Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Specifically to any of you that use the Final Cut Pro and Encore Workflow...which workflow do you prefer?

Maybe this doesn't specifically belong in the wedding forum, but I posted here because that's what I do and I'm interested in hearing from others with projects that are a similar duration.

I've been through the lynda.com tutorials, and it seems easiest to just let Encore do the work, however, with a wedding video that is an hour long, shot in 1080/30p, the file size of exporting from Final Cut "using current settings" seems outrageous. Also, the H.264 transcoding takes a long time, even if I can work while it is transcoding.

I've also tested the MPEG 2 Elementary streams from compressor and those seem to work and look fine, but just curious to see what others use?

Also, if I understand it correctly, Bluray does not support 30p, so at what point is my project getting interlaced? Does Compressor and/or Encore do this automatically?

Feel free to move to an appropriate forum, but like I said, interested in the duration of other wedding videos.

Any help or input in the general Final Cut and Bluray workflow is greatly appreciated.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Hey Katie -

It should always stay progressive I believe. Maybe 60p on some players/tvs, but not interlaced I don't think.

My workflow: ProRes timeline, Export to QuickTime (yes big file but this file can eventually be tossed away as it's only a stepping stone for compressor: output for Blu-ray h264. Then Encore.

I do not let encore transcode. I don't like how they transcode for the DVD version. So I do two builds by replacing the video asset. Very simple. That way I've transcoded with my own settings.

So everything stays 30p the whole way. Again: not sure how Blu ray players differ in their ability to play 30p but my understanding is that the progressive stays.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

The only progressive mode in the Blu-ray standard is 24p. If in the US you shot 30p or here in PAL-land 25p then there is no way to produce a Blu-ray in 25p/30p except by authoring in 50i/60i. A combination of the authoring package & the Blu-ray player should then do the right thing & even though the disc is flagged as 50i/60i when played back it will be 25p/30p on the TV.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Nigel, for the record, 720 60p is supported by Bluray.

Katie, not much help at this point, but I would think that in the future I would avoid shooting 30p if possible if your primary delivery is DVD or Bluray. Shooting in 1080 60i would be simpler and would look great. Progressive is nice when we can get it, but 60i looks just fine too.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

That's interesting. I guess I stand corrected then. I didn't realize that the progressive didn't carry over in 30p. At any rate, whatever the case, when I follow the workflow I put above, the results on blu-ray have been gorgeous. And isn't 30p the way to go if you know you're going to be doing *both* blu-ray and DVD for given projects?

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Katie edit in 30P and when you're ready for rendering render as 60i for Bluray. As Nigel says it's 30P in a 60i container. Your video is never really interlaced. The fields are separated but they are rejoined upon playback in any bluray player. You keep the feel of 30P in the Bluray disc despite having to render 60i. I've done almost a hundred bluray's and this step works best for me and others I know. Hope that helps.

Monday

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

30p is not supported by Bluray or DVD, I don't believe. So your results are not stunning because you shoot in 30p but because your authoring program, etc are putting out great looking video shot in 1080. You have great looking footage to begin with, obviously!

The conversion or whatever is happening during your post production is simply working well for you and is playing out well on DVD and Bluray.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Just saw your post Isa, maybe I'm wrong in my previous post. I have never shot 30p, but it makes sense if it's in a 60i wrapper, or whatever, that would be nice and your method would make perfect sense, explaining why it turns out so well for folks like Tim and you.

I have shot only in modes that were not wrapped, or whatever it's called, so I have no experience. Now that I think about it I have shot in 24p in a wrapper but I converted footage prior to editing to remove the pulldown so it would match other unwrapped footage and keep things consistent.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Hey Jeff I have shot in 30F/P since 2008 with my XHA1 to T2i to now my AF100. None of them shoot progressive in a container. My old HV30 did shoot 30P in a 60i container but I just combined the fields in the editing software. 30P is a good compromise for those not liking 24P or 60i and want something in between. Give it a try one day playing around with it and render out a Bluray on DVD as 60i to test in your bluray player to see if you like it. Take care.

Monday

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Monday, doesn't it make sense to just shoot 60i since it's going to end up 60i anyway? Is there an advantage to shooting in 30p and converting? Other than being able to upload to the web in 30p?

Last year I shot in 720 60p which was awesome and is supported by Bluray so it came out great, of course, but I added a new cam without 720p so I switched over to 60i or 24p, depending on the needs of the project.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

The best thing I can tell you Jeff is to play with it. 30P looks very different than 60i and Katie shoots 30P because she sees the difference. There is no conversion going on at all as well. The only difference is when it comes time to render the bluray file you render as 60i instead of 30P. It is supper easy and no extra steps needed. Give it a try during free time.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Monday, when you render 30p to 60i as you describe it is being converted, and is my point. It will look superior in it's progressive form while on the computer, but when converted to 60i you are undoing the 30p, it is no longer progressive. It will still look fine on Bluray, but you're playing a 60i movie, not 30p, because it's been changed. Shooting in 30p will give an advantage for uploading to the internet as it will be "ready" in that aspect, but otherwise it just makes sense to me to shoot using the same frame rate as I'm delivering, but maybe I'm missing something.

I understand the appeal of progressive footage, shot dozens of wedding in 60p last year, looks great, and does not need to be interlaced for Bluray as it's supported.

At any rate I have only one camera that shoots in 30p, and since I run 3-4 cameras I need to stick with a frame rate that is common to all my cams.

To be clear I'm not criticizing the workflow, it just sounds illogical to shoot in 30p if you're converting to 60i anyway, but if it works for you then it's all good and doesn't matter.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Blu Ray
 

Jeff, I don't think 60i deinterlaced to 30p will look the same as material shot in 30p. Here's my understanding of how it works -- and I could be wrong, so I'd welcome any corrections from those who have more experience with this.

When you shoot 60i, you're taking 60 half-res pictures per second. The fields are not actually shot at the same time -- there is a 1/60th second time difference between them and that's why you see jagged interlacing lines. When you deinterlace this to 30p, some methods just throw away a field, while others find nifty ways to blend them, but the two fields can never be temporally identical.

Shooting in 30p -- even if it's wrapped in 60i -- means that both fields are shot at the same time. You have 30 full-res pictures per second. So even if they are then converted and split apart into fields, they are temporally identical and you shouldn't see interlacing lines even on an interlaced display. It should still look like 30p.

Now because you have fewer pictures per second it's not great for fast motion (sports) but some people like it, I guess. Gives you more of that stuttery cinematic look if that's what you're going for.

So I don't think they're the same.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Adam, thanks for your post. I was referring to shooting in 30p when the final product will be 60i, and how it seems unnecessary (unless that is all you have available, etc).

No one was talking about (I wasn't anyway) converting 60i to 30p. Katie had brought up how to deal with 30p, and I jumped in, I was kind of off topic, but I pointed out offered that there seems to be no advantage to shooting in 30p when you can't deliver in 30p to clients. I was merely pointing out that if you're going to interlace the footage in the end, you might as well shoot 60i anyway, that's all.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Hi Jeff, There is a different feel all together with shooting 30P. Whether it's rendered to 60i or not it's 30P. The nex-vg10 shoots only 60i but it is 30P footage and many people confirmed it. All it does is splits the frame to 60i which when playing from any Bluray player is played back with the fields joined back together as 30P with no quality loss that I have seen. I get your point but if anyone wants to shoot 30P which is in every pro camcorder that shoots progressive they need to render out to 60i if it's going to bluray. If someone shoots 1280X720 30P how do they render that out to bluray if bluray only supports 720 24/60P? I hope the last question helps you understand it a bit better.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Now you're talking about 30p footage in a 60i wrapper, but I thought you said you shoot in real unwrapped 30p, so I'm confused.

I need to bow out, I'm clearly lost here, sorry for the confusion. I have no need for 30p so I'll leave it for you guys...

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Here in PAL-land we definitely have a need for 25p which is the TV standard. We could shoot 24p as that is supported on Blu-ray but unfortunately not all cameras here support 24p out of the box. If I want 24p on my Canon XF105 or XF305 I would have to pay Canon a few hundred extra for a simple firmware update that enables 24p (30p too) & frankly I don't like being screwed by a camera manufacturer like that so refuse to pay the NTSC tax.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

I actually didn't realize that Bluray supported 720 / 60p.

Last season we shot in 720p because we were only offering DVDs, and from testing, that yielded the nicest results in downconverting to us...Now we're going to be offering Bluray soon, and I wanted the advantage of the full 1080 frame, and I'm not a fan at all of interlaced footage, especially when downconverting to DVD. I have never had luck with that process, thus we chose to try out 30p.

Now I'm thinking maybe we should just stick to 720p since it is bluray compatible. I like having the slow motion advantage of shooting in 60p for sure.

At Tim -- So you use compressor to compress a bluray version, and a separate dvd version, and then eventually toss the uncompressed quicktime, right? Do you use the MPEG Elementary settings, or H.264? I did one as MPEG Elementary once and it seemed to take a very long time, but everyone says h.264 takes longer?

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

I wasn't either, not really. My point was that 30p rendered as 60i (i.e. for BD) will (should) look totally different than anything originally shot in 60i, because the fields match. It should still look like 30p and won't resemble 60i at all.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Adam, I misunderstood your earlier post apparently. I had asked what the advantage of shooting in 30p and then converting to 60i, and you just explained it in a way I understand.

What you say does make sense, I suppose.

Katie, yes 720 60p is nice, but there are those that think the higher resolution of 1080i is better even though it's interlaced. As I've read it explained, there are pros that feel strongly on each side of the debate.

I do like 720 60p, it is nice, but I haven't seen any of my work shot in 1080i yet as I haven't edited the projects yet. Same with my 24p weddings. I am most anxious to see the 1080i weddings I've shot but am still weeks away from editing those.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Again,

As my first post shows, I obviously wasn't quite aware of the blu-ray capabilities, but I'm pretty picky about final quality, and 30p -- through the workflow of Compressor (H.264 Blu Ray) to Encore (no Transcode) to Toast (for final burn of disc image -- as I like to keep disc images archived) works great for me and yields beautiful results. I also thought that 30p was the best way for DVD and blu-ray projects, but maybe that was wrong, too?

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

It all depends on what you want it to look like in the end. Video is usually 60 frames or
fields a second and it looks smooth. Film is 24 or 30 frames per second and it has
judder. If you want to deliver a product that has film judder as opposed to video smoothness
(an entirely aesthetic decision), you should feel free to capture 30p and then let your
NLE rewrap it to 60i.

Now if you expect to get more resolution this way, you are probably making a mistake on
the TV end. The TV has to deinterlace the "60i" to 60p and it does not expect to be fed 30p
wrapped in 60i which has more vertical resolution that a 30i stream. Whether the deinterlacer
will pass all of that resolution without seeing it as aliasing is anyone's guess. The deinterlacer
might try to filter down the resolution to avoid line-flicker or motion problems.

I don't do wedding videos but in my event videos my customers would not like the "effect" of shooting at
a low frame rate. It simulates the judder that one gets from a cheap cell phone or iphone like
camera which is fine for the web but it's not "video" IMHO. If you want the Bluray to have the
full "live" feel, 1080/60i or 720/60p capture is the way to go. If you want the Bluray to
feel like a low-temporal resolution web video, cell phone video or film, 30p might be alright. If
you only care what the video looks like on the web, 30p is great because then you don't have
to use a quality deinterlacer to make the web version.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Agreed.

why not record 60i instead of 24p?

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Eric & Dustin, sorry but I find your ideas nonsensical. Shooting at 24/25/30 progressive in no way "simulates the judder that one gets from a cheap cell phone or iphone like camera". Shooting interlaced is a hangover from requiring interlaced material for display on CRTs. Modern screens are all progressive. The cameras that we use extensively (Canon DSLRs) don't even shoot in interlaced mode.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

CRTs were interlaced to reduce the bandwidth of the signal required to feed them. 1080i30 blu-ray is interlaced for the same reason. While 720p60 has the same motion characteristics and bandwidth requirements as 1080i30, the apparent resolution is lower. In event situations where lifelike motion is important you don't find people shooting 24, 25 or 30 fps progressive video. Whether a wedding is such an event is a matter of opinion that may depend on the style of wedding, available light as well as artistic taste.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

Just to revisit this discussion & correct some of the misconceptions posted. Video whether progressive or interlaced is always shot at a frame rate of 25fps (PAL) or 30fps (NTSC) or 24fps (film look). If it's interlaced then the field rate is double as each field is interlaced with its partner to give a full frame. So progressive paints the lines on the screen 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc & interlaced paints 1,3,5 then 2,4,6.

There are many drawbacks to interlaced materials not least that all screens nowadays are progressive & thus introduce the need for de-interlacing which can introduce artefacts. The faster refresh rate may improve the look of motion but only if the source material supports it. Peter Jackson is shooting The Hobbit at 48fps & evidently this does improve the look but this is progressive not interlaced.

It's nonsense to say that shooting at at 24/25/30fps progressive "simulates the judder that one gets from a cheap cell phone or iphone like camera". It just doesn't & as evidence all cinema movies & many TV shows are shot at 24fps (film or progressive video).

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

This drawback mainly affects web video because programs like Premier and so on do not have the
basic adaptive deinterlacers found in modern televisions. You are unlikely to be able to
spot a deinterlacing artifact on a modern TV unless the footage is of a starfield or some other
worst case scenario. You will spot deinterlacing artifacts if the bitrate of the video is so low
that the mosquito noise dominates the vertical detail in the video. If this is true, your problem
is that you have been too stingy with the bitrate.

If you need web output from an interlaced frame, there are a number of nice deinterlacing plugins
but you need to spend $. Most of the web video I see is heavily compressed 1280x720 anyway
so whether you shoot 1080/60i or 720/60p the tiny differences are going to get smoothed away by
heavy compression.

Cinema has traditionally run at 24 fps because the low light levels of the theater mean
the eye is seeing in the "scotopic" regime where the temporal acuity of the eye is lower.
The frame rate places some requirements on keeping the motion in the image down to avoid judder,
particularly with respect that the speed that one can pan. See a text on film technique for more.

Television in the US (apologies for my lack of knowledge about our overseas friends) was
60 fields per second between 1936 and about 2009. It was this higher frame rate because
television is much brighter than film and seen in uncontrolled high level room lighting.
In this circumstance the eye is closer to "photopic" vision and can perceive motion at much
higher than 30 frame per second rates.

In 2009 or so, content providers realized that there wasn't enough bandwidth on the direct broadcast
satellites and terrestrial DTV to cram as many parallel streams of advertising in as would be
nice. I watch the H264 encoded streams from a US DBS provider and I would agree that there
is not enough bandwidth to send interlaced footage. Six mbps is just not enough to send good
HD video unless you start cutting something. Thus, 30 fps became the acquisition standard because
there was just too much information in the high framerate video.

At any rate, we're talking about weddings which are somewhere between low motion talking
heads and an event/sports video. If you can shoot 30p and stay within the motion
requirements, by all means. If you have some high motion segments (say the bouquet
toss or the dance segments), make your own aesthetic judgement about the product you
want to sell. Do the tests, watch the footage online and on a TV.

You may even find that by shooting 30p you can cram an extra 30% more running time on
a single Bluray or DVD by using lower bitrates. This monetary benefit may also be compelling
to you. It certainly is to the folks that send us our advertising streams.

Re: Shooting Weddings in 30p and Authoring Bluray
 

I'm sure you meant to say "mesopic." And that would not be true all of the time, which nevertheless does not invalidate your point.