Trying to wean myself off 60i / slow motion

[Jeff Wallace]

I have my first wedding of the season coming up this weekend, and I'm considering shooting it all in 1080/30p but it makes me nervous. Up to this point I've shot in 60i because I like the option of doing slow motion in post. It's been part of my editing style for the past 9 years... doing nice romantic montages throughout the video with slow mo clips, but I realize this style is now pretty dated.

My issue is that I currently don't have a Steady Cam rig, although I just ordered a GlideCam HD2000, but won't have it ready for this weekend. So if I shoot the whole wedding in 30p, I think my only option is to do static shots for the whole day... no camera moves like pans or zooms or simulated dolly shots, because those will all stutter in 30p. And when I do the wedding day highlights montage, it will have to be real time, with no slow motion.

Have any of you faced this same situation and had to completely change your style of shooting and editing to accommodate?

[Vito DeFilippo]

Do you have a compelling reason to shoot in 30p? There's nothing stopping you from changing your shooting and editing style, but still shooting 60i.

I use one quarter the amount of slomo that I used to, but still happily use 60i. Your bride is not going to notice or care if you shoot 30p, but she might notice stuttery footage on slomo (though she probably won't notice that either...).

Why not try changing your style first?

[Jeff Wallace]

Hi Vito,

The main reason (which I forgot to mention) is that I have a Canon 7D which I've never shot with before, and I wanted to incorporate it into the wedding footage -- the other 2 cameras are Sony Ex1r and Sony FX1000.

Since the 7D doesn't do 60i, I figured 30p would make all the footage match nicely.

But yes, you're right... I should change my style first before jumping into 30p. I just didn't want to shoot a bunch of footage with the 7D and then have it look really bad on 60i timeline.

[Dimitris Mantalias]

Hi Jeff. I don't know what NLE you're using but if you are using Premiere, try to slow down your progressive footage by using Time Warp (and uncheck the Frame Blend first).

[Cody Dulock]

Do you mean 60p for slow motion instead of 60i (60 frames interlaced = 29.97)?

[Vito DeFilippo]

The 7D does 60p, doesn't it? You should get some smokin' slomo out of that!

[Travis Cossel]

The 7D does do 60p, but it's also a great way to get the camera to overheat. d;-)

Jeff, do you have anything against shooting 30p and just doing a 50% slo-mo? It will have some stutter, but most people aren't going to have any issue with it at all. We shoot in 24p and use 50% slo-mo and it's worked fine for years.

You can also look into Twixtor, which lets you get silky smooth slo-mo, although I've heard some negative reviews on the software too.

[Jeff Wallace]

The 7D only does 60p in 1280 x 720, so if I mixed it with the other footage (1920 x 1280) I would have to upscale which I prefer not to do.

Travis... thanks for the tips. My tests so far using slow mo in FCP at 50% on 30p and 24p footage seem to look really bad. But maybe it's because I'm so used to the silky smooth slow mo you can get with 60i.

I will check out Twixtor. If there are better ways to slow mo 30p or 24p footage outside of FCP that would be nice!

[Roger Shealy]

IMO the resolution at 60P on the 7D/T2i looks lower than 720-60P and the plastic-skin (over processing) and aliasing get worse than with 1080-30P. On small screens and internet it's passable, but on a full screen my results have been less than stellar.

[Vito DeFilippo]

Dang. Travis' and Roger's comments dont' fill me with confidence in the camera. Perhaps you're better off shooting 30p and avoiding shooting stuff for slow motion. Leave that to your interlaced cameras.

[Peter Manojlovic]

Yes, i'm in the exact same boat...Looking to go 30P and got a steadicam.

Originally Posted by Vito DeFilippo

Do you have a compelling reason to shoot in 30p?

Low light, resizing for SD, output for web...The first two being big issues for me personally..
I find that 1/30th shutter speed at 30P produces one stop more light than the 1/60th at 60i.

Doing some quick and random testing, i've dropped the 30P footage on the timeline, and watching it on an SD broadcast monitor, i must admit, it looks good. Although the viewfinder shows stuttering, the ouptut to my monitor from the NLE doesn't exhibit the same issues. I can't understand this.

[Richard Wakefield]

i had exactly the same problem/question.

And i have to say, PPro CS4/timewarp is pretty darn good (no forking out for twixtor!) - just play around with the mix-method (e.g. frame blend)

e.g. for this clip I made, i wanted some slow-mo on some of the moving/action shots:

The Inspirational Series: Rock 'n' Roll Bride on Vimeo

(e.g. at 2min55) - ok, it's not silky smooth slow-mo, but it's gonna be fine for slow-mo bride shots :)

[Roger Shealy]

Originally Posted by Vito DeFilippo

Dang. Travis' and Roger's comments dont' fill me with confidence in the camera. Perhaps you're better off shooting 30p and avoiding shooting stuff for slow motion. Leave that to your interlaced cameras.

Didn't mean to bash the camera. I use two T2i's and one 7D and enjoy them and have some stunning results from them in 1080. I just work around aliasing issues and haven't found 60P acceptable for full screen display. It looks more like 480 IMO but I wouldn't hesitate to use it if delivering in SD or small-frame-internet delivery. I haven't used 60P extensively, but every time I do, I wish I'd gone full 1920. I recently used 60P and decided to "age" the footage with film effects to mask what I consider unnacceptable HD resolution for full display. Looked great as a 8mm retro!

[Travis Cossel]

Originally Posted by Vito DeFilippo

Dang. Travis' and Roger's comments dont' fill me with confidence in the camera. Perhaps you're better off shooting 30p and avoiding shooting stuff for slow motion. Leave that to your interlaced cameras.

I promise I'm not stalking your comments, Vito. d;-)

Just an FYI, you're more likely to get overheating shooting in 30p also. 60p is much more likely than 30p, but 30p is more likely than 24p. The more frames-per-second, the more processor intensive things get.

[Vito DeFilippo]

Sounds like you better REALLY like 24p before buying this camera. What's the point of all those other frames 'supported' in the 7D if you can't use them reliably?