PAL vs. NTSC for slow-motion...
 

Hello,
I'm very close to purchasing a european FX1 (FX1e) even though i live in the states because I want to shoot PAL and cineframe25 as opposed NTSC..

my dilema is that i also intend to shoot some slow-motion and i'm wondering if it would be worth upgrading to the Z1U so that i could shoot 60i as opposed to 50i and gain an extra 10fps??

i know it seems alittle nuts to spend an extra $1500 for 10fps.. but i don't know..

i was wondering if anyone had any experiences with comparing slow-mo in the two formats?? or if anyone just had any good points that i'm overlooking..

thanks in advance..

I suspect you will get better slow motion at 60i, but whether it's worth the price difference is something you'll have to decide.

However I think you should consider the Z1 regardless since a PAL-only camera is going to be somewhat awkward in an NTSC country if you ever want to do DVD's or other projects in the US.

I'm very happy with my Z1, and I bought it because I needed PAL capability for a standard definition project in Argentina this summer. The ability to work in both PAL and NTSC is a real bonus on the Z1 - and HDV is pretty cool also :-)

pretty much everything i shoot will make at least one pass through the computer, so i figure there must be good PAL to NTSC conversion options.

Are you going to be converting your 50i to 60i?? In the case that you are going to 24p then you should not use the 24/25 cineframe options on either. 50i will give you the best resolution to 25p and then 24p and with the slightly better picture when going from 50i to a film-like fps you can get super slow-motion using frame blending programmes. If you are going from 50i to 25p then you should use 1/50th shutter speed but if you plan to go to 50% slo-mo then use 1/100.

Hope this helps as I wasn't quite sure what you wanted specifically.

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http://www.inasinglemoment.com - The premiere feature film in HDV from d|p

thnx Ainslie,
to clarify.. the best sonyHDV footage i've seen has been shot in 25p.. it doesn't have the messed-up motion of the 24p mode and its less wedding video then 50i or 60i... i will be using the camera almost exclusively for shortfilms and movies where i want to avoid the video look.. there will be times where i will want slow-mo so i intend to shoot interlaced and then convert those 60/50 interlaced fields into frames..

the final output of what i'm doing will most likely be seen on computer or on NTSC DVD... so are you saying Ainslie that its better to avoid the 25p/24p modes all together and just do a conversion in the computer later to get that filmmotion look?? in that case would it just be best to shoot 60i/50i for everything and then use 'magicbullet' or some similar program to get the 24frame motion?

i guess the other reason i was into the 25p mode is that i heard it produces less drop-outs..

There will (theoretically) be less dropouts when recording in standard definition DV mode on the FX1 as opposed to HDV if that's what you mean. I've never heard that there's any difference in dropouts when using HDV regardless of the frame rate. And note that the FX1 doesn't shoot "25p", it has cineframe which is an approximation since the camera doesn't have progressive scan CCD's.

By all means buy whatever camera you like. But personally I don't think it makes much sense to get a PAL only camera in the US. Converting PAL footage to NTSC can't help but degrade things. Why not use something like DVfilm Maker, which is inexpensive, if you want 24p?

http://www.dvfilm.com/maker/

Note that they recommend shooting 60i footage instead of 50i to produce the best results: http://www.dvfilm.com/fx1/index.htm

HDV 1080i60 uses a 15 frame GOP, HDV 1080i50 uses a 12 frame GOP. HDV 1080i50 is slightly more robust, but a dropout still means half a second gone.

i guess my new question is this...
..if my ultimate goal is to have an NTSC DVD with video footage that at some point gained a 24/25fps look to it so that it doesn't look so 'videoish' is it better to:

A: start with sony's cineframe25 and convert to NTSC.
or
B: start with 60i and use some sort of conversion to 24 and then back to NTSC for the final output.. (applying some sort of magicbullet deinterlacing or something)

? :)