Progressive or interlaced video for weddings?
 

Given the choice between progressive or interlaced video, what is your choice for weddings and why? Do you think brides care one way or another?

my choice is progressive all the way. Looks more professional and gives a pleasing look to the eye that they will just like. But hey I could be wrong. I hardly ever shoot anything interlaced even these days. Even when I do news stuff, albeit the more feature type stories everything is shot progressive.

Progressive looks nicer - My hd110 is progressive only, although my hd7 cam I use for b-roll is interlaced its converted to progressive in post to match the hd110 (not quite the same but down rezzed to SD it look ok)

Ian

Anyone have a preference for 24p or 30p?

I'm using a lot of slo-mo for weddings, and I've been using 60i because when I tried slo-mo on progressive, I got unacceptable jerkiness. That was awhile back though. Maybe everyone is using 60p now for better slo-mo?

I'm shooting 30p right now but I would love to try 24p, I just don't have the guts yet. Do people complain about the strobe w/ 24p?

One thing regarding this issue still nags at me: you can easily achieve a "film look" with interlaced video via any number of software packages, but you can't achieve an interlaced look with progressive video (unless you shoot 60p). I guess what I'm saying is...it seems that shooting interlaced video gives you more options. If a client wants the film look, you can achieve it with interlaced video (without the strobing motion of 24p to boot)... but if your client wants HD with an interlaced look, you're up a creek if you have a JVC HD100 or something like that (that only shoots progressive HD). Thoughts?

Are any of the networks shooting native progressive video? I shot a wedding for a guy who works for Avid installing and designing network broadcast NLE systems, and he says his experience with these installations is that interlaced video is more efficient and that (in his words), the networks are all set up to work with interlaced HD, not progressive.

Can somebody please enlighten me, because I don't understand the 24P hype.

Getting the film look is dependent on superior cameras, the resolution of 35 mm film, the lighting, the DOF, the dynamic range, the use of primes, etc. None of these are sufficiently available in video cameras, either from a technical point of view or because of lacking means like lighting equipment or glass.

Hollywood shoots 24P. Agreed. But when distributing their movies on DVD everything is back to 50i or 60i. Where is the value added, especially when displayed on a interlaced CRT TV?

You can with software packages like Apple's Compressor 2 & 3. I've shot footage in 25P and converted it to 60i, easily. (The only downside is rendering time as Compressor has to rebuild the missing frames, but that's merely a function of processing power.)

With today's powerful software, converting between frame rates and formats is high quality and easy.

You can? Does it look like interlaced video when its done?

Ever see Doctor Who on the SciFi channel or the BBC? It looks like film from top to bottom but is shot on interlaced SD video, then processed in post to look like film. Obviously they have great lighting and maintain shallow DOF, but its still interlaced video.

That's what I'm starting to wonder.

Yes, in glorious "soap opera" reality feel. ;-)

I had no idea you could do that with progressive video. Would I convert to 59.94 fps if the original was shot at 24p? Guess I'll have to experiment. Can you tell me what settings you use to make such a conversion?

T'was easier for me to do a Google search.

http://digitalproducer.digitalmedian...e.jsp?id=33819

Sweet! Thank you!

Weddings? 50i every time. It's just smoother, and brides like looking smooth. It's possibly less sharp ultimately, but these days we have sharpness to spare. And I find 50i drops into progressively varying slo-mo much more attractively than 25p.

Sections of the film (the suits strutting their stuff for instance) can look good masked down from the film's 1.78:1 to 2:1, and these look good in 25p. But then again these bits of the day aren't supposed to look 'real', and vignetting, slo-mo, sepia tints and so on all come together here.

tom.

Hi
Do I have this choice with my camera (Sony FX7)?

Stelios

You certainly do.

Doing the conversion at the last part of the chain means that you can fit more on a DVD. Less compression = nicer video. Or more material, or better audio.

To me, that's the value added.

Can you explain that. It seems to me that encoding to MPEG2 at X Mbps has nothing to do with interlaced or progressive.

I just tried it and it certainly works very well. However, it took my dual 1ghz G4 almost 4 hours to convert a 1 minute clip!!!! I know the G4 is not state of the art anymore, but will the new Intel chips make a huge difference in processing time? If I convert a 90 minute 24p movie, would that take days to finish even on a modern Duo-core machine?

I think he was talking about framerate.

If you have encoded video that's 30 FPS and your bitrate is 7000Kbps then each frame gets 233k. If the video is 24FPS then each frame gets 291k (basically). So the quality of each frame is increased at a lower frame rate.

If I understand it correctly, the point is moot when discussing 25P versus 50i, or 30P versus 60i.

Perhaps so. But I was comparing 60i (typical for NTSC broadcast in the US) to 24p (which seems reasonable for Hollywood or independent releases).

By shooting 24p instead of 60i, it is possible to use less compression and get a better quality product in the same amount of space.

I see that as added value.

Tom How? I have looked in the manual and I couldn't find a way to do so.

Stelios

Sorry it does not support progressive mode. Only progressive 25p on HVR-V1U.

http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/ar...comparison.htm

Exactly what I was getting at.

The 8-core Mac Pro should be about 9-12 times faster than your machine. Per GHz, Intel is about 25% faster than a similarly clocked G4.

If you're converting programs 90 minutes or so in length, you're better off shooting 50i/60i in the future and doing 24P conversions in post. Faster and better quality.