24F or 60i for web?

[Craig Lieberman]

Stupid question...I do car videos, each about 8 minutes in length.

Most of it uses camera mounts on cars as cars move.

Projects are edited in Premiere, output using H264 Quicktime codec.

I'm filing in 60i mode now.

I'm curious:
A) Am I ok to use 24 fps?
B) If so, wouldn't render times be a lot faster as I'll only have a fraction of the amount of frames I currently do?

I know...a remedial question, but someone fill me in.

[Jack Zhang]

A stable image is recommended for 24p filming in car, keep using 60i and de-interlace to 30p since it lessens extreme blur and/or jitter.

[Bill Pryor]

I shoot all 24F for web stuff. No deinterlace artifacts. Looks great.

[Brandon Freeman]

Well, unless you're going for the film look, I'd recommend the medium between 24F and 60i -- 30F. It does a better job than software deinterlacers, it deinterlaces before compression (less artifacts), and it's quicker.

My two cents.

[Henrik Reach]

Originally Posted by Bill Pryor

I shoot all 24F for web stuff. No deinterlace artifacts. Looks great.

Same here, my A1 hardly ever leaves 25F.

[Ron Evans]

Why shoot 24p if you are not going to sound film? 24 doesn't divide into 50 or 60 so cannot be displayed without some changes to frame rate on TV's anywhere in the world!!! I can see 25P in PAL countries and 30P in NTSC but 24P makes no sense at all. Apart from that the motion is awful most of the time because inexperienced camera persons use it as if they were shooting interlace video and cause way too much judder, no masking of backround judder motion because the small format cameras cannot generate a small enough depth of field etc. You can see I am not a 24p fan!!! 24fps was a technological and economic restriction of 100 years ago.Do we still need to do that now and mess up so many TV shows with motion artifacts? The composition part of the "film look" is still absolutely valid. Managing emotion on screen with composition, contrast, colour and depth of field. But we don't need frame judder anymore because we now have no technological or economic reason to do so.

Ron Evans

[Taky Cheung]

24p will be good for web delivery. No need to deinterlace and make better use of data bandwidth. However, if there're lot of high motion scene, 60i will be a better choice.

[Philip Williams]

For web video I think the best bet is either shoot 24F and output at 24fps *or* 30F and output your web video at 15fps. I would recommend shooting/processing both and seeing which one offers the best compromise between motion/quality/filesize

[Taky Cheung]

There is no reason to lower the frame rate to 15fps for web output. Most video hosting sites like youtube or vimeo can handle 30fps. But it's important to deinterlace if the source video is 60i.

[Philip Williams]

Originally Posted by Taky Cheung

There is no reason to lower the frame rate to 15fps for web output. Most video hosting sites like youtube or vimeo can handle 30fps. But it's important to deinterlace if the source video is 60i.

Actually its one of the reasons cited by Canon for intoducing 30P on the HV30; specifically for easy conversion to 15fps for web output.

Granted, I wouldn't typically want to publish at 15fps, but apparently someone does....

[Tripp Woelfel]

Technical considerations aside, specifically transcoding speeds, I like shooting at speeds appropriate for the subject matter. For example, if you're shooting people (interviews, drama, etc.) or nature, 24f would be fine if that's the look you want. But I would stick to 60i for anything that moves fast, like action sequences or sports. Shooting motor racing at 24f would not look good IMHO, so I stick with 60i. Plus that settings gives you better options for slow motion.

Please note that this is my opinion and others with much more knowledge and experience might take issue. If so, I'll defer to their wisdom.

Also, you won't save much on file size by going 24 vs 30 for Web delivery. I've transcoded a bunch of videos to h.264 in both frame rates and although I don't have the relative file sizes in front of me, as I recall 24p will save you a lot less than 5% overall.

[Seun Osewa]

15fps has its benefits; reduces the compression artifacts on sites like Youtube. For this reason, the top video bloggers always use 15fps.. Also, blip.tv flash files default to 15fps - the essentially doubled bitrate can be the difference between barely watchable video and good-looking video.

Also, for the web, there's little or no difference between 60i and 30p. The only difference is the vertical resolution, which becomes mute by the time you have to resize your video for the web. This is especially true if you shoot HDV.

[Taky Cheung]

Originally Posted by Seun Osewa

15fps has its benefits; reduces the compression artifacts on sites like Youtube. For this reason, the top video bloggers always use 15fps.. Also, blip.tv flash files default to 15fps - the essentially doubled bitrate can be the difference between barely watchable video and good-looking video.

Also, for the web, there's little or no difference between 60i and 30p. The only difference is the vertical resolution, which becomes mute by the time you have to resize your video for the web. This is especially true if you shoot HDV.

15fps is just too last century for my taste. hey but if it works for you, why not.

As for the web, there is no vertical resolution difference between 60i and 30p, but the interlace comb line becomes a major diaster in downsizing 60i video stream to the web. You just need to deinterlace 60i video before posting to web.

[Evan Cooksey]

When you are shooting anything and it is going to be shown on a TV it is pretty much going to be coming out at 29.97 at the end of it all. You can drag it into your time, and export it out as a .mov or what have you at just about any frame rate you want, but when you encode on a DVD it is going to to encode it to NTSC standards(29.97) so that it will show on a TV.(unless you are using PAL)

A few things don't shoot/import in advanced pulldown(2:3:3:2/23.98) unless you are going to one day going to transfer it to film. When panasonic came out with the DVX all those years ago they included 24pADV as a feature for new film makers. The XH-A1 also has the option to use the 2:3:3:2 pull down rate and I've seen many people using it for no apparent reason. I have found that it leads to a few audio problems and even more drop frame problems.

If you are shooting cars moving 24p might limit you in a few ways. You will definitely notice some jittering if you are moving all over with the camera. That is just the price you pay to use 24p, if you were shooting film you would have the same effect. When panning, try to make it so that as you follow your subject it takes about 7 seconds to make the pan.

As far as the difference between 30p and 60i. If you are ever going to shoot something in slow motion I would suggest shooting in 60i. You can split the frames into 60 individual frames(at half resolution) and be much closer to true slow motion. The only way I've found a way to do it is in After Effects, but I heard that Vegas can do it as well. Slow motion in Final Cut always leads to ghosting because of how FC interpolates the footage, but I've only used Premiere a hand full of times so I couldn't say if it's the same.

Personally I usually shoot in 24p because I like the look it gives me. I've been told that it is better to shoot in 60i or 30p if you have a ton of post plug-ins to make it look more like film, but I don't really have the cash for that right now.

hope some of this information helped,
Evan

[Jarrod Whaley]

There is a lot of misinformation in this thread.

24p is better for the web than 30p, because the lower frame rate allows you to either lower your bitrate or get better quality out of the same frame rate.

Originally Posted by Ron Evans

Why shoot 24p if you are not going to sound film? 24 doesn't divide into 50 or 60 so cannot be displayed without some changes to frame rate on TV's anywhere in the world!!! I can see 25P in PAL countries and 30P in NTSC but 24P makes no sense at all. Apart from that the motion is awful most of the time because inexperienced camera persons use it as if they were shooting interlace video and cause way too much judder, no masking of backround judder motion because the small format cameras cannot generate a small enough depth of field etc. You can see I am not a 24p fan!!! 24fps was a technological and economic restriction of 100 years ago.Do we still need to do that now and mess up so many TV shows with motion artifacts? The composition part of the "film look" is still absolutely valid. Managing emotion on screen with composition, contrast, colour and depth of field. But we don't need frame judder anymore because we now have no technological or economic reason to do so.

There are so many easily refutable comments here that I'm not sure where to start.

First of all, all computer monitors are perfectly capable of displaying 24p material, and since we're talking about delivery for the web, your comment about "no TV's in the world being able to play 24p" is out of place here.

Second, there are many progressive televisions out there which can quite easily play back 24p.

Third, it is very easy to author a DVD at true 24p for playback on regular 60i televisions; the DVD player will insert pulldown. No, this is not really the same thing as "changes to frame rate" at all.

Fourth, your disdain for "judder" is easily resolved by properly shooting 24p. If you use a 1/48 shutter speed (unless going for some effect), the resulting motion blur will make for smooth motion. No "judder." Also, 24p requires somewhat slower pans, tilts, camera movements, etc.

Finally, there are technological reasons to shoot in 24p--as I pointed out above, with 24p you are able to squeeze more quality out of a given bitrate. You also neglect the fact that the use of 24p may be an aesthetic decision--not everything must be dictated by either "technological" or "economic" concerns.