24p?
 

I thought most wedding videographers used 30p.

Hi Geoffrey,

Many do. I'd be surprised if it wasn't split pretty evenly between 30p, 60i and 24p in the states. I think its a personal decision - you go with what works best with your shooting style and aesthetic tastes. Obviously slow motion isn't going to look as good with a progressive format unless you're shooting 720/60. Ever since 2000 I've been de-interlacing my mpeg2 files, and when I could shoot 24p I did, mostly to gain the extra stop of light. I stopped using slow motion at the same time because it just wasn't practical. I think it made me a better shooter - not having the ability to slow it down in post. If I really need slow mo for a certain sequence I can send it to Motion and it looks ok, but its time consuming.

Tests
 

I'm still struggling a little with some of this so I did my own tests. I also posted this on the Canon 60D forum.

I shot 4 very short clips at different settings to try and determine what is going to work best for my upcoming wedding season.

Questions: I can't find in the operator's manual, but the 1280x720 60 setting in the Canon 60D seems to be 60 progressive. I took a frame and put it in Photoshop and it appears to be progressive. But when I render in Vegas, there isn't a 60P setting - at least in "main concept AVC/AAC mp4. So, I rendered as 29.970 progressive and it came out fine. Is there a way to shoot 60i in this camera?

Does anyone have an opinion as to which setting produces the nicest camera movement? 24P looks the worse to me, with 30P in second place and 60P looks the smoothest. Is there a reason people on this forum always recommend 24P and 30P? Do they think it's more important to have that extra resolution of 1920 x 1080 and have choppy movement?

Is there a best setting if output to SD DVD's is most probable outcome?

Isn't 60P the best setting that would allow me to do decent slow-motion (in After Effects/Twixor) every once in a while?

Test 01 (1080 30P)
Camera setting
1920 x 1080 30
1/60th shutter speed
Vegas project setting
HD 1080-30p
Render setting
MainConcept AVC/AAC mp4
Video 29.970fps, 1920x1080 Progressive 20 Mbps
Uploaded to YouTube
YouTube - 30P test

Test 02 (1080 24P)
Camera setting
1920 x 1080 24
1/60th shutter speed
Vegas project setting
HD 1080-24p
Render setting
MainConcept AVC/AAC mp4
Video 23.976fps, 1920x1080 Progressive 20 Mbps
Uploaded to YouTube
YouTube - 24P 1/60

Test 03 (same as Test 02 except for shutter speed)
Camera setting
1920 x 1080 24
1/50th shutter speed
Vegas project setting
HD 1080-24p
Render setting
MainConcept AVC/AAC mp4
Video 23.976fps, 1920x1080 Progressive 20 Mbps
Uploaded to YouTube
YouTube - 24p test 50th.mp4

Test 04 (720 60P)
Camera setting
1280 x 720 60
1/60th shutter speed
Vegas project setting
HD 720-60P
Render setting
MainConcept AVC/AAC mp4
Video 23.976fps, 1920x1080 Progressive 20 Mbps
Uploaded to YouTube
YouTube - 60p

The T2i can only shoot progressive.

60p will give the smoothest motion rendition by far. The higher the frame rate, the smoother the motion will be.

People recommend 24p because it is considered to give "the film look" of 35mm motion pictures. People recommend 30p because it is close to 24p, but still mixes perfectly with other 60hz (NTSC) sources such as 60i or 60p. For example, you can easily drop a 60p clip on a 30p timeline, and the NLE will just drop every second frame of the 60p clip.

Yes, they do put too much weight on the spatial resolution. What they are not taking into account is the effect that temporal resolution (resolution over time) has on percieved sharpness and detail, espescially when shooting moving objects. 720p60 records roughly as many pixels per second as 1080p30 and therefore can show just as much or even more detail that 1080p30 in certain situations.

No. The camera has a SD mode but it is smaller than NTSC DV. Just shoot and edit in HD, then figure out the down-conversion method which you feel gives you the best results when going to DVD.

Yes. Although you don't need to use Twixtor/AE to get good slow motion from 60p. Simply slow it down to 50% in your NLE (re-interpreting in Premiere is my preferred method for doing slow motion - I change the frame rate from 50fps to 25fps) and you now have perfect, smooth slow motion footage. Of course, if you want to go slower than that then Twixtor/AE will help.

Dslr weddings
 

I use a 5D II, T2i, and small camcorders (Canon HF11's). I wouldn't go without the small camcorders or a regular video camera, since it can keep recording beyond the 12minute or so limits that DSLR camcorders have. I just place them in various places, and keep them running. I check up on them every now and then to see if I need to change anything.

Then, you're free to move around with the DSLR's and do close-ups, extra wide, various angles, etc. Being able to have a video running till it reaches the 30 gig or so is just fantastic. ... and they're easy to review and analyze as far as which files you want to keep.