Are there any advantages to shooting in 30p or 60p instead of 60i when the final product is going to be delivered in 60i?

I deliver weddings on both Bluray and DVD discs. I am currently shooting in 4K 30p, the only option for my camera in 4K.

If I move to 1080, I can choose to shoot in 60p but half the frames will be thrown away during processing, so that seems a waste. 30p seems to work out fine, but would the final product come out better if it was shot in 60i, which is how it's going to be delivered?

Does footage shot using 30p come out the same on Bluray or DVD when rendered as 60i? Or is some IQ lost? I have been operating on the assumption that 30p will come out pretty much identically to footage shot in 60i when processed for disc delivery. Am I right?

60i has the same number of camera exposures as 60P so changing from 60p to 60i just takes a field from each frame of the 60P. Do not get confused that 60i is 29.95 frames a second. That is only timecode, the temporal motion of 60i and 60p are the same only vertical resolution is different. Either a full frame or a field. You will just get half the vertical resolution of 60P when you encode to 60i. The NLE will take alternating fields from the 60P file. With 30p you are losing half the motion of 60i or 60p. Hence the judder if you move the camera. Not as bad as 24P but still twice as bad as 60i or 60p. Taking 30P to 60i for most NLE's will repeat each frame and take a field to go to 60i meaning that when viewed it will look like 30P motion again. The value of progressive, 30P or 60P is that if you take stills from the video they will be a full frame of information.

Ron Evans

Thanks very much Ron. To clarify: other than the ability to get awesome frame grabs, no advantage to 60p or 30p when the footage is going to be converted to 60i, right?

My AX100 will shoot at 50mbps in 60p, so I would receive a bump in IQ from the higher bit rate, if not from the 60p. Ron, in your estimation, would the 60p at 50mbps be significantly easier to edit than 4K at 60mbps? Or only marginally better?

I am enjoying the flexiblity of 4K cropping, etc. but want to try 1080 60p for my next shoot, just to see how the differences would shake out in the final product.

60P will have smoother motion like 60i, than 30P . If the 30P cadence doesn't both you then really little difference. 60P XAVC-S and 30P 3840x2160 XAVC-S likely have similar impact on Vegas decode which I think you use. Vegas will not have to scale to 1920x1080 60i timeline so it will be a little easier at 60P. Need to make sure timeline and file properties are correct.

Ron Evans

Thanks again Ron. I hear you about file and project properties and appreciate the reminder.