SQ motion, or 60p?????
 

In a few weeks from now I will be shooting an enduro rally

does anyone have any experience with dropping 720 60p material in a 24p timeline?
as apposed to shooting in 24p overcranked to 60p?

the footage will be edited in FCP (NTSC in the States)

As I normally have nothing to do with post production, I can´t check this out for myself...

I know the action footage shot in SQ motion is very sexy, done it many times before, but have never dropped 60p native footage in a 24p timeline......

does it look the same and if so why bother shooting in SQ motion with no audio?

You may need a two step process. Convert the video to a none GOP format such as Apple Pro Res. Then have Cinema Tools reflag it as 23.98fps.

Doing that versus overcranking at 720p24/60 has the disadvantage of converting the video which eats up hard drive space and takes time but, on the other hand, you have the audio and you have the freedom to make the decision in post.

Keep in mind you're still faced with choosing which sections are 24p and which is 60p or you're faced with the whole thing in 60p and lots of converting to do if your time base is going to be 24p. To me it's just another tangle that I'd rather avoid. Freedom has a price you know.

"You may need a two step process. Convert the video to a none GOP format such as Apple Pro Res. Then have Cinema Tools reflag it as 23.98fps....."

... do you really need to make that in the mac world ? .... in VegasPC I just drop the 60P clip on my timeline (24 or 30p) and on the properties clip event just select the % speed that I want .... just like "dialing" on my EX3 speed button ... but, yes, I'm still not sure if overcranked 720p on camera is "better" than 720-60p with speed control on Vegas ...

my 2 cents... good luck

Enrique, you could do something like that on the Mac too but it would be the WRONG way to do it. Slowing down the video will NOT look as good as reflagging it (unless of course Vegas is truly reflagging and not slowing it down. Someone who understands the technology used in Vegas would have to answer.).

One thing to consider is that 24/60 is shot at a much higher data rate than 720p60. That's why you can shoot 720p60 on SDHC but not overcrank.

Another way of looking at it. 720p60 is 35mbps but 720p24/60 is actually about 87.5mbps.
The idea with overcranking is that the playback will be at 35mbps.

OTOH, 720p60 played back at 720p24 will have fewer bits per second of playback time (yet the bits per frame remains the same). Does your head hurt yet?

The reason I´m asking is that we really like the look of the SQ motion footage, but we are in a bit of a catch 22....

shooting overcranked footage is great, but having no audio is a major minus, which tends to make us shoot mostly in 24p, or assign 1 or 2 cameras to overcrank, while the rest shoot in normal mode, in this case 24p.

the whole idea of 60p native footage working in a 24p timeline as slomo and also having it all in normal running speed with audio (where required) is brilliant and all that without having to change to and from SQ motion....especially with the EX1....... having to fiddle around in the menu......so much can happen in those precious seconds.

the guys who are going to be editing this lot normally take their time with it and I reckon they have plenty of drive space too...so converting shouldn´t be too much of an issue



"Another way of looking at it. 720p60 is 35mbps but 720p24/60 is actually about 87.5mbps.
The idea with overcranking is that the playback will be at 35mbps."



this makes me believe that the SQ motion footage is way better qaulity, even though it plays back at 35mb/s

60p native at 35mb/s will be 14mb/s when reflagged and dropped into a 24p timeline(run at normal speed), as it will chuck 36 frames???(is that how it works?)

and seeing as the bitrate per FRAME differs between 24p, 30p and 60p, which all run at 35mb/s I should rather shoot in 24p,(and overcrank when I need to) because that way, I have the highest datarate per frame, hence clearer frames, better quality

hmmmmmmm 3 weeks and counting need a solution....

FINAL CUT PRO solution...........

It's not the Mac.. is Final Cut the problem. In Adobe Premiere you just "interpret footage" shot as 60p as shot at 24p. So when you put it in the timeline you'll find it allready slowed down.The only problem is that if you want to use it an normal speed (that for you is 24 fps) you need to convert it with a 3:2:2:3 algorithm.. otherwise, putting 60p footage on a 24p timeline will give you jumpy video. So.. the best thing is to shoot at 24 fps what you'll use at full speed and to shoot at 60fps ONLY what you want to slow down. I know. sometimes is not possible to know in advance what you will use the footage for!

Marcello, interesting. Premiere Pro will reflag the (interpret) the video as 24p/60. Keep in mind the data rate issue is still there. At 24fps you're getting less than 35mbps since only 24 frames are now "passing" in a second.

Kenny, your are facing a workflow question many face. Marcello is right when it comes to getting that video to play at 24fps at normal speed.

It's a tough decision for sure. One way or another you're going to need to get 60 frames to play in 24 frames at either normal or slow motion.

If they really have all those resources for post, especially the time to convert, it might be best to allocate budget for another camera so you can have one shooting 720p24 and another shooting at 720p24/60 or 720p60 (keeping in mind the data rate issue) to use in 24p timeline.

Of course there's the "optical flow" route but that's simply another bag of issues.

At least your thinking and asking about this in advance rather than digging yourself out of a hole after the fact.

BTW I faced all these issues myself. We were shooting 720p30 though. We designated a separate shoot day where everything would be shot 720p30/60 since we really didn't want to have post issues you're looking at. As mentioned above is to simply have another camera shooting slow motion only.

Using S&Q at 60p will use far more bandwidth and give a cleaner signal. Obviously, that presents a challenge with audio, but you should be recording that off-board anyway (24bit, 48KHz).

Of course it´d be great to have an extra sound man with external recording possibilites along with each camera, but when you´re talking about 7 camera teams, that gets pretty costly, considering we will be shooting for 3 - 5 days.

I suppose I can just be gratefull we are shooting in 24p and that I have an EX3, so it´s all done with the press of a button.
The other 6 cams will be rented and I don´t reckon the EX1R is up for rent in South Africa just yet

the absolute worst is shooting in 50i and having to switch to 720, before activating the SQ motion, which is even more of a mission with the EX1....

great that the EX1R has got SQ motion as an extra dedicated button

now if I could just have SD recording as an option for my EX3, I would get so much more work with it.....instead of having to rent something else.(NLE conversion time just takes too long when shooting for news)

anyway, getting off the subject here.
thanks for all the constuctive input.

looks like we will just switch as the situation demands, would´ve been a great shortcut though

Shoot HD and edit in an SD timeline. The output is SD. At least for me render is extremely fast since it's an SD timeline and it's only a few minutes long. BTW editing that way can give you the appearance you have more cameras since you can cut from close to long shot or move left and right all from a single camera.

more than one camera is in fact the issue Craig
we usually are using at least 4 - 5 cameras on any one event and the transcoding of the EX material is the issue.(P2 in SD is so much faster when using Avid Liquid 7.2)

with one camera it wouldn´t be a problem....

Oh yeah then there are the broadcast cutters who call me up and tell me my EX footage is too big and won´t fit their screen..............hahaha
and these guys call themselves pro´s

I´ll be very glad if it is a possibility in the pipelines to shoot SD AVI with my EX3 one day soon. save those guys some embarassment, which I hope they do feel when I have to explain to them how to work their NLE

This is probably a stupid question, but is there a way to blend frames together instead of using 3-2-2-3? What I mean is could you blend 3 frames into 1, then 2, then 2 then 3 etc, to add motion blur to the 60p footage to make it look more like 24p when not to be viewed at slomo.