Hi all,

I need to recommend shooting settings for a PDW-F350 camera on a project that's mostly 720p60 (real 60p, not 60i or 30p or some other flavor). It's not the ideal marriage but these are given.

To the best of my knowledge, the F350 can't shoot anything like this, but it can overcrank 1080p at 60fps. What would happen if we shot this way? Could this be a viable workflow?

The other option is to just shoot 1080/60i and extrapolate every 1440x540 field into 1280x720@60p.

HI,

there a 2 reasons NOT to shoot overcranked 1080:

a) vertical resolution decreases by overcranking
b) I assume there is no audio in overcrank mode ?

I´d prefer 1080i downscaled/deinterlaced to 720...

BTW:

Meanwhile many european broadcasters switch to 1080i acquisition... but officially EBU is still 720p

regards


ULi

Yeah I'll probably go that route...

I'm surprised to hear anyone is switching to 1080i at this point... personally, I hate interlaced formats and think they're a mistake. When Rec.709 was standardized CRTs still ruled the world, now they're obsolete and the dominant display technology is progressive. I really can't see how interlaced makes any sense nowadays besides being legacy.

On a more practical note, I chose 720/60p in consideration of the source material and possible deliverables for the project. We have lots of (progressive) archival film stuff; I'm thinking of projection in festivals; and out of relevant broadcasters (Discovery, History, Nat Geo, PBS..) they're about half and half between 1080i and 720p. Finally, it's easier to derive interlaced from progressive than the other way around.

You are absolutely right - at the moment we work in a world of compromises: Datarates vs. memory, compression, recompression, transcoding , interlaced etc...

Going 1080i is just a matter of resolution... Most broadcasters found that shooting 720p creates "old" stock footage right out of the camera. It seems to be easier to shoot full HD (interlaced for more moving resolution) and downscale/deinterlace the material with some premium hardware or software tools.

Consumers are watching the program on 1080 screens - it looks like upscaling is worse than deinterlacing 1080i...

In the end we are waiting for 1080 50/60 p - thats for sure...

rg. the 330/350 : what about taking the SDI out and use a nanoflash? (does it support 720?)

Best regards

Uli

b) I assume there is no audio in overcrank mode ?



That is correct, there's no audio at 60 fps.