25p or 50i again!
 

hi okay ive read as much as i can find about the two formats but still not sure which way to go...im filming a dance school show on friday,two cameras both canon xh-a1.
Ive never used 25p in anger but having filmed some short clips i really like the look it gives so my question is who would go with the 25p (pal land here) or who would go with the 50i...anyone got any thoughts..final output will be pal dvd ....thanks john

25p would be my choice.

thanks for the reply..well ive been frantically trying some 25p footage out on as many tvs as i can and it looks really good on a 42 inch plasma the only problem i found so far was playback on a friends playstation 3 onto a plasma , the footage looked really sharp but you could see the motion stuttering slightly..( i did film cars moving)maybe the ps3 was upscaling and didnt like the progressive footage? but through a normal dvd player it looked great, much sharper than my old vx2100/pd170 footage and no motion probs to be seen..so 25p seems the answer.doubt i will ever use interlaced again unless im filming sports.

John, like you I battle this often, for me its 24P, or 60i.
I have so many churches and low light places we work that 60i is winning out. I too love the 24P look, but when it comes down to the day of the shoot, I always play it safe and go 60i, also ease of doing slow mo.

Someone may chime in and explain that slower speeds do well in low light, I dont really know, but have read where it does, so dont take that chance. I also have never tried the 30p another thing I need to try.

The general feeling I seem to get, is that 24/25p will get you more possible exposure time per frame, while also have the most possible motion blur (talking low light). If you want to do any slow-motion, you'll want as many frames as you can get. Half speed at 24p will only be 12 fps which is choppy at best. 15 fps from 30p/60i is still not smooth as silk, but can often times be passable.

I'm really not sure where 50i gives you any concrete advantage over 25p for any type of lighting situations. I'd be interested to know of some though.

well I went with 25f (canons 25p) at 50 shutter and I must say, with relief, it looks fantastic.
I was playing back a dvd of the footage onto a large(ish) crt tv and a friend passing bye, who knows nothing of filming,commented saying wow that looks like a film.
That comment along with better playback on lcd monitors has justified my choice.
thanks for the comments and advice its 25f for 90% of my work from now on.

interesting thread, thanks.

I've heard that progressive footage is best for monitors too, is this correct?

I'm soon to start filming some training DVD's that will be played back on both TV's and PC's but probably more commonly on PC's. Does that mean I shoulf opt for 25p? What about just deinterlacing the 50i footage in the timeline or during export?

My camera currently doesnt do 25p so would it be best to deinterlace when I export?

David, your best option to properly deinterlace footage is Magic Bullet Frames. Talking about some fantastic quality but it's a pretty slow render! Especially if you use the Plus version for AE, I don't think there is a computer in existence that can handle it fast. But for short videos (really short, like trailers or highlights), it's absolutely the best.

Dimitris,

Ive heard about Magic Bullet but dont really know anything about it. Is it a piece of software where I can open a 50i 1920x1080 mpeg and then output a 25p 1920x1080 video with minimal quality loss?

I always notice jitter after deinterlacing clips within my NLE but dont know if that's just the effect it causes, or if this is a poor way of doing it...?

David, yes, it's exactly as you know it. Import interlace, export progressive. Check this link

Red Giant Software: Magic Bullet Frames 1.1

Jitter in converting i to p is common when the deinterlacer is "cheap". Of course you'll never have the native progressive quality with any deinterlacer, but I strongly believe that Frames will give you the best possible output. Although it's pretty straightforward, you'll need to play with its settings a bit, so you can find your optimal setup for each video. The power is there, but are the CPUs able to follow? Try and find out. There is a demo in the official site.

thanks Dimitris thats very helpful. will give this a try.

if i deinterlace using frames and then someone watches it on a pc they won't get all of the horizontal lines, right? However what happens if they watch the same dvd on a tv?

Am i right in saying it'll be fine but not quite as fluid motion as it would have been should I not have deinterlaced?

So the ideal solution would be creating one disc for tv playback and one for pc?

The reason we do deinterlace is not because of the lines when viewed on PC. This is easily solved from the PC player itself since software like PowerDVD do real time deinterlacing (if selected) although not as good as your NLE. We deinterlace it simply because we dont like the looks of interlaced material since we go for the cinematic style and interlaced is far from it. Sure, deinterlacing with Frames won't be never as smooth as the interlaced footage but it does a damn good job.

I suggest that you do the following. Install Frames demo in both Premiere and AE (AE has the Plus version, much better and slower), find a 30 sec footage with lots of panning etc and experiment with the settings. Play the output on TV and see what happens. My bet is that AE Frames Plus will give you the best result.

Dimitris,

Thanks for that. I now have frames installed but actually see how to use it to export a video? I'll search for a tutorial or something...

I've taken on some corporate work and I'm worried that some people will watch on DVD, some on a PC, some on the web so would you agree that deinterlacing a 50i video using frames would solve all of those problems with only a slight smoothness loss? (what about quality loss?)

Would it also help me achieve better slow mo results? When I slow my 50i footage to 50% in premiere I need to deinterlace to not get horrible jitter, however then its not particularly smooth. Can frames help with this too?

Thanks for your continued help

There are some simple tutorials around, one of them can be found at Red Giant Software: Video Tutorials - Plugins for After Effects, Premiere and more

Some loss of quality is in a way inevitable but then again it depends on the footage itself sometimes, how much motion there is, etc.

About slow motion, deinterlacing directly from Premiere (right mouse/field option) and then slowing down was good enough for 50i material. In CS5 though, you dont need to deinterlace. If you do, you'll get jerky slow motion. I dont know why this happens in the new version but it saved me from a lot of trouble! :)