Yeah, the slower the frame rate, the tougher time the autofocus has. Low light, low contrast, lack of vertical lines, a lot of motion all make the job of the autofocus more difficult. Under challenging 24p conditions, you're probably going to be better off with manual focus. Page 40 of the instruction manual.

Even in brightly lit scenes, I've noticed that the autofocus will hunt more in 24p than in 30p (and probably a lot more than 60i, but I've not yet shot a frame of video with my XL2 in 60i to verify it).

On the XL2, autofocus actually does work in 24p, but it is very slow. Autofocus needs information from previous frames and gets its updates from one frame to the next, analyzing it one frame at a time. So the slower the frame rate, the slower the autofocus. When in doubt, go manual. Hope this helps,

Well that's true. It's not actually disabled by the camera in the 24p mode, but as you noted, it's very slow. So slow that I consider it unusable and that's what I meant when I said it 'doesn't work' in 24p. :-)

-gb-

For 30P to 24P slow mo, should I use Shutter Speed 30 or 60 for smooth slo mo?
 

Thanks in advance!


Andrew

For smooth slow motion without having to use third party software, you should shoot it in 60i mode. It'll give it the smoothest look. For an example, check out this spec commercial I shot:

www.meydenbauerentertainment.com/heineken.html

We shot 60i and slowed it down in post.

NICE!

--Ralph

haha, that was hilarious!

Hmmm... if you were to shoot in 30p then drag it into a 24p timeline would it have a slight slo-mo effect? I'm guessing it would. Has any one tried this?

If the NLE interprets the frame rate correctly there should be no slo-mo, just conversion artifacts.

Richard

I need workflow for 24P, 16:9 with an FS-4 and FCP
 

Hi,

I'm trying to shoot and edit (FCP 4.5) at 24P, 16:9 and I'm currently using a Firestore FS-4 Pro set to Quicktime 24P.

I need help:

1. Figuring out which 24P setting to use on the XL2.
2. Which import settings to use on FCP.
3. Which export settings to use on FCP to get max res for iDVD.

Thanks a bunch.

Ty Ford

I had the same setup, and for some reason when I used the setting on the fs-4 on quicktime 24p it really messed things up! The only way I fixed the issue is by shooting in quicktime or raw dv mode on the firestore regardless of how I was shooting (60i, 30p, 24p).

As for your settings on fcp I've had most sucess just in standard ntsc dv anamorphic (if in 16x9) setting.

export just as you would for anything else going to dvd - standard export using current document settings, let it render and then import to idvd (highly recomend dvd studio pro 4)

thats it...

Thanks Michael,

When I spoke to Amanda at their technical support line, she said there had been some problems but wasn't hopeful for an answer. I thought that was weird. Did you also have issues with getting the XL2 and FS-4 Pro to operate correctly? The manual and Amanda said to start the XL2 first, but after having two FS-4 Pros here, I found that the ONLY way the two would work together was if the FS-4 Pro was started first. Again, I thought it weird that their own tech support people wouldn't know the right way to do things. Where I come from, that's crap.

There are two 24P modes in the XL2, 2:3:2 and 2:3:3:2. Do you know which you chose and why?

Regards,

Ty Ford

Ty,

This has been discussed several times and Adam Wilt has a good technical/graphical explanation on his site showing the difference between the two modes of 24P. Conventionally, if you were going to display the final output on tv, the regular 24P mode of 3:2 is used. If you were going to do a film out, the 24P advanced mode is used because it allows extracting 24 complete frames from a 60i stream. However, with DVD as a final output, some folks use the 24P advanced mode and edit in pure 24fps timeline because the DVD player can handle the conversion for output to TV.

I would use your firestore in regular 60i mode. That's what always comes off the tape or out the firewire cable. It's up to the NLE to properly decode the 60i stream back to the 24P in which you acquired it. FCP can do this automatically with 24P 3:2. You will need to make sure that both capture preset and sequence settings are set to NTSC DV and check the anamorphic box. DO NOT change the pixel dimensions or your video will look like &$&#. The anamorphic check box tells the NLE you shot in widescreen and that it needs to stretch the 720 horizontal pixels to create the 16:9 ratio.

If you use 24P 3:2, your timeline base is 29.97. If you shoot 24P advanced, you'll set the timebase to 23.98.

Also for widescreen, if you have graphics from Motion or Livetype, those will have to have dimensions of 852X480 to display in the 16:9 sequence properly. But that's only for graphics. Again, don't change the video dimensions.

Render the final sequence to a QT self contained movie. If you are authoring in DVDSP, when you bring in your QT movie as an asset, DVDSP has to be told it's an anamorphic sequence also. IIRC, it's a right click on the name.

Anyway, that should get you on your way. You can probably figure it out from there but if you need more help, we're here.

-gb-

Oh, thats your question... Ok, well just as Greg mentioned, one mode is for video and the other is ment for tape output. I have always used 2:3:2, so unless you plan your output to tape this is where you want to be.

Greg, Michael,

Thanks for the succcint tutorials! Next time I fire up and shoot 24p 2:3:2, 16:9, I'll try regular QT or Raw DV on the FS-4 Pro and see what happens when I import 16:9 anamorphic.

Please let me know if you ever have any audio questions.

Regards,

Ty Ford