24F and The Progressive Look
 

I've heard a lot thrown around about CCUs and encoding... but can anyone tell me if the 24f frames look 100% progressive? Can you visually tell the difference in a frame of a moving subject between a 24f frame and a "true" progressive frame?

Thanks in advance.

The motion blur you see in a (F) frame looks progressive, you don't see the 'jaggies' you normaly see on an interlaced field. It is shutter dependend.

Not only do the 24F frames look 100% progressive, they capture that way as well. Apple's Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Grass Valley / Canopus Edius all use 24P settings in order to capture 24F. They can't detect any difference between Frame mode and progressive scan, and neither can you. For all practical purposes, Frame mode *is* progressive scan.

Man, people need to get over this hang up with the "F".

The single biggest mistake Canon made was not using the "P" moniker like Sony did with their XDCAM products (which also use interlaced CCDs clocked at 48Hz and progressive scanned).

As I understand it, Sony's new V1 derives progressive frames from interlace chips much the same way Canon does. Not the same way, but they get P from I, which they call P, not F. It's the same damn thing. I'm shooting 24F(P), capturing that way in FCP, and I marked an in point, counted off 24 frames and set an out point and guess what: it's exactly 1 second. You shoot at 24F(P) and capture in HDV at 24P, you get 24 frames. It is progressive. It's not the pulldown thing with blurred frames between. It is progressive. It is 24 frames per second, it is not interlaced. Canon calls it F because they get progressive from interlace chips; Sony gets progressive from interlace chips and calls it P. Same thing.

Actually...one more thing. Here's a suggestion for somebody to make some money: Write a program that people can buy for 10 bucks. When they install it, every time there's an F after the number 24 on any web site, it automatically turns the F into a P. That should solve the problem once and for all.

V1 doesn't work that way; XDCAM-HD does, but the V1 is apparently progressive all the time.

But here's the bottom line -- I took the all-progressive all-the-time HVX, and the 24F-from-interlaced XHA1, put 'em side-by-side, split-screened the footage, single-frame-stepped through it, and -- 24F delivers 24P motion. It delivers the exact same motion cadence and the same motion signature.

Thanks Bill and Barry also... wow traffic is moving fast on this one.

I had seen a lot of threads go by on the codec and CCUs, none that were purely subjective on motion, though... and it's a tough thing to search for.

I knew the XDCAM HD did but I also thought the V1 used interlace chips. I stand corrected there. But XDCAM HD also says P, so the point is still valid. F is P and P is F and it's all the same.

If the FX7 is using the same CMOS sensors as the V1U, is it to say that a 100% interlaced FX7 is using 100% progressive sensors? That would be odd.

If the CMOS sensors are bit addressable as stated, then you could scan any direction, even from the center to the corners. As a term, progressive scanned could be as outdated to describe the Sony CMOS sensors as 24F is to describe Canon's P mode.

The salient question is whether Sony's 24P manages to not lose 10.6% vertical resolution compared to 60i as happens with the Canon.

That question could be answered if someone would shoot an ISO 12233 test chart and email me (or post) the frame grabs, I will run it through the Imatest MTF50 and post the results.

I like to kid that Canon calls it 'F' rather than 'P' because theres no 'rounding'...
get it...
an 'F' is a 'P' without the round part...
get it...?
ahahahahahah...
I am so funny it hurts.

I'm looking at Brent's reply just above this one, and I'm looking at Tom's reply just above his, and I'm thinking, you know, we have a pretty diverse group of people on this site. Which is always a good thing. Happy Holidays, everyone!

LOL, very un-grinchly of you Chris, but I do agree. And Brent's response was precisely the type of subjective analysis I was looking for :O.

Thanks as always for your hard work on the site.

Heh. Getting Cindy Lou a glass of water was your first clue that the Grinch was redeemable after all.

To be honest... Barry is the only one that I'd trust on this issue.... on the contrary any mod from the Camcorderinfo board would be the least person I'd trust on anything in regard to interlace... they still claim that you can deinterlace footage that was captured interlaced and retrieve perfectly the same progressive frames with the same resolution as when you'd have captured progressive frames in the first place.. bruawhahahaha :->

and lol @ diversity