Does the EX1 or EX3 shoot 60fps? (29.97p vs 59.94i vs judder)

[Francis Lee]

Here...
when I say 30fps I mean 29.97fps
when I say 60fps I mean 59.94 fps

I'm just catching up on all this so thanks to any kind soul who will share some info with me and help me get quickly educated.

I thought I wanted a 1080p cam that shot at a 30fps.

But was told that "judder" would be an issue because we were accustomed to 60 fps interlaced (60 "fields" per sec)... what we have traditionally refered to as 30fps...

Then I was told that the best solution is to shoot 1080p at 60fps and to render it as 60i (60 interlaced frames per second ) (After converting original 1080p 60fps to cineform for editing.)

I'm trying to educate myself on this so any help would be very appriceated.

Finally, do the EX1 & EX3 shoot 1080p at both 30fps and 60fps?

Thanks again.

[Steve Phillipps]

It doesn't do 1080/60P, nothing of a sensible price will do it at the moment (save a few cheapo camcorders that won't do a proper job of it).
It will do 720/60P. You wouldn't want to turn it into 60i though.
Steve

[Duncan Craig]

There's so much information you could easily have found before asking this question here.

1080p60 is well out of the capabilities of an EX1 or 3.
What you need to do is shoot in 1080i60, which almost any HD camera can do (including the EX series)
You could also shoot 720p60, and I believe this will drop onto a 60i timeline.

What is your end product supposed to be? Which delivery medium(s)? What look are you going for?

I guess you realise cinema uses 24fps, that has a 'judder' which we are accustomed to.

[Francis Lee]

Thanks Doug & Steve.

I'm just getting started with HD so I have lot's to learn.

So if I have shot 1080i60... and used ciniform to convert to 1080i60 for editing... (Sony Vegas Pro)

And you want to render h.264 for the net... and I wanted it to come out like traditional 30fps (60 interlaced fields per second) what would I ask my editing program to do...

(Having not done HD before I've never thought about progressive vs interlaced... I just told the editing program to render to 30fps... and I guess it was actually rendering to 60 interlaced fields per second)

And... yes, it is true. All the answers are already on the net somewhere... maybe right here in this forum... And if you search and/or Google long enough you would never have to post a question on a forum... but, alas, it seems to work better for me to chat with knowledgable folks... rather than dig and dig and read and read :)

Again, thank you for your kind assistance.

[Steve Phillipps]

In actual fact this "judder" goes some way to giving video a more filmic look. It's more of a blur really, and as you quite rightly say it's because we're used to seeing 60 pictures per second with interlaced. The basic "trick" to smoothing out 25P and 30P motion is to shoot with a 180 degree shutter (so double your frame rate ie 1/50th sec in 25P and 1/60th in 30P). This takes some of the blur out of it.
If you want it 60i though, why not just 60i? Virtually all cameras will do it.
Steve

[Dean Sensui]

For my show I shoot 1080p30.

No one has ever mentioned anything about strange-looking motion and thousands have been watching the show regularly every week.

What they have mentioned is how good everything looks.

Regarding shooting interlaced, I avoid it. If you're ever going to do any roto work or green screen keying, interlaced will be just another problem to deal with in a workflow that's already complex.

Another advantage of shooting progressive: you can extract still frames and actually make prints. This is something else I do fairly frequently. For a couple of ocean-related expos I created a display that consisted of still images pulled from the show.