Weddings 24p/f shutter speed? Yes, I searched

[Nick Weeks]

Can't seem to find a good answer for this... but I'm sure its been asked 1,000 times

I'm contemplating doing some upcoming weddings in 24p, but I'm not sure of the shutter speed. Some tests I did around the house reveal that 1/24 shutter makes for some nice smooth shots with a small amount of motion blur, but 1/48 shutter seems to strobe out the video and make it feel choppy. 1/60 looks ok, but I'm leaning towards 1/24 mostly for the help with lower light situations, and even with the motion blur I think the footage looks very nice, indoors and out.

I know the limitations of slomo footage, and that I should use 60i, although I haven't tested any slomo 24p yet, I do have Twixtor and have read it can produce some very acceptable results from 24p. I could use multiple framerates because the upcoming ones will be using 3+ cameras, but to simplify my timelines (I use FCP 5.1) I want to stick with one.

I'm just not sure which would be better to stick with when doing a wedding, 1/24, 1/48, 1/60 or some other shutter speed? So I'm wondering what you guys that shoot 24p at a wedding are using for a shutter speed? ...and which shutter speed produces the best slomo at 24p? Do you use a different shutter speed indoors and out?

[Ger Griffin]

Im going to second this because I am also interested to know what you guys think.
Im using the A1 in pal land.
so if i shoot in 25f mode should I be on 1/25th shutter speed?
if so this is better again due to the extra light allowed in eh.

[Patrick Moreau]

We shoot nearly everything in 24F.

This is what I've learned so far:

Shooting in 24F/P at 1/48th is the best for all around well lit footage that might be sowed down to 70-80% or ran at normal speed. The key here is to learn how to shoot in 24P- what moves owrk and what don't- especially when shooting with something like a merlin or steadicam such as we are.

We never shoot at 1/60th and I don't know of a reason why that would be advantageous. The slow motion is worse and in general I don't think the footage looks as solid. If you want the high shutter look I would go higher than that and try to find a multiple of 24 or close to.

Shooting at 1/24th with the right preset and the right post work produces phenomenal results. I haven't seen anything close from cams in this range in terms of low light performance, not even close- but the key is the right preset and posts and shooting. I am sure every cam has its sweet spot to get the best looking low light footage but having the 24F option and being able to shoot at 1/24th is huge for us. Shooting in the way, you can also get away with 12 gain in most cases and it looks very filmic in my opinion. I only use it when needed, but especially when the final output is SD, the footage is superb.

Things to avoid:

Watch out for the wrong types of camera moves that will be unusable when editing. Slower moves are better and panning quickly across a screen is not something I would suggest.

Limit your slow motion (here the slow camera moves help again). Yes twixtor works, and it looks better than 60i slow motion with BUT there are many shots with motion that have weird artifacts and are unusable without way too much messing around. Add to that the fact that rendering times make it out of the question for a Same-Day Edit and the lack of any sort of preview without rendering make it very time consuming overall (as in 10 muntes or so to get a shot perfect).

I would definitely not suggest using 24F if you are going to edit in 60. If you downconvert on import, the footage goes back to dv 60i and you then need to runa reverse telecine on it to get it back to 24P. It doesn't look nearly as good- you can never get good slow motion- even with twixtor, and you lose a ton of time in processing. I can't suggest strongly enough to only shoot 24F if you are going to edit in HD. Final output can be SD, that works no problem, just don't downconvert in cam.

That is my experience at least. We shoot with 3 or so A1s, an XLH1 and a couple HV20s. All editing is on mac.

Patrick

[Nick Weeks]

Patrick,

Thanks for the info! I shoot and edit everything in HDV using FCP, the only time I downconvert is when putting it to a regular SD-DVD.

What presets are you using on your A1s? Are they custom-made or the ones from these forums? I found the EOSPHOTO and LOWLIGHT presets on these forums work great for what I've done so far, but I'm always looking for some new stuff.

[John Estcourt]

pal land shoot 25f shutter 1/50.no probs with motion.
using 1/25 shutter helps with low light but motion appears choppy.
i prefer the look of 25f to 50i dont know why hard to explain ..just looks right.

[Glen Elliott]

60 is to 60i as 48 is to 24p. In other words the "default" shutter for 24p is 48. I never see this discussed but my favorite part about shooting 24p is the ability to lower my shutter to 24 in low-light situations and the footage MATCHES the rest of the stuff from the day. When you shoot 60i and lower your shutter to 30 it adds a bit of strobe to the footage. It's much more noticeable because 60i is so smooth. 24p naturally has a bit of a strobe look to it due to it's progressive nature- lowering the shutter to 24 doesn't change the "look" of it at all- but DOES increase it's light sensitivity quite a bit.

[Patrick Moreau]

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

I never see this discussed but my favorite part about shooting 24p is the ability to lower my shutter to 24 in low-light situations and the footage MATCHES the rest of the stuff from the day.

That is because it is a secret...sshhh...

[Art Varga]

Patrick - any other tips on how you get such good results with 24f/p on the A1? I watched your Vegas shoot-out clip and was amazed at how smooth the footage was considering all the camera movement you had. I've been practicing slower moves and see some results but I'm still getting ghosting/ blurring/strobing at 24p 48 shutter. Do the presets make that much of a difference? Any specific post prescriptions you could offer?

Thanks- Art

[Patrick Moreau]

Hi Art,

No other tips really- for me it really all comes down to the types of shots and the speed at which you do them. You really need to arc around things or move straight towards them, avoiding lateral movement unless your subject is moving with you. If you notice in the vegas shoot, many shots are arcing around th subject or slowly moving in or away from them. I haven't found and presets or post filters that make the motion look better- I think the motion looks awesome straight out of the cam. I am editing a Dominican wedding now shot in 24P with the XLH1 and the cam/lens is so good outdoors that it needs very little post work to match my other shots which have extensive color grading.

Not sure if that helps at all but I tried :)

[Art Varga]

Thanks Patrick - this does help. You hit on the key word "arc". Looking at your footage again I see exactly what you mean. I'm gonna grab my cam right now and practice. I have a wedding in 2 weeks. I'd like to go back to 24f for this shoot (been shooting in 30f lately because of this problem) so I'll see what my practice yields.

Thanks again!

[Jason Bowers]

Hi Patrick,
When you say to downconvert in cam what do you mean? Wouldn't you capture the footage to the mac in HDV and edit that way?

[Patrick Moreau]

For some weddings it is faster to import in SD even if it was shot in HD. Only our newer packages include HD so we can get to SD either from the editor or from the cam= and we do a bit of both- but it is a terrible mess if you downconvert in cam when shooting 24P HD.

[Jason Bowers]

I am a little confused. You shoot in 24f 1/48 HD then when you get to the studio you capture the footage to the mac in SD. You use the HV20 to capture. Once you have all the footage you edit and output to SD dvd. Is this the basic setup.?

[Nick Weeks]

What patrick's saying is downconverting from the camera so you can capture SD makes the 24p look terrible because it gets converted to 60i, so you end up with that weird pull-up/pull-down or whatever its called. It looks best to shoot HDV, capture HDV, edit HDV, and export to SD DVD.

I don't see any reason to capture SD, in my opinion, if your software supports HDV and you have a computer to handle it. My workflow stays HDV right up to when I export with compressor to SD DVD, that's the only time it ever goes to SD. Sure, it takes a little longer to render than SD, but my computer does that quite well while I'm sleeping!

[Patrick Moreau]

Jason,

Your correct, we do at some times down convert on import to SD but that is only with 60i footage. Some projects stay HD all the way through and al 24P projects stay HD all the way through.