Chris, I *just* saw that you edited my first comment, and I must say that I am not very happy about this. While I have mixed the wordings of "24f" and "24p" in my first comment, I was talking about HV20's 3:2 pulldown, not the one found on the semi-pro cameras. My ORIGINAL question was about AVCHD and its relation to the HV20 24p (which is why I mentioned the pulldown), and why didn't Canon use true 24p for their AVCHD cameras, as the HDV format was seen as the reason before, but it's not a necessity on AVCHD anymore as it records on HDDs instead of tapes. If you must do an edit, please change the "f" to "p", not invalidate my whole post with the way it was edited. You see, I started the whole thread because I am coming from the HV20 camp. I own one, and so I am interested in going over HV20's own 24p limitations with a future AVCHD camcorder.

Thank you for the understanding.

Eugenia, you will note that I most certainly did not edit your post. I didn't change one letter of what you said. I simply added to it and pointed out for the benefit of our readers that what you described there is *not* accurate, and I left a pointer to Barry Green's post which correctly summarizes the situation.

Canon's Frame mode seems to be widely misunderstood, and I could not in good conscience allow you to further obfuscate what Frame mode is... thus my link to Barry's post.

24F = 24P.

Also, the single most successful 24P camcorder in the world, the Panasonic AG-DVX100, records 24P within a 60i stream just like the Canon HV20. Nobody complains about it being "fake" either.

Mountain. Molehill.

And, invariably, you get what you pay for in this business.

For the last time: I was not talking about Canon's frame mode as found on the semi-pro cameras, but the HV20's mode (3 progressive, 2 interlaced frames in succession). I didn't try to "obfuscate" the Canon semi-pro 24f cameras, in fact, it was not my intention to include them in this discussion at all. I am interested in the $1000-$1500 market, not the $3,000-$8000 one. I maintain that my mistake was to call the HV20's 24p as 24f. But instead of fixing that, you took it the other way, that I was supposedly out to get Canon's semi-pro cameras. I wasn't. It was an honest mistake/typo.

And yes, anything that's a hassle and requires additional work to get the true 24p out of it, it's not "true" for me. I need to spend 2 hours to convert HV20's bastardized system to true 24p by exporting to a huge lossless codec before I even load it to my NLE. This is not fun. Sorry, but it's not. I hate it with all my guts. That's why I started this thread. Because I am trying to find out if AVCHD camcorders, which don't have the tape limitation, are able to, or should be able to, to record a clean 24p stream right from the beginning. I am interested in clean, out of the box solutions that don't require conversion. I want to know that when someone sells me a 24p-capable camera, if it's just that and nothing else. Why is this too much to ask?

Clearly you don't understand the workflow. There is no "additional work" if you have 24p in a 60i stream. None. Oops, you *may* have to set a switch in your NLE, depending on which one you use. Most of them don't require anything, they intelligently recognize the flags and present the 24p as it should be presented when imported to a 24p timeline.
In other words, it is clean, it is 24p, and it is simple to work with in post. In every professional NLE there is (as far as 24p, not every NLE supports AVCHD yet).
The problems of 24p aren't in post.
Try it rather than writing about it, and you'll immediately see how it works in practice, not theory.

I am sorry Doug, but you really don't have all the facts laid out on the table. The Canon's version of 24-in-60i in their consumer cameras is FLAGLESS. NLEs don't know that this is 24p, and if I force my project to be 24p on my NLE, then random frames are removed, not the right ones.

Only After Effects and FCP can recognize that kind of Canon HDV 24p and extract the right frames out of it *after* capture (so you still have to spend these 2 hours exporting in a lossless format when doing the pulldown removal after you capture from the 60min tape).

I am using Vegas Pro 8, just like you are (I assume). And Vegas doesn't support HV20's kind of pulldown removal. When you import that file on Vegas, it's a 60i file as far as it's concerned. If you force the project settings to IVTC, then the wrong frames are removed.

The only utility that exists that will capture *and* remove pulldown for the HV20 in one go is Cineform's NeoHDV which costs $250 (and unfortunately it's just 8-bit, for 10-bit you gotta pay $500). And all that, for no good reason, because the hardware CAN record "true" 24p, it's just that Canon decides to not save it down as such. It reminds me of Nokia not including Bluetooth A2DP profile support for all their phones, even if all their phones have Bluetooth (they just make a change during compilation to not have the feature in order to segmentize their market artificially).

Sorry, but speaking as a prosumer, this is not good enough. I have to spend either an extra $250, or an extra 2 hours each time to get the pulldown removed so my NLE can recognize it *properly* as 24p. Please do some research about what I am talking about here, especially about the HV20 because it's a big deal for HV20 prosumer owners (and even a whole forum was dedicated to this particularly, elsewhere).

It's not too much to ask. But it's also not currently on the market. Yes the format is able to support the recording exactly the way you're asking for. But nobody has implemented that capability yet. Someday someone will, but until they do it remains an unrealized potential.

I first got into DV way back when the Sony VX1000 first came on the market. It was murder waiting and waiting and waiting for a native firewire editing card to come out (DPS Spark, anyone?) But that's what we had to do -- even though we had the camera, and the footage recorded in digital component format, we couldn't edit it until the rest of the world caught up.

Similar situation here: we have a format that's been announced, and even implemented in low-cost camcorders, which is capable of recording 1280x720x24fps or 1920x1080x24fps. But nobody has enabled that feature yet. And nobody has even announced plans as to when they might.

There is no inexpensive solution on the market that does what you're asking. The only camcorders that record only 24 frames, anywhere near your price range, are the HVX200 (in 24pN mode) and the XHA1 (in 24F mode). Outside of those, it just plain doesn't exist yet.

Eug,
I'm fairly aware of how Vegas manages 24p, and yes, I spoke to 24p in general, not the HV20. Yes, the HV20 is flagless.

That said, with this camcorder, you are not a prosumer. You are a consumer.
You might as well buy a small car with a Vortec engine in it and cry "foul" because NASCAR or ARC won't allow you to drive it in a race.

I don't think that I am going to pay $3000 for a feature that it's just a compilation option when they are compiling the firmware of their camcorders. I rather wait 3-4 years and get the feature when the manufacturers get in their right mind rather than pay money for an artificial feature that was segentized out.

Which is why I started this thread. To learn what AVCHD's standard says about the 24p implementation, to hopefully give me some hope that future consumer cameras will have the right 24p version.

Then we've reached agreement. You will have to wait until the manufacturers offer you what you want, because today's offerings do not.

I couldn't have said it better than Barry -- and when the manufacturers *do* offer you what you want, then let me know and I'll be happy to re-open this thread.