60i to film

[Bob Zimmerman]

I've read from some video to film transfer house websites that 60i works best. If this is true why have 24p?

[Rob Lohman]

Bob: true 24p has just been around for a short period of time, so
the remark that 60i will be better is mainly from before that it was
readily available. However I'm no film or film out expert and there
might be other reasons as well to use 60i to go out to film.

However, if you are going to make a movie that needs to go out
to film (and 99.999% of the people don't) then I would definitely
contact the company you are going to use for this to discuss these
and other matters.

[Bob Zimmerman]

I ask two places this month. They both said 60i. I saw in a story in Moviemaker mag some company called Hokus Bogus said to, 1. Shoot PAL and 6:9. 2. Shoot interlaced not framed or shutter mode. Another place said the best results he has seen lately has been with the Sony F1 shooting 60i HD. Best to go to film.

These places know about 24p and list the best set ups for transfer to film with them. But they say best results are with interlaced. I've ask this question a few time and you have been the only one to even answer. ( i could have missed one).

I would like to have native 16:9 and real 24p on my next camera. I feel 16:9 is a must. But is 24p? Is 24p still just a "film look"?

[Joshua Provost]

Bob, if the choices are 24p or 60i, go with 24p. It's a direct frame by frame copy when you go out to film.

The confusion comes when people ask the best way to shoot with their non-24p cameras for film out. In that case, the advice is to shoot 60i, not in-camera "frame" (fake-progressive) modes, since it preserves more information for the 60i->24p conversion, and shoot at 1/60 shutter speed, since that give the smoothest 24p conversion with as little strobing as possible.

[Bob Zimmerman]

Thanks...

[Rhett Allen]

Be careful with the notion that 24P is 24P because it isn't always really 24P, it's 60i arranged to look like 24P. Even the DVX100 has 2 different settings for 24P and neither one is really 24P. It has do do with the way it arranges the fields onto the tape.
That being said though, Rob has some good advice, find out who you want to use for the transfer and follow their recommendations. Some have more experience with 50i some 60i and some 24P.

[Rob Lohman]

For a film company to work with 24P footage from a DV camera
they need to support the 2:3 pulldown method being employed.
As Rhett points out there are two ways (2:3 and 2:3:3:2) and
they may not be able to work with either or both. This is one of
the many reasons to talk to the company that will do your
transfer. If they can't do a good 24P -> film there is no reason
to go down that path, or you may want to look at another
company.

If you are spending that much cash to go to film then the least
you want to do is thoroughly talk to all the technical people and
departments involved and I would definitely want to do some
test filmouts before shooting the movie in one way or another.

Good luck!

[Josh Barker]

I record in 60i, then on my own PC I convert 60i to 24p using an AviSynth script I created. The reason I don't and probably will not go to 24p (straight from camera, instead of converting it on PC), is because if you record in 60i then deinterlace it, you have 60 fields.

If you would want slow motion... perfect! Deinterlace your 60i to 60p and then you have 40% slow motion with 24p (24/60=40%)! You can also use AviSynth to fool around if you want to insert more frames or less frames for a faster or slower slow-mo.

If you don't want slow-motion, you have 60 frames to work with. You could reduce it easily to 24p without any stutter effects.

Regards,
Josh

[Stefan Scherperel]

"Be careful with the notion that 24P is 24P because it isn't always really 24P, it's 60i arranged to look like 24P. Even the DVX100 has 2 different settings for 24P and neither one is really 24P. It has do do with the way it arranges the fields onto the tape.
That being said though, Rob has some good advice, find out who you want to use for the transfer and follow their recommendations. Some have more experience with 50i some 60i and some 24P."


Actually, I would have to say this is not necessarily true.24p both on the DVX and XL2 is "True" 24 progressive scan frames per second. The CCD is actually sampling at 24Hertz. Were the pulldown comes in is when it is written to tape. Since the DV codec needs to be 60i it is written to tape as if it were. The difference with this is when you edit. Most NLE's today are capable of detecting the 24p pulldown in your footage. Thus you can extract the actual 24 frames and get rid of the extra duplicate frames made by the camera to comply with the 60i spec. So now you have the full resolution 24frames as samled in the real world. You can then send this file as a true 24P file to have it blown up to film, with each frame being true to it's original sample.

Recording 60i and converting to 24p is a good way of doing it, however there is a pretty big resolution loss, and interlace video is inherintly lower in resolution than progressive scan becuase of field blending.
I personally plan my shots accordingly, shoot 30p or 60i for slow mo, and 24p for everything else. 30p is great for slow mo because there is no resolution loss if done correctly, however it is not "that" slow.

Check out http://www.dvfilm.com/faq.htm#dvx100 for more specific information of transfering 24p to film.

Now I would have to agree that right now, the sharpest image possible for a film transfer will most likely come from one of the new HDV cameras shooting 60i. But a close second would definatly be PAL25p and the NTSC 24p. Progressive scan will give you a better film transfer.

[Michael Struthers]

Should the miracle occur that you will be going to 35mm film (a less than lightning chance, as someone pointed out) 16x9 will help you more than 24p. The post houses are doing pretty well with 60i footage.

You can always rent a panny sdx900 that does 24p and 16x9...

Or buy an Ikegami for 11k + lens shoots awesome 16x9 60i...

Or don't buy a cam, rent a dp and his camera instead.

[Stefan Scherperel]

Absolutly, or just shoot film to start with. i would say that 99% of the people that say they are planning for a film transfer will never do it. It's nice to shoot with the intention of transfering to film, but if you absolutly know that you are going to have a film projection, Renting an SDX or 16mm camera would be the way to go.