Why wouldn't I want to shoot in progressive all the time?

[Aviv Hallale]

I see some cameras allow the option of shooting interlaced or progressive, if progressive offers better quality, why would anyone not want to shoot with it? If there is a big reason, can you use an NLE like Premiere to convert Progressive to interlaced and visa versa for different reasons? How would you do that? Under Processing Options, select Deinterlace, or in the project settings, under Fields, select None or both those options?

[David Jimerson]

Depends on your use.

Shooting 50i/60i is better for things like sports and "reality" television.

But a lot of users of cameras like the DVX never shoot anything but progressive.

As for changing it to interlaced, well, it's recorded to tape that way, so all you'd really have to do is capture. But it still looks progressive.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

I love interlaced for reality things, like the news, documentarys, soap opera's...

Because I myself make especially narrative movies, so I always use progressive (frame mode on my XL1s PAL), so I think I wouldn't like it that much if the soap operas looked the same (I mean the feeling of the motion) as some good narrative films...
I know it's a bad argument :-)

[Shane Ross]

i edit TV documentaries, and more and more we are shooting progressive.

[Aviv Hallale]

To the untrained eye, do you only really notice the difference between progressive/interlaced in the motion? the former looking more film like? Progressive (PAL) can be 25FPS, same as interlaced, as well as 24, right?

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

You'll notice it the most if there is motion, indeed. Interlaced seems to move faster.
The best to notice is when you see both right after each other.

Interlaced is 60i (NTSC) or 50i (PAL)
Progressive is 24p (NTSC/Film) or 25p (PAL)

[Robin Davies-Rollinson]

I don't particularly want to see the wheels of wagons and cars going backwards as they do in films - because of the temporal interpolation caused by progressive scan. I tried DVFilmmaker last week to de-interlace a sequence and that's exactly what happened. Please tell me that I won't see this effect on all these nice new cameras capable of shooting progessive!!!
(LOL)

Robin

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Aviv Hallale

........ if progressive offers better quality, why would anyone not want to shoot with it?

Because it's not such a simple A or B choice.

Think of three basic attributes that define a HD TV standard:
a) Progressive or interlace
b) Frame/field rate
c) Resolution - 720 or 1080 lines

Fundamentally, progressive is better than interlaced, 50Hz is better than 25Hz for motion rendition, and 1080 offers the better resolution (if lens/chip can deliver it) over 720. So, the champion must be 1080p/50 - so why is this not what we use all the time?

Quite simply, except at the extreme high end, the technologys not capable of it (yet), and it also needs high bandwidth to distribute it. Hence one or other of the attributes has to be sacrificed for practical reasons.

One school of thought says always sacrifice the potential resolution - let 720p/50 be *the* standard.

Another says keep to a 1080 resolution, but mix and match the other factors depending on material - interlace for news and sports etc (so 50Hz motion), but progressive (and 25Hz) for drama etc. And when technology allows move to 1080p/50 - at least for acquisition.

The choice is not progressive or interlace, period, but interlace or progressive with reduced resolution/poorer motion handling. All that said, any of the options is better than SD TV!

[David Jimerson]

But let's not confuse interlace with framerate.

A 60p video (which you see a lot on HDTV here in the States) looks like reality TV, like sports TV, etc., in terms of motion, only higher-resolution. But it's still progressive.

Likewise, 50p will look like 50i in terms of motion.