I'm used to shooting on Digi Beta on a daily basis, so please excuse my ignorance, if any, in the HD field...(which I'm new to).

A client asked me to shoot a series of pieces over a long period of time. Limited budget, want film look etc etc. I reckoned the jvc200e was the best bet. So I went out and bought myself one.

Now...heres the naive bit. For the film look I always knew that 24p at 1/48 was the closes t you'll get. What I didn't bother to notice was that anything shot in 24p on the 200e would effectively be NTSC. Everything I've shot so far has had to be converted. Now everything I shoot must be 25p. Client now panicky cos 25p doesn't sound as 'filmy' as 24p. You get the picture!

Now, whilst this isn't such a great headache, it got me wondering...why would the Euro market really want 24p on this camera?

Thanks.

24p is very handy in Europe if:

Your principal delivery format is film. Film is still 24fps in Europe, of course.

You must deliver to Europe and North America as part of your main contract. One timeline to create all deliverables. For NTSC land you add pull-down and for PAL land you speed up 4.1%.

25p is very handy if:

Your main delivery is for PAL territory broadcast with no special consideration needed for the NTSC world. For a film-out the film would normally still be projected at 24fps and would therefore run slower.


Post production for 24p is not as scary as it might seem - in SD or HD.

Any suggestion that 24p looks more film-like than 25p is just splitting hairs. If you're so eagle-eyed that you can tell the difference then you should be more concerned about issues like noise, HDV compression and ridiculously un film-like depth of field on cameras in this price range. Bottom line: your client should not worry at all about 25p but I would be very careful about mixing 24p and 25p in a project - not a good idea at all!

Like Antony says, if PAL areas are the target audience, stick with 25p.

All film shot for television in the PAL countries is shot at 25fps. In these countries 24fps is only used for theatrical films. In the NTSC countries they seem like the 24p pull down effect that they've had for years. With PAL all the happens is that the picture runs a bit faster (you'll notice the effect more in the running time rather than how it looks) and a pitch change in the sound.

In the PAL countries you can find yourself with sound issues when a film is shot at 24fps and the sound facility is set up for 25fps TV work and the pitch change has to be considered. This can also be the case when shooting film and post house has to purchase a key from Avid to be able to use 24 fps. Basically, you need to check your workflow for any possible problems.