to 24P: I had a client where I edited on their facilities and converted the footage from 29.97 to 24P in Cineform. I could not discern any loss of resolution. I know that there had to be some loss of resolution from a technical standpoint, but I could not see it.

I have exported also 29.97 Interlaced footage for web use. However resolution was not a problem because we were going down in dimension.

Ken