Since sony did not do it with their new camera, are we sure it is possible?

Yes. The Sony shoots in 30i and there are several programs that will specifically turn 30i into 24p.

DVFilm has just put out a new version of DVFilmmaker that will do so for the FX1.

I thought the sony shot 60i

Technically it's 60i. Everyone knows what is meant by 30i however.

And yes it's possible. The format calls for 1080/60i to be stored on the tape, but if the CCD is set to 24 Hz, repeat fields flags could be used just like they are in DVDs (which are also 60i) to insert artificial pulldown, which is easily removed by the NLE.

Will there ever be a day without interlaced video? I mean c'mon--is there any point anymore? If you want fluid motion...shoot 60p and let's just embrace the fact that new technology has gotten us over the phosphor gun speed bumb...

There are many creative professionals who prefer the look of 60i and have not felt "held back" by the lack of progressive frame rates. Interlaced video is excellent for sports and a variety of other applications -- most programming on broadcast and cable these days is originated on 60i. I'm all for having the choice of shooting progressive, but that's all it is to me: an aesthetic choice. So in my opinion, no, there will never be a day without interlaced video anytime soon. To turn the question around, I would have to ask, is there any point to not shoot interlaced video, outside of the typical application of emulating a film look?

LCD's, plasma TV's, projectors, computer screens, they're all progressive display devices. And progressive-shot footage looks a lot better on them than interlaced footage does. So, depending on your targeted display device, sure there are reasons to shoot progressive.

Another good example would be for web streaming video, shooting progressive gives you a cleaner/easier-to-compress source, etc.

Regarding "ever a day without interlaced"... I don't think so. In Europe, maybe... the EBU is apparently trying to decide right now whether they'll embrace 1080/50i OR 720/50P, but not both (unlike in the US, where the ATSC endorsed both 1080 interlaced and 720 progressive, it appears that the Europeans are going to go with one and not the other). Sony's pushing hard for 1080/50i, Panasonic is pushing just as hard for 720/50P. If Sony wins, we're pretty much guaranteed that interlace will be with us forever. If Panasonic wins, there may be a lot less importance attached to interlace, since the ATSC also supports 1080 at progressive frame rates, so both resolutions would be supported in the US.

But for the foreseeable future interlace will be with us for quite a while, and maybe forever.

But my point is that it seems like all new tech displays are natively progressive. What advantages does 60i give over 60p? It seems to me you'd still have all the smooth motion in 60p...right?

I guess in my way of thinking, interlaced video was invented to over come a technical deficency which has now been over come...so why cling to it, if you can get the same (if not better) picture from progressive, and it will be better adapted to any display that someone might have...

Well, I guess it depends on what formats those displays support.

In the ATSC HDTV standard, 1280x720 is approved as progressive-only, at 24p, 30p and 60p.

But if you want the higher pixel count of 1920x1080, that is supported at 24p, 30p and 60i. If you want the fluid motion of 60 updates per second and also the higher pixel count, you have to go interlaced. There is an argument to be made that 1280x720x60p provides fundamentally the same # of pixels-per-second as 1920x1080x60i, so it may not be much of an issue, but the fact remains that if you want the highest pixel count per line at the highest refresh rate, that means going interlaced...

"There are many creative professionals who prefer the look of 60i and have not felt "held back" by the lack of progressive frame rates"

No one is saying they're held back. However, I don't think we should have to settle for things that are objectively not as good. 60i has no advantage over 60p except bandwidth. That's not an issue for a lot of us here. 60p objectively looks better (just look at sports on fox before they switched to HD). I don't know *who* would prefer 60i over 60p. Prefer 60p over 24p if you want (I don't). But seriously, interlacing provides nothing that is not exceeded by 60p.

I agree. Interlaced video should be a thing of the past now, and it is a pain to upscale or downscale witch is not a problem in progressive. Still, HDV 24p in 1080 is rather unlikely because of the bandwidth for the moment. A good progressive CCD capturing a real 24p and recording a pulldown 24p version of it on a 60i signal would be better though (like the DVX or the KL2), let's see what the future has in store...

"There are many creative professionals who prefer the look of 60i "

Perfer it over 30p, sure. But .... prefer it over the look of 60p? I'd be honestly surprised if "many" people prefer 60i over that.

" is there any point to not shoot interlaced video, outside of the typical application of emulating a film look?"

Are you serious? Interlaced video flickers and has less resolution than progressive. A while back computer monitors used to be interlaced. People very quickly wisened up to the fact that they gave eyestrain and low resolution (not literally, but perceived) pictures.

So what camera shoots 60p? Under $5,000

> So what camera shoots 60p? Under $5,000

The JVC HD1 seems to have a 16:9 480/60p mode. It's not really HD, but if it's the temporal resolution what you are after and you don't care about the low sensitivity, lack of manual control and chroma noise, you can get away with it with this cam.

A better idea perhaps would be using software to extract reasonable 480/60p from HDV 1080i. Instead of what everybody seems to be after --losing temporal resolution and keeping as much spatial resolution as possible for the holy grail "film look"-- you could try keeping the temporal and dropping the spatial. I wonder if there is any software that can do that, custom software might be needed.

Interlacing was just a analog compression method inroduced mainly because in the 1930s' it would have been to expensive to build progressive scan crt's for receivers.

I really don't understand why to keep this ancient method anymore in digital domain. With digital domain we have lots of more advanced ways to compress the image that interlacing. Eg. mpeg.

When atsc formats were designed there were still strong belief from major receiver manufacturers that hdtv's will be mainly based on crt's.

Now that we know that receivers mainly are and will be progressive displays, so there's no reasons for interlaced pictures any more.

720p has equal aquity than 1080i, so there's no benefit in that direction either.

Like it is said in EBU's papers, we will get better quality if interlaced material is de-interlaced at tv-station with expensive equipment than at homes with consumer priced receivers.

So I hope EBU will decide to end the interlaced era pretty soon.

I don't believe that anybody prefers interlaced over progressive.
Some just prefer higher frame rates over slower ones.

But bigger numbers (1080) are easier to market than small letters (i/p).

> we will get better quality if interlaced material is de-interlaced
> at tv-station with expensive equipment than at homes with
> consumer priced receivers.

That is a VERY good point in favor of either 720p or 1080p. Very good indeed!

There are some bright people in EBU.
I think that proposed path that first 720p is the basic level and 1080p is an option and after couple of years 1080p becomes mainstream, sounds quite sane.
Allthough I believe that 1080p displays will rush to stores already next year. Will they rush to the homes, depends on the prices.
Someody remembers the time when they tried to sell 480-line plasmas for 20 000 ¤ in PAL land?

I only know of a few Real camera that shoot 1080 24p and those are close to $250k. I'm sorry I understand that some people still harbor that whole "I shoot vide and it should look like film" which is odd because a lot of the people I know who think that have never SHOT film. I think a lot of people think that the f900 shoots real 24p which is not the case, it shots psf which is a frame that's split in half. Maybe that's the direction things will go but to say that everything should go progressive (as pretty as it may or may not be) seems like regurgetated ad propaganda. The varicam is the only can I know that shoots 60p but often times it's just flagged for 30 or 24. and it's 720 lines not 1080. I'm sorry but to do 1080 60p that would be a rediculus amount of storage and information, for what? because 5% of the population who havd HD TV's think that maybe when they have a set that is capable of doing 60p 1080x1920 they'll like it better. Why not just go ahead and insist that everything should be 4k? I mean there are camera's that can shot that now, why doesn't everyone jsut accept that, after all it's obviously superior...

PsF is a progressive picture format. It doesn't matter if fields are separated in the tape, as they are captured at a same moment of time.

PsF is just a method how to record both progressive and interlaced picture with same tape recording technic.

Storage space get's cheaper quite accurately with Moore's law.
So it is now 18 times cheaper that when ATSC decided their 1080i/720p formats.

If you are saying that there's no point in 1080@60p, because there's too little people who would want it, it is same like saying there's no idea in anykind of HD, because majority still watches SD.

And you can have great quality with AVC compressed 1080@60p with 8Mbitps bandwidth.
Is that's too much?