24fps??? Why leave it out?

[Mark_Wylie]

Hi,

I know the XL1 and XL1s has a 30fps shot mode, but why did Canon not put in a 24fps mode for film work? I mean what gear uses 30fps anyway? I did not even think that was a standard.

I read something in the articles that said you could use the 30fps mode and remove every 5th frame or something, how well does that work? Does it make it look like real film?

Cheers!

[Chris Hurd]

Hi Mark,

30fps is the industry standard for all NTSC video cameras (NTSC is the standard for America and Japan), and has been for a very long time. I've only recently seen some extremely expensive Philips cameras at NAB that had switchable frame rates.

If you want to convert the standard NTSC frame rate of 30fps to film, which as you point out is 24fps, you have to go through a complicated process called 3:2 pulldown, which removes a certain number of frames to get the speed to match that of film. It's not an easy thing to do and it's part of the expense of transfering video to film.

Down in your part of the world and in Europe, you have the PAL standard, which is 25fps (and slightly better image resolution). This is a little easier to transfer to film, because all you have to do is drop one frame per second and stretch the audio by 4%, and now you have 24fps. For this reason, PAL cameras are popular here in the USA for a lot of folks who want to transfer video to film.

There's an excellent 3-part guide to this process in the Articles section of the Watchdog under the Post-Production heading. Hope this helps,

[Mark_Wylie]

Ahhhhhh so thats why... :-)

I should know about PAL v NTSC. I have a friend here who keeps dribbling on about how PAL is better, and ra ra ra, I genrally ignore format wars. :-)

I will have to read that article.

Cheers!

Mark