Blu-ray 25p 1080P

[Tariq Peter]

I have been shooting all my footage at 25p on mk MK3 but when watching my movies back on a Blu-ray player the sliding shots are awful, they appear to be missing a frame and jumpy, not smooth at all. Any pan movement just looks like jumpy.

I export my movies from FCPX as Master File Pro Res 422, then import them Encore. I choose Automatic with encore. Has anybody had this issue before or am I missing a step?

[Alan Craven]

1080p at a frame rate of 25fps is not a valid format for Blu-ray.

You must either convert to 1080i @ 25 fps, or 1080p @ 24 or 29 Fps - these are the only valid formats available to you.

I have generally found that converting to interlaced is more convenient.

[Zoran Vincic]

As you probably know, blu ray doesn't support progressive natively in any mode other than 24p. But you can export progressive footage in an interlace wrapper/container (using progressive segmented frame or PsF) and import that into encore and it will play as progressive.

I'm exporting 25p projects using h264 50i blu ray preset in PPro and the final output on a HDTV shows a nice progressive footage without anomalies. I guess PPro automatically set's the psf flags when you export progressive footage in interlace format.

Not sure about other NLE's.

I guess that Encore won't do it right if you import clean 25p footage.

[Roger Averdahl]

I export 25p to 50i as well and i cannot see any issues. It looks as expected, iow progressive and sharp.

I have tried to convert the footage to 24p and quality wise there was no difference, so it's not worth converting to 24p. (If you do, don't forget to pitch correct the audio...)

Keep in mind that pans always look bad in 25p. The faster they are, the worse they look. 25p is great for static shoots, but when there is any movement it looks bad. Motion in 25p looks jittery and "nervous". If you interview one person the close up shoot looks good until the object start talking with their hands. The movement of the hand looks really bad. Or, if you shot people in the town and a car passes by, close to the camera or far away. It looks very odd.

25p on a camera with a global shutter looks way better.

So, what you see is probably just the nature of progressive footage on a slow frame rate.

[Ann Bens]

Hi Roger,
what is it with this panning? sometimes even in 50i it looks bad.
Is it the framerate, the bitrate, the compression?

[Roger Averdahl]

Originally Posted by Ann Bens

Hi Roger,
what is it with this panning? sometimes even in 50i it looks bad.
Is it the framerate, the bitrate, the compression?

Hi Ann,

25p and 24p pannings looks bad by nature when filmed with a video camera. If it is out of focus it looks kind of acceptable, but not good. Slower pans looks "better" than fast.

If filmed in 50i or 720p50 it looks better but can look bad depending on the TV. 50i or 720p50 downscaled to 576i watched on CRT TV's always look good, new non-CRT HD TV's can look good and some looks bad, depending of the panel type and refresh rate. (1080p24/1080p25 downscaled to SD looks "nervous" on a SD CRT as well due to the camera that recorded it...)

For me it boils down to personal preferences and i like 720p50 much better than 1080p25 since 720p50 looks more natural and the motion is smooth and not "nervous" and stuttery. I have done tests and compared 720p50 to 1080p25 and burned a Blu-ray disc and looked at it. In the tv-sofa i could not see any difference in resoulution between the two. When playing back the footage on the computer screen i could not see any difference either. Both were as sharp and i got rid of the bad blurriness when using 720p50. All shots was shot with a tripod with a Canon XF100.

Leafs moving in the wind looked really odd when filmed in 1080p25. It reminded of DV, when the filed order is filpped, iow LFF footage is rendered out to UFF and thus making the motion in footage stutter.

Frame rate is king! :)

Yes, 1080p filmed with an ARRI ALEXA camera looks good, but it is not a video/DSLR camera.

[Panagiotis Raris]

automatic may be the culprit; it may be outputting to 24P instead of 50i when you burn, then the HDTV/blu ray player has to change framerates to meet TV specs (i believe).

what are you burning the blu rays at? (framerate)

[Roger Averdahl]

Originally Posted by Panagiotis Raris

automatic may be the culprit; it may be outputting to 24P instead of 50i when you burn, then the HDTV/blu ray player has to change framerates to meet TV specs (i believe).

what are you burning the blu rays at? (framerate)

For Tariq, that may or may not be the issue.

For me, no.

If i render out 50i from Premiere Pro the TV says PAL, if i render out to 24 fps the TV says 24.000 Hz, if i render out to 23.976 the TV says 23.976. (And, i never render out 25 fps to 24 fps from the timeline)

When i converted 25p to 24p i rendered out a master file @ 1080p25, imported it back to Premiere Pro and used Interpret Footage and changed it from 25 fps to 24 fps. After that, i placed the media on a 1080p24 and rendered out to 1080p24.

Authored in Encore, burned with ImgBurn. :)

[Panagiotis Raris]

Tariq, please give me the shoot/edit/burn specs and i will try to replicate/troubleshoot.

Roger, give me a few hours, i have the day off waiting for kit to get back, clean, etc so i will try to replicate the issue. what blu ray burner do you use?

i have pioneer 206mbk/205mbk. Roger, you are correct about pans in PAL; interlaced does look better.

i have an older trinitron that can display 50/59/60/70/72/85hz so i will try 50hz with pal T2i footage and play with it a bit.

[Larry Kropp]

I always use 1080i, 29.97fps especially when I do sports and have nice smooth video. I also use a shutter speed of 120fps. IF I use 1080p, 30fps I get jitter and shaky video.

Larry