Did you used to prefer horizontally-squished video or pan-n-scan over letterbox when you had a 4:3 TV? :)

Sorry, not trying to pick a fight, it's just a little pet peeve of mine.

Can I ask you US members what the uptake of 16:9 tv sets is like over there currently ? I've been working in 16:9 with the BBC for the vast majority of our domestic output for nearly ten years now, and there's scarely a 4:3 set to be found in the stores anymore.

I'm under the impression that the UK and Japan have the fastest 16:9 take up ? Just curious...

An interesting question: on 4:3 TVs I prefer letterboxed widescreen movies over pan-and-scan cropping. For some reason pillarboxing on widescreen TVs bothers me more than letterboxing on widescreen TVs.

Where I live it's rare now for me to have a customer who doesn't own at least one widescreen HDTV, and I see people buying them almost every time we go to the local warehouse club store. Overall I think something like 20-25% of households in the U.S. own HDTVs and that percentage is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years.

24P Pans, what manual settings work best?
 

Hi everyone;

I'm really liking the look of my XL-2 on 24P, 16x 9....except when it comes to panning. I'm still getting the "stuttered" look on some pans, & increased gain.
I'm on manual settings, with the iris up, as well as the gain on -3db. Is there a trick to this to make the pans look smooth when played thru a JVC deck S-Video'd into an LCD screen? I have the vertical detail set to normal. Should I change it to low for 24P? Any help would be most appreciative.
Thanks;

Peter N. Vaughn

You just have to pan more slowly in 24p than you do at higher frame rates. That's just as true of film cameras as it is of video cameras.

As for the increased gain, I'm thinking what you're actually seeing is a slightly hotter exposure due to the fact that 24p allows a slower shutter speed. Are you shooting at 1/48?

Finally, switching to low vertical detail won't help with any of the things you describe. These things aren't detail issues, they're just things inherent to a frame rate of 24. You should really only decrease vertical detail if you have a lot of straight lines in the shot that give you "jaggies."

Shutter settings for 24P ....XL-2
 

Jarrod;

I'm actually trying to shoot at 1/75 shutter speed at 24P? Is that a good setting

Hi Peter. Faster shutter speeds mean more time between exposures therefore more stuttering. The default for 24p is 1/48s so you could try that and see if it is good enough. Going to lower speeds such as 1/24s gives much smoother results but at the expense of motion blur (lots of it).

Panning to track a moving subject is one way to reduce the impact of stuttering. The background will still stutter but it is not so obvious unless you look for it.

Richard

Good to know.....
 

Richard,

Thanks for the info. Is the default setting for 30p 1/30? And what about for 60I. I don't know...
Thanks,


Peter Vaughn

I don't know about 60i, because I've never used it on this camera (no need). But the default for 30p is indeed 1/30. HOWEVER, 1/60 is actually a much better choice for most 30p footage. The motion blur at 1/30 is a little too extreme for 99% of the time.

The default shutter, which is equal to a 180 degree shutter in film camera world, should be 1/48th in 24P, 1/60th in 60i and 1/60th in 30P. If you go at ANY other shutter speed you are adding a motion effect that cannot be reversed. The higher the shutter, the more jittery or crispy, the lower the shutter, the more blurry motion becomes.




ash =o)

I agree, it should be... but it isn't. The camera default in 30p is 1/30 (the shutter light comes on when you use anything else). Your default should probably be 1/60, unless you're going for one of the motion effects Ash describes.

By default, I dont mean what the XL2 goes to, I mean what YOUR default should be. It is also what the XL2 will go to in some of the auto modes. For that matter, the XL2 will default to 1/24th if you are in manual mode in 24P, pretty silly!



ash =o)

The PAL XL2 default in 25p is 1/25s too, i.e. the default power up shutter in Tv mode is 1/25s. It's now second nature for me to set the shutter after power up, but I must admit I shot a few blurry scenes before I got into the habit. Wish this default was user settable in a menu.

Richard

Best settings for clean detailed look in 24P?
 

Thanks for everyone's help yesterday on my 24P questions. However, I do have a few more. I'm trying to get a very sharp & detailed look in 24P for filming B-Roll inside of builder's model homes.
Here are my current settings:
24P
1/48 Shutter Speed
GAMMA: Cinema
KNEE: Middle
CONTRAST: Stretch
COLOR MATRIX: CINE
COLOR GAIN: +1
COLOR PHASE: -1
R GAIN: +2
G GAIN: -1
B GAIN +1
V DETAIL: NORMAL
SHARPNESS: +4
SET UP LEVEL +3
MASTER PED: -3
N.R: OFF

My footage still seems to be a little soft around the edges, & was wondering how to sharpen it up. Also, what are good settings for interviews to make the subject(s) sharp but to somewhat diminish the background...
Thanks for any input.
Peter Vaughn

Pink selection for 24p pulldown mode???
 

Hi--

We've just shot some footage using two XL2s, so I was checking the settings for the pulldown mode in each. One of the cameras has the 3:2 mode selected, but the other has the mode selection pinked out inthe menu, which I presume means unavailable (it also doesn't change when you click the button). A cursory check shows all other settings on each camera to be the same.

Anybody know what this means?

TIA,

--Tim

The only thing I could possibly think of is that the fps select knob is set to either 30p or 60i (instead of 24p).

Anyone else?

No, that was the first thing I checked. I was tied up today (and tonight) but will do a thorough comparison of the settings on each camera tomorrow. If I discover the cause, I'll report back.

Thanks!

--Tim

How do you export 24p BACK to tape?
 

This might sound like a silly question, but I have never, ever been able to export 16:9 24p footage back to tape, and I was wondering if anybody here had a solution. I can't get it to work with Premiere Pro 2.0. Nor with Avid Xpress Pro. Nor with Vegas. It simply doesn't work, at least not with widescreen footage. I always get this weird aspect ratio jumping back and forth between 4:3 and 16:9 problem. When I re-import it sees it as 4:3 footage. It does this with both Premiere and Vegas. Avid, even worse, it exports as 4:3 footage and on top of it I have no sound going out and can only export with 3:2 pulldown, not 2:3:3:2 to be able to re-import and re-edit in 24p.

So I'm honestly at a loss here. I don't know what to do to export back to tape. I have 2 projects I'm currently working on that have been shot with the XL2 in 24p 2:3:3:2 mode and edited in Premiere with a 24p timeline. I can export a true 24p uncompressed AVI file. I can even export a 24p MPEG2 file. But I just can't get it back on tape in 24p. The only solution I found would be to export back as 29.97 regular NTSC. But I don't want to have to do that.

So how do you guys do it? Somebody out there has to have a successful workflow.

You cant export 24P to tape, you have to insert the missing frames. Premiere does this automatically, just check the Project Settings, then Playback Settings and then choose which conversion for 24P.

Sounds like you have other issues, I have never had any like you describe and I monitor to a firewire monitor so they would be pretty apparent. Are you sure all your settings are correct?



ash =o)

Yes all my setttings are correct Ash. I know it adds a pulldown to conform to DV specs, but in my case, the process causes the aspect ratio to jump frantically every few frames between 4:3 and 16:9 footage. If I choose in Premiere Pro's project settings to have the aspect ratio conversion to be software based instead of hardware, it works, except it adds black bars on top and bottom instead of exporting true 16:9 footage. And if I choose no conversion well it just exports 4:3 footage.

I've heard others mention they had the aspect ratio conversion problem as well when exporting 24p with a pulldown added on the fly, I just don't know where it comes from and how it can be fixed.

I've had this problem on 2 different systems, one Intel the other AMD, no hardware component being the same, with the only similarity that both video cards were Nvidia GeForce based. My hardware is pretty new and powerful. I use a GeForce 7900 GT for video card and have a dual core Intel processor.

Just as a reference, can you tell me which video card you use, and if you use any other hardware acceleration cards?

You need to configure your NLE to re-insert a pulldown pattern (2:3 / 2:3:3:2) to your 24p timeline when sending the video signal to something other than your computer screen (ie to throuugh firewire to your XL2 for viewing on an external broadcast monitor) If the XL2 receiveds the signal at anything other than 29.97, it will only display a stillframe, if anything.

I haven't used Vegas or Premiere for years, but check in your preferences to verify that when mirroring the video on an external monitor or when printing the timeline back to tape the necessary pulldown pattern is being applied.

As far as the audio, make sure it is either 32 or 48kz, and if more than two mono (stereo) channels, that your NLE is configured to downmix the tracks into just two channels. If you are doing 12 bit audio (32kz sample rate) the DV spec supports 4 channel audio, but I don't know of any NLE that supports capturing/exporting more than 2 at the same time to a miniDV device. You would have to do it in two passes.

Good Luck!

I have had this same problem. The way I went about fixing it was to edit everything in Premiere 24p timeline then under the export settings set your compressor to “DV (24p advance)”. This is actually not 24fps its 29.97. This setting will add a 2:3:3:2 pulldown back into your footage so that at any point you can import it back into a 24p timeline and it will remove the added frames. After you have that file exported, create a widescreen 30p sequence and then import your exported 24p video into that. Being that your footage is really 29.97 with a pulldown and ur sequence is 29.97 they will play nice. Then from that sequence export the video to tape. There will be no loss in quality other then color timing. If you ever want to edit it again just pull it over to the computer as 24p footage and work in a 24p sequence. It will treat it as 24p because it has a 2:3:3:2 pulldown. Problem solved.

Thanks for the suggestion Alan. Just to make sure here though, if you export as 30p (or 60i), even if the pulldown was correctly done, are you sure any NLE will see it as 24p material when re-importing? In other words, are the 24p flags that tell the NLE 1) that this is 24p material and 2) where to remove the fake frames to bring it back to 24p correctly applied? Because I understand that you can add a pulldown and export as regular DV but if the 24p flags aren't in there with the footage, no NLE will be able to recognize it as 24p footage.

Just wondering if you've actually tested for that.

Don’t export as 30p or 60i straight from a 24p sequence. That will add a 3:2 pulldown to it and that wont work. I’m going to try to explain pulldowns and how NLEs treat them. I don’t know how big of an expert everyone is on this subject so I’ll try to explain as much as I can. If it is incoherent babble then just tell me and I’ll try to make it better.

Okay. To start with ALL frame rates are recorded to 60i. ALL. Because 30 is half of 60 there is no problem with storing progressive 30 on 60i. Same amount at data per frame and per second. Now 24p is different. The chips of your camera will fire at 24 fps but because all data is stored at 60i is has to add pulldowns. A 3:2 pulldown can’t easily be turned into 24p in a computer but a 2:3:3:2 pulldown can. So advance cameras can store 24p both ways. When you pull over footage your raw files are actually in 29.97 frame rate with a 2:3:3:2 pulldown added. When you import that footage into your NLE it quickly scans through the clip and figures out based off of interlacing and how the frame changes what frame rate it is and removes frames accordingly. So when u export your 24p footage using the 24p codec then re-import it into a 24p sequence the NLE again sees it as 29.97 with a pulldown and removes the pulldown.

So if you export you 24p footage using the 24p codec (turning it into 29.97 with a 2:3:3:2 pulldown) then import that into a 30p widescreen sequence the NLE will this time not care about interlacing and pulldowns because 60i and 30p are saved the same way. It will see it as what it really is, 29.97 with a pulldown. When you export that to tape it will export as the same because the frames will sync up. Now when u recapture it and edit in a 24p sequence the NLE will see the pulldown and remove it.

Might be confusing. The best way to see what I am talking about it to film different frame rates and capture them. Then in a 30p sequence go through them frame by frame and look at it at 100 percent magnification. You will see what I mean. Hope this helps.

Yeah I knew about the way the pulldown works with DV Alan, I was just trying to figure out if when re-importing it would see it properly, as DV with a 2:3:3:2 pulldown, and not simply 29.97 NTSC DV video. But I've tested it myself in AE, Premiere, Xpress Pro and Vegas. They were all able to identify and remove the advanced pulldown. Only difference is that AE recognized the 24p advanced export from PPro as a EEMEE pulldown pattern, while the footage I exported back from tape was detected and recognized as MEEEE pulldown pattern. I don't know why the sequence changed between the DV file and the footage on tape, but it doesn't matter to me, all the NLEs were able to properly remove the pulldown.

So thanks for that suggestion Alan, worked for me.

I'd still be interested in knowing what causes the aspect ratio to freak out when letting the NLE add the pulldown on the fly. Could it be hardware related? If anybody does not have that problem, or for the people that do have the problem, could you list your hardware, most importantly video card(s)? That might help formulate an answer based on similarities.

Help!! How do I capture XL2 24p footage??
 

Sorry for asking such a stupid question...I'm completely lost here.

First, let me ask --is it possible to capture 24p from an XL2 using Adobe Premier 6.5?

When I use it, the footage seems interlaced (I believe that's the correct term for what I'm seeing) and also very noisy/grainy.


Here are some screenshots of what I do: (I know I'm doing things wrong)


Ok I open up Premier and select the following project settings:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ctsettings.jpg


I then click 'Capture' and select the following capture settings:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...resettings.jpg


And then when I want to edit it on After Effects I export 'movie' with the following settings:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...rtsettings.jpg



Will someone Please! help a n00b out?
thanks so much

...Ps. --I shot it in "2:3" as opposed to "2:3:3:2" (not 100% clear on what that means)

I don’t know if it is possible to edit 24p footage in Premiere 6.5 but you are going about it the correct way. You can correct that you are seeing interlacing. Mini dv stores all of its info on tape as 29.97FPS. So it has to add in 6 more frames to conform to the 29.97 frame rate of the tape. If there is a 24p setting you should be able to just import your footage and it will remove those frames, if not then just edit at 29.97 and put up with the interlacing.

One thing u might want to look into is the pulldown setting on the camera. Turn the camera to 24p mode then open up the menu. Go to “camera setup”. Under that go to “24p mode sel” and make sure your camera is set to 2:3:3:2 mode. When footage filmed in this mode is imported into a 24p sequence it will recognize it as real 24p rather then 29.97.

I will bet that the problem you are running into is just your editing program but I cant say for sure because I have never used Premiere 6.5. Good luck.

That's a 29.97 timeline you're putting it in in Premiere. Check to see if 6.5 even supports 24P. I have version 7.0 (which is actually v 1.0) and it does not support 24P.

A 29.97 timeline of for 30P and 60i footage.

Chris
Premier 6.5 does not support 24P.
You'll have to get Premier Pro 2.0

Am I Dense? 60i vs. 24p
 

I'm relatively new to the world of pro video, but I'm a pro still guy and I know my tech stuff quite well.

So here's my question: given the world's trajectory towards everything digital, the proliferation of LCD and plasma TVs, and the assumption that everything I shoot is going to be delivered either on DVD or the web, is there any reason to shoot interlaced source material?

I understand that (on the XL2, for example) 60i is going to give you slightly smoother motion, it drives me nuts to see the interlacing artifacts on a DVD. I *vastly* prefer sacrificing a small amount of motion fluidity for the cleanliness of a proper progressive shot.

And, I suppose the same thing holds true for HDV capture, but I've not yet taken that leap, so this question really applies to the SD world.

Thanks!

Hi Steve,

No you are not dense, well not that I really know! :)

The difference between motion blur with 60i and 24p is not slight, it is quite harsh. Most TVs are still interlaced for a while yet. But, all you really have to do is to deinterlace. I burn my DVDs in progressive, and my DVD player plays progressive and my TV plays them just fine and they look great!

Still don't want to use 60i, well then 30p would be better than 24p for handling motion.

JMHO

Have fun-----Mike

Only if you don't have access to a camera with progressive chips and absolutely must end up with a progressive finished product. Deinterlacing reduces resolution pretty considerably, and not all interlaced footage deinterlaces with usable results.

Deinterlacing is best thought of as a last resort, in my opinion. If you don't have a camera with progressive chips, I generally think it's best to try to shoot the kinds of things that look good in an interlaced format. This way, you make assets of what were once liabilities.

Using limitations to one's advantage is an extremely important skill for us poor people to have, and yet it is very rarely discussed.

24p / 50p PAL
 

I would like to know, how they differ from each other. while viewing in the TV I did't noticed difference. can you people elaborate it deeply as in which situation these are better applied.
I prefer 24p in low light condition, is it correct or not?
Ashok Mansur

It's 50i instead of 50p

Don't know anything about "50p," so I'm thinking you mean 25p, since you also wrote "PAL".

24p is the standard for matching a film camera's rate of 24 frames per second, and gives video a somewhat filmic look. 25p is the PAL (UK, etc.) equivalent, though it would havep to drop a frame if you were going to do a transfer to film, since all film is run at 24 frames per second. Neither 24p, nor 25p are used especially for low light conditions, but for the look they have.

25p is used in PAL countries because it fits in nicely with the 50 cycles per second of the electrical grids in those countries – one frame per every other cycle. 24p doesn't really fit in nicely with anything, except the film frame rate, but we've learned to live with it.

In any event, It you are watching the two from a DVD played on your television, and you think they look the same, it's because they are. What ever region you live in, your DVD player will add the correct pulldown to display it. For example, when displayed on a standard NTSC TV (which only display 60i), the DVD player will add 2:3 pulldown to the signal. So yes, 24p and 25p will look pretty much the same played on a TV from a DVD in any given region.

24P, 30P, without Stuccado look
 

We have a full feature scheduled to shoot starting in Mid May. Two Canon XL2 cameras are going to be our workhorse. However, there is some divided opinions on what to shoot the film in. One says shoot in 30P to avoid the stuccado hanging when panning. Another says use 24P and Up the shutter speed to correct the problem. I own the cameras and the script. I would like to hear everyones opinion on what you would shoot. Or, how can we get 24P to DVD without the stuccado pans when movement is taking place? Rarely, do you see ANY stuccado or hangs in a televised or DVD movie. Thanks.

You see TONS of blur in movies. You just don't notice it too much because they attempt to hide it by shooting from certain angles and tracking subjects during pans. It's part of the art.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say whoever told you to shoot 24P and up the shutter does not know what they are talking about. No point in shooting 24P if you're going to crank up the shutter. That defeats the whole purpose to me. You might as well just shoot 60i then. That's my opinion.

Just shoot 24P, 1/48 and pay attention to your angles. Make sure you have a subject to follow on pans.

If you don't like the effect of 24p then shoot 30p. It's your movie.