720p 60 vs: 1080p 30 vs 1080i 60?
 

We have been producing short video episodes for our site www. KeysTV.com using our EX1. To date we have been shooting in 1080-60 interlaced. Editing in FCP and compressing in squeeze to Flash 480 x360 30 fps de-interlaced.
We just did a test and think that 720 p 60 fps seems to end up looking "better" on the web than 1080p 30fps or 1080 60i in spite of the smaller image size/pixel count. We noticed that the moving images are clearer and their shapes more readily decernable...ie: a juggler's bowling pins, etc. We noticed that 720p 60fps had little or no motion blur as expected and that 1080p was slightly better than 1080 i after deinterlacing but not as good as 720p 60fps. The temporal clarity of the 720p 60fps was exceptional and produced an overall "high definition" viewing experience. The color rendition also seemed to be better, however this may be due to a slightly darker picture. The iris was fixed for all 3 sample aquistions. All shooting was done with a shutter speed of 60.
Has anyone gone through a similar process and what were your findings?
Thanks, Craig Hollenback
www.KeysTV.com

Math is on your side with a variable rate codec and using 720p.

The lower resolution of 720p would leave more room to keep more information in the compression space while 1080p would have to discard some information to get under the 35Mbps bar.

But I am unsure about recording 60 frames a second and how the 35Mbps is affected.

Do 720p24, 720p30 and 720p60 have the same rates of compression or does the image information stored vary with the framerate?

Also, 60p matches really well with the 60Hz of computer monitors.

Makes it look like watching a television imho.

You should use whichever version works best,
but your 720p version has less motion blur,
and that's the only difference.

I think you should shoot 30p for this application.
That way, what you see is exactly what you'll get.