Camera Settings

[Randy Johnson]

What do you guys shoot in? 1080p? 1080i?

[Noa Put]

1080p all the time

[Chris Harding]

1080i all the time

Guess we all are different ...even my slomos work well in 50i ... I tried 50P and really and honestly could not see any difference once it goes down to MPEG2 for a DVD.

In fact I accidentally shot a whole wedding in 50i at the lower bitrate (I think it's HA and 17 mbps) I use that for realty shoots as quality is not an issue and forgot to change it back for the wedding.

The DVD footage is just as good ... All my weddings have a delivery format of DVD ..If anyone is brave enough to convince me otherwise (by showing me side by side differences that I can visually see ) I'm happy to use 50P ..BUT I need to see something and not use 50P "because it is there"

Haven't seen anything to convince me yet and brides think the end result is awesome ... 50i is a safer option for me and I've always used it!

Chris

[James Manford]

How come it's a 'safer' option for you? storage issue or?

I would have thought even if the differences aren't visible, say you were to colour grade or do some post production work to the footage, 50p could be pushed a little better than 50i ?? for that reason alone I always film in 50p.

[Chris Harding]

Hi James

During my Panasonic era I shot a few weddings at 50P and found that I was getting pixelating on some area of the image ...I doubt whether the bride ever saw it but it tended to show up on cheek bones which was a bit scary. 50i has always worked well for me so I stick with it. I'm not sure but one might see a difference with the HD file but I have yet to see it. Maybe it's a cinematic thing using 50P?

As for colour grading ... I seldom need to! I don't want any fancy usual effects on my clips as I'm purely shooting in a doc style ...at best I might push saturation a bit but otherwise I don't need (or want) to do more than I have to and with matched cameras I really don't have to anyway.

Chris

[Randy Johnson]

I just changed to 1080i vs p and I noticed my footage didnt look as good but that could be because every wedding is different also the 1080p bit rate being higher may have had something to do with it. BTW I tried my idea of using a digital zoom so I could zoom my lens all the way out and shoot at 3.5 I couldnt see anything but I only tried it on a couple of shots during dancing at the reception.

[Peter Rush]

1080p on all my cameras :)

[Joel Corral]

1080p 150% of the time. I see no point in interlaced footage. It's terrible. Even for sd dvds I use 1080p then down convert to 29.97i.... sometimes even 24p.... why would you shoot in interlaced when you can have full frames 50 or 60 times a second?

[Randy Johnson]

So is there a BIG difference or just one you really need to look for? I mean I would do it just for the higher bit rate BUT cant it complicate things later depending on where your delivering?

[Jon R. Hand]

Absolutely no reason to use interlaced. And yes, there is a difference.

[Marlon Martins]

i shoot 1080/60p.

but i convert after to 1080i for delivering Blu-Ray and DVD.

i prefer the smooth motion + few interlace artifacts vs. no artifacts but with motion blur/judder.

[Joel Corral]

That only makes sense if your watching your interlaced footage on a interlaced system. 99% off all hd tvs are progressive meaning the tv will deinterlace the footage automatically. So why shoot In interlaced?

[Marlon Martins]

TV's will bob-deinterlace (most will do a motion-based "smart deinterlacing") 30i to 60p, not to 30p. so you will get a much smoother motion.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Randy

There is a big difference if you are pixel peeping. I fact I shot yesterday's wedding at 1080 50P and the footage is really nice. However once down to DVD format the bride won't see any difference at all as she is looking at the dresses and her stunning husband!!

One reason that I sometimes use 50i is that the bitrate is lower and for civil ceremonies that means I don't have a split file as I can squeeze the clip of the ceremony into 17 mins were as 50P splits at 12 minutes ..However with the Sony software it just means you need to create a new full length file..no big deal of course.

All my weddings now have stedicam footage and it very advantageous to shoot that at double frame rate so I have also shot everything at 50P as it's pointless to have to change record formats in mid stream.

I still do my Realty Condition Reports at 50i and at 17mbps as quality is not important and I can then fit a 4 bedroom house shoot onto a 16GB card with no problems ...weddings 50P is a better bet with the 28 mbps bitrate

Chris

[Randy Johnson]

From what I see the only difference that effects me is the higher bit rate which does make a difference in darker scenes.