24P Wedding, client hates it...
 

Hi,
So I have made one of the biggest mistake in my video career...
I was to shoot my ex-boss' cousin's wedding for discount price and it was my first shoot with my xh-a1. I always wanted to make 24p wedding as I saw on some wedding videos and looked great...So.. I shot the whole thing in 24P...
Well, I finished the video and reviewed with the couple a couple days ago, and bride really liked how I edited and stuff, but groom asked how the video is extremely choppy, especially on the slow motions. So I said, well this is 24p and it gives more of film look. Then he asked if there is anyway that I can smooth it out because he absolutely hates it. Well, I was heart-broken to hear that, but it was one camera shoot (because they were looking for someone cheap, didn't want any fancy multi cam due to their budget), and it was challenging to capture everything... so some of shots were shaky which made even worse.
Anyway, long story short, I use Adobe Encore and Premiere CS3, and have tried to export in different mpeg2-dvd file, tried to burn in different rate (24 and 30) on DVD setup, but it is pretty choppy sometime even to me... I know it's pretty impossible to fix it at this point, but is there anyway software or trick to make 24 p smoother looking?
You can see the preview of the intro of wedding here:
Wedding Intro (Prep) on Vimeo
Thank you so much ahead for all your advice and help, everyone.

JJ

Don't know what the fuss is about? Looks great! Defiantly more filmic! Doesn't feel choppy IMO. If the groom hates that he's not looking at his bride. I did noticed a choppy part on the dress slow down, as a general guide I don't shoot 24P for weddings because I'm very liberal on the slow downs however there is a way slow down 24P in After Effects that allow for superb slows by placing in extra frames not sure about the entire process. No reason to be heart-broken that short clip is completely up to professional standard. I switch between modes for shots I feels I won't slow down I'd shoot 24P however 60i is more forgiving.

sorry I cant really give advice about how to best convert to 60i or 30p but I thought you did a good job with a new camera.The guy sounds ungratefull Ive seen worse multi camera weddings done for lots of money looking horrible. For a cheap wedding video the guy got a bargain, he should be gratefull and you should be pleased.
Only thing I can think of is that some displays and players handle 24p better or differently to others but end of the day progressive is supposed to look different and does also I suppose some people like 24p and others hate it.
Perhaps someone can advise on better software to convert it but im not convinced it would do that good a job.
cheers john

Thanks, Nocholas: I thought it looked OK, too, but just like dress part, some other slow mo looks pretty bad, I am going to AE to find out what I can use (I am a rookie at AE...) i think it was called time wrap or something?
I would never shoot 24p for wedding.. learned it in hard way...

Thanks, John: bride is pleased with whole video, but for groom, he liked how I edited except (!) the 24P part... I actually had unmanned HV30 as 2nd cam on the back during the ceremony, and the groom told me, "wow, that 2nd camera looks truly HD to me, but the handheld one, what kinda camera did you use? It's very choppy" Well, I told him they are both HDV and actually A1 is better cam than HV30... I mean that's how unpleased the groom was with my footage...

JJ

simply interpolate de missing picture, it work very nice usually.

I thought it looked good.
I have been shooting my most recent weddings in 25f on my xha1 and personally i just love it.
Without going too much into the semantics of p vs i, lets be honest, all things considered, including unwanted choppiness, lack of res, etc. prgressive still looks better.

Sometimes when you are a professional, you encounter clients who come from a business background and understand that in order to accumulate "more" from a service provider, the initial element required is to find fault.
Fortunately so far, for me, I haven't run into many. But as all pros will agree, they are out there.
The fact that there seems to have been an initial tendency from this client to negotiate a deal prior to the wedding, I wouldn't be surprised if that was his angle.

In my opinion- Stand by your work. Give him nothing more that the initial deal. Tell him that is the way it has been filmed and there is nothing that can be done about it. If he wants you can take out the slowmo shots. They were an 'extra' anyway.
And then move on. Don't give it a second thought.

I think you have been unlucky with who your first client has been. Dont let this deter you from anything, including 24p.

Edit- maybe there is something that can be done (thanks Giroud) but I still think the same approach to this guy should be carried out.

So do I just drop the whole avi file to AE and interpolate? I am a rookie to AE, and I googled "interpolation After Effect" and showed the manual of AE, but I am kind of lost in this.

Ger: Thank you, and yes, i was unlucky to have him as my 1st client, but I learned it in hard way, I guess, but I would rather use 60i and deinterlace in exporting to get rid of interlace fell... I would love 24p for concert and interviews but maybe not too often in wedding... I am who I am , yeh!!!

J.J. -
Interesting Article - Do not shudder at the judder.

do not shudder at the judder

Very interesting article... Thank you!

JJ

I think that it's rather fluid - could it be that 'choppy' is just a word to use when he just means different? I'm thinking when faster frame speeds came out and racing cars stopped being blurred as they past by - people said they juddered - they didn't, they just didn't blur? Same thing, maybe?

I don't think you made a mistake at all shooting in 24p. The video looks great, and probably in the top 80th percentile for the wedding videos that I've seen. I wouldn't take it to heart, you are the expert in the this field, not the client. The client trusted you to do your job and you did it. If the client is unhappy with your work then you should make the changes requested, but you are not going to get a better looking framerate without re-capturing without the 2:4:4:2 pulldown or whatever the pull down is (but it will still probably look weird becuase of duplicated frames). Because you are happy with the results, and everyone else appears to agree, then you should tell the client that you will try to re-capture and re-edit the video but it will cost extra.

From what I've learn for working at a video production company for the past three years is that any style issues that a client wishes to change that are don't have any significant meaning should be charged as extra. If you ask 100 different people their opinions about the video you will get 100 different answers.

I always have been shooting in 50i with my SD cams even with my trusty dvx100b and only recently I switched to HD with the xh-a1, last saturday I decided to bite the bullet and go 25f at a wedding to see what all the fuzz was about.

I already read here that slow motion was not really an option with 25f but that's something I almost never use, during daytime I used the AC PREF1 preset from Alister Chapman and in the evening no preset and mostly filmed at 1/25th shutter and 6 db gain at a very dark reception with the use of a additional swit light on the camera.

About the stuttering motion, I did quite some testing before I took the camera to the wedding and noticed real quick that when you had quite some detail in the background and panned to quick it looked real bad so at the wedding it was me doing all the slowmotion moves instead of applying it in post :) and it worked out well. On my crt and on a friends large lcd it looked really great, yes you do see minor stuttering and in the evening I also saw some "smearing" from the /25th shutter but again it was acceptable.

You can see the demo here on vimeo, there the stuttering is a bit more noticeable then what I saw on tv.:
Teresa on Vimeo but that could be due to wrong export settings I used in premiere CS3.

I took particular care of the way I filmed by following my subjects and doing real slow panning or tilting, if I had too move a bigger distance much quicker I just did a very fast pan and then the stuttering is not such a problem.

When I see your film I honestly can't see what's wrong with it and it must be that most people are not used to look at progressive material, if my clients react positive on their film I will continue to use 25f for weddings, but maybe I will have to come back here with the same comment as you have :)

Thank you, Wes: I can't really charge them again... just because they were not a real customer... more like a favor of my ex-boss.
Well, I opened up new project on 60i, and dropped the timeline on new timeline and it actually looked a little better.. we will see if that makes any difference on DVD, but I can only have my fingers crossed. But you are right, Wes, if they have seen my work before and that's what they asked for, then later they said they don't want it, yeh, I will ask them to pay me for whole process and will make new video, but they were sort of my first one, and I do not want to make them disappointed... They saw what I did with sony Z1in 60i mode, not 24P with XH-A1, so it was kinda up to me what format to use, and I went for 24P because, as you have seen, some of other wedding video in 24p looked absolutely beautiful to my eyes. Maybe this moving 60i timeline will make it look so much better and smoother.
14 minutes to go for 1st passing on rendering... I will update you all when DVD is done.
Thank you for your compliments!

JJ

Noa: Thank you. I honestly don't see much problem with my edit, either. Thank you. I do have a couple questions, though, with your video. First of all, it looked great and I liked it. My questions are 1. the preset AC PREF1, its main difference from default preset is what? Is this for low light situation? or the color saturation boost like VividRGB or Panaloook?
2. When you start the project on PPCS3 (I am so glad that you are using same system as I am, so I can ask you a bunch of questions!!! :-) ) what kind of project setting do you start with? DV 25 ? DV widescreen 50? or HDV project to downconvert at the end?

Try this...

Export timeline to one file.
Import into new project on timeline 1.
Import same file into timeline 2
reduce opacity to 50% on timeline 2
Offset timeline 2 by one frame, try to the right first, then to the left.

See if that makes any difference.

I am exporting right now, so I can't try that at the moment, but before I try that, I gotta ask you:
I have 3 video tracks and 5 audio tracks. when the timeline gets exported, do they get to be made into one tracks each so I can move them around easier? or no?
It might involve tons of work to adjust the opacity of each clips...

The preset: PRESET02.CPF "AC PREF1" which is described as Alister Chapman's prefered general setup at this link: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-xh-...rary-copy.html

I tried several presets but found that many did not display red accurately, above preset together with the panalook preset did give according to what I saw the best results, eventhough both make your image a bit darker they resemble my dvx100 image which I really liked.

For low light I didn't use any preset, I noticed that all lowlight presets produce ghosting and working with untouched footage gives you the best possibilities in post.

In premiere I edit in the hdv1080p25 preset because from what I heared it's allways better to edit in HD and do the downconverting in your editing program.

Noa: I just downloaded the preset and red does look good though it gives up the brightness on dark area. I don't like the ghosting on the low light preset, either, and I have been sticking with no preset, too. Because my 2nd camera was unmanned (which mostly don't happen), I edited in DV, but captured the 2nd cam footage in HDV so I can move around (zoom in out, pan, etc), but maybe I should start editing HDV footage in HDV setup instead of SD. Does it take up more hard drive space, I assume?

JJ

Noa, I have tested this extensively.
In my experience (pal XHA1 and PPcs3) if your final output is to DVD, shoot in SD.
There is an incredible amount of loss in downconverting footage within the camera. And even downconverting any other way is inferior to shooting/editing and outputting in SD for DVD.
Bottom line- if your client has no interest in HD and it hasn't been mentioned at all prior to the shoot, then SD all the way. PP3 settings- SD DVwidescreen with fields set to none. This is all especially true if shooting in frame mode. A downconversion is even worse (more strobelike) if its shot in frame mode.

I've been playing with tampering with presets for making them optimum for 25f in SD.
Definately the HDTfreq and the one under it (DHT I think) needs to be played with to soften that jaggie/interlace flicker appearance to thin white line and areas of high detail in the footage, especially on CRT screens. These settings appear to soften everything enough to eliminate that appearance but doesn't seem to soften things so much that it takes from the quality (remember I am talking SD here).

24P SloMo in AE
 

I believe the AE effect you want is called Time Warp. I'm a little fuzzy on the nomenclature but you don't want the frame blend option. That will look pretty much the same as it does in PP. You want the option that interpolates frames. It can give you some very stunning slow motion when it works. It has tripped over some footage for me... moving river water... but in the few other times I've used it it's great.

Don't be concerned that it takes a very long time to render. It's doing an awful lot of work to make those new frames.

"I am exporting right now, so I can't try that at the moment, but before I try that, I gotta ask you:
I have 3 video tracks and 5 audio tracks. when the timeline gets exported, do they get to be made into one tracks each so I can move them around easier? or no?
It might involve tons of work to adjust the opacity of each clips... "

Yes they are made into one track video+audio. you then import that clip and put video on v1 audio on a1. You only need the video from the clip to go to v2 and follow previous instructions.

What are you editing with?

Adobe Premiere CS3

PARDON ME?

J.J., I quite like what you've done with your footage but the sooner "professionals" realize that our job is to give the client what they are looking for and not foisting our "wants" on them, the better for them professionally. In future, now that you have a 24P example, you may want to show clients examples of "normal" and 24P footage and allow them to choose the look they want for THEIR memories of the event.

Wes, just because a bunch of people with a vested interest say it's ok, doesn't mean it is ESPECIALLY on something as personal as a wedding. Because the VIDEOGRAPHER is happy it's the couple's tough luck? Don't take up corporate work! Or broadcast if that truly is your belief of what is right and wrong.

Shaun: Even though I was happy with my edit and shots, my client wasn't. That was the first and foremost reason I started this thread to find the solution to make it look good enough for my clients. Even my website states that I put client's satisfaction before anything, I mean ANYTHING. Yeh, I liked 24P and people liked the film look, and my client didn't. I know since it's kinda favor, less of hiring me, we didn't sign any contract or showing him bunch of my weddings. Well, kinda to put this thread to end, I moved my timeline to DV 60i then burned it to DVD and it looked noticeably better. I am delivering the DVD next monday, and I am pretty sure they will be happy with outcome. I will update the footage sometime this week, but it's all good, and thank you all so very much for help/advice.

cheers,
JJ

HD is giving me a headache, when I worked with SD life was real easy and final output was always as good as my 4:3 SD cam allowed it to be. Thing is, no-one is requesting HD or blu-ray delivery so far but what I like about working in HD is the detail you have to start with, also outputting a demo for the internet is superior in quality.
I will try to do a SD test recording as you suggested though, ask you said, if HD is not requested and if shooting in SD gives better quality, why not? The wedding season is over now and the following months I have more time to figure out the best workflow for HD to dvd with premiere CS3.

This seems to be one of those things that keeps coming back like a bad check. Conventional wisdom and my own experience indicate that you will get better SD video if you shoot in HDV and downconvert in the camera. But even if quality was no better it would still make sense to shoot in HD. As time goes by would you rather have an archive library of video in SD or HD?

J.J. - I agree with everone on this: Great job on the edit. Very professional and complete, almost too good for a "favor". Many people the couple would've hired would not have done as good of a job.

I also agree to always put the client's wants first. And weddings may have the craziest clients. (that's why I moved to corporate vids)

But after doing weddings for many years you see that there are lots of people out there that are never 100% pleased no matter what and you can spend a lifetime learning to deal with these people. Maybe the mistake was made to take 24p and make it slow-mo, but it was quite small, and you will run into too many ungrateful people in the future to let this experience bring you down.

One of the tough things of wedding videography is that most of the time you have two clients (bride & groom) and need two approvals instead of one. Reading your post, the bride seemed happy and she's probably the one most likely to replay this for friends and family. I would try your best to fix it once and then let it go if the groom continues to complain. I would bet since his bride liked it he's going to drop it anyway.

I know customer satisfaction is key to the business but there are people out there who cannot give a compliment or acknolwedge satisfaction to save their life. These are the people would would win the lottery and then complain that the large novelty check is too glossy.

Do your best but keep from getting heartbroken about it.

JJ: Thanks for this open and honest discussion of a topic that we ALL face at points in our careers. Look on the bright side, like I mentioned earlier, now you have a 24P wedding to show off to those potential clients that do like the look. Good luck and continued success!

I have it in my contract that creative aspects such as shooting and editing style are at our discretion.
Shaun, I agree to an extent, the customer should be accomodated to help make them happy but unlike corporate gigs, weddings must be approached with a different ideology if one is to survive.
We must target a high volume of clients to make it work. The product must be up to a certain (high) standard, and then that is where we must draw the line.

On the other topic, yea a very bad check. But it is in MY OPINION that Im better off to shoot/edit & output in SD.
I have been told on this site by some serious technical experts that when shooting SD with a HD cam the signal passes through the same sensor(s) so exposure is the same as when shooting HD. A downcoversion actually takes place in the camera before writing to tape. This down coversion is obviously better as it is taking place before it becomes a highlighy compressed mpeg. Whether this is the case or not, to my eye the finished product is sharper.
Not to mention other advantages like editing and applying filters, more tolerable dropouts on the tape etc.
Not to mention PPCS3 crap ability to keep audio in sync with video with HDV clips (has this been fixed yet?)
Noa will you please let us know (in this thread) what you think after testing, even if it is a long time from now.

Did you remove the pulldown?

That would make a difference, and it is something that you'd want to do on the DVD MPEG2 file.

My best,

Mike

Slow down there Shaun! Did you read the part where I said he should fix it for the cleint? Lets take a second and read my quote.

My point I was trying to make was simple, and did not involve the ethical values of right or wrong, but values to of producing a higher quality product. Now I don't know your background or experiences, but you have probably came across an event where you really needed to be the leader and do what you know to get the job done correctly.

I'm just saying this becuase I have also had on more then one occasion where in the past I have let into "mistakes" clients pushed me into, wasting both our time and money, when ultimately the original version was better. And it is not about right or wrong, but using your professional judgment to listen to your clients ideas and let them know your honest opinion of them. Thats all :)

I burned to MPEG2-DVD file on DV60i Widescreen project and it made the video crisper and less judder... I don't know what's the process of changing that, but it sorta worked, so...
How can I remove the pulldown, Mike? Please help this rookie (on tech side).

Thank you all for helping!

JJ

Removing the pulldown is what you probably already did the first time around when you went with 24p.

If you capture it in Premiere using the Canon 24f setting, and then keep your final export at 24fps, then you removed the pulldown the first time. Removing the pulldown is how you go from 30fps to 24fps. The reason why you had to do this was becuase that on miniDV tape you can only record at 30fps. So to kind of "hack" the tape format, 24p cameras record duplicated frames every so many frames to fill in the "gaps" or missing frames. When you capture that footage using the correct method, the editing system removes the "pulldown" or duplicated frames to bring you back from 30fps to a true 24fps.

J.J.,
I just want to chime in and state that I went through the exact same problem you went through -- and yes, I use the Canon XH-A1 as well. The client was unhappy about the shutter and motion blur. But unfortunately I didn't do the camera work, I just produced it- and had to pay my camera guy. So it hurt me to do it, but I did end up charging them. Unfortunately we ended on bad terms.

The moral to my lesson- shoot 60i unless you are specifically asked otherwise (which won't happen).

I once did some test shots in 24p, edited it, then showed it to my wife without saying anything. She hated the look. To her eyes, something was terribly wrong with the picture! 24p is definitely an "acquired" taste and some people might not like it, especially for a once in a lifetime event such as a wedding.

Hi all,

You guys know more about the A1 than I do. Although we use one for our PBS series, Painting Wild Places, I'm only the producer, and I don't know much about it. But I do teach editing software, Premiere primarily, and there have been some complaints from users about how Premiere has handled the 24p thing in the A1, and there are a few red flags that I see in the postings that don't make sense as they are written.

If the pull down was done, the timeline would be a 24 frame timeline. Earlier versions of Premiere (and I'm unclear of which versions) failed to catch the Canon flags accordingly. I don't know if this is fixed in Premiere 3.2 or not. The Forum at Adobe.com was spotty on this, too. Removing those frames would make a difference, though. The lack of 'smoothness' lies in those frames being repeated.

Making a DVD in 24P is possible, too, once the pull down is completed, and the content is de-interlaced, the Adobe Media Encoder can be invoked, and the frame rate utilized at 23.976 (for NTSC TV standards) with a Progressive Field Order.

This should make a world of difference and shouldn't cost a penny to try out.

My best.

Mike