30p, 24p, 60i oh my!

[Mitosh]

Ok, I just got a HV30, and I have been reading and reading on these forums for hours now. I have a good understand about 24p being great for giving a "film" look. 30p for being good for web and sports. But I am still confused, and still do not understand where 60i fits in this (I assume this is the standard HDV mode but not sure).

Ultimately, in the morning I will be taking my 11 month old to the park and want to use the HV30 for the first time. What mode should I be using for this type of setting? I do not plan on taking this to Hollywood, but I want to have a good experience and something that will last a lifetime.

As a rule of thumb do I shoot 30p when going to motorcross, 24p to make the Blair Witch project, and 60i for everything else?

[Lunchbox]

There is no such rules. It's a preference as well as what's your target output would be.

if you are shooting for a film contest, 24p would be the way to go. If you are targeting to output to web, you can do 30p, it gives you a semi-film look without dealing with pulldown removal and deinterlacing. If you intent to do lots of slow motion and high motion scene, 60i is better.

There's also the difference between interlace video and progressive video. Progressive video gives you a rich film-like output (e.g. TV show The Office) whereas 60i deliveries a home-video look (e.g. day time soap, local news report).

For me, I shot everything in 30p.

[Mitosh]

What is 60i? Is that the first HDV mode without 30p and 24p preference?

[Lunchbox]

60 interlaced fields per second. Each frame consists of two fields, odd fields and even fields. You can see it as 60 half-frame per second. 60i video is still being treated as 29.97fps.

[Mitosh]

I can't find anything in the manual or anything on the camera that specifies 60i mode. How do you get into this mode with a HV30?

Originally Posted by Taky

60 interlaced fields per second. Each frame consists of two fields, odd fields and even fields. You can see it as 60 half-frame per second. 60i video is still being treated as 29.97fps.

[Lunchbox]

The default HDV mode is 60i

[Mitosh]

Thanks! Sorry to keep asking. The manual should specify this. I was 90% sure this was the case but I couldn't confirm it anywhere in the manual or even the forums.

Originally Posted by Taky

The default HDV mode is 60i

[blazer003]

When you go into menu the second down is REC/IN Setup (at least on my HV20), you should see HD Standard as the top option with HDV, HDV (PF24), HDV (PF30), DV (WIDE), and DV (NORMAL).

It never hurts to check. Personally, if I were in your situation, if I were going to edit it I'd probably shoot in 30P (HDV PF30), and if you are just planning to pop it in the camera and play it later, 24P is a touch more artistic, maybe with cine mode on to get a little more washed out colors.

But ultimately it's all your own preferences, and I might change my mind once I got out there and actually saw the setting.

Just my 2¢.

[Eclipse]

Many people say that the 30p mode is primarily for the web.
But I thought that this mode must give you a better resolution especially for moves and pan-shots, because you overcome the quality loss of deinterlacing in your HDTV. From what I've read, if you shoot in 60i and playback it on the HDTV, it tries to "line" fields with the same pixel information together. This is supposed to create a "fake 60p" with the same vertical resolution, but there is always quality loss accompanied because two fields contain different time information, and aligning them in correct position still leaves the second frame being different from the first one.
Can't you get rid of it by using 30p? You will get a less temporal resolution, but the full horizontal resolution and no picture failures.
I mean, if 60i would produce the same picture quality as 30p, why would we need 30p at all?

[Lunchbox]

30p is not only for web. It's the stupid canon marketing couldn't come up a better way to sell 30p. I have been using the Frame mode in GL2 to shoot wedding. The mode gives you a progressive footage in 29.97fps. It has a file-like look instead of video-like look. It makes the video instantly a rich expensive film-like output. No more comb lines. No need to deinterlace for PC playback.

Another reason to have 30p is to have film-like output without dealing with pulldown and the stuttering in 24p.

[rlb]

Would 30p also be better when shooting indoors under normal room lighting? I'm talking the typical home use of kids birthdays, Christmas, plays in the gymnasium... There would be minimal editing, maybe regrouping clips and then burning to DVD and eventually BluRay. From what I've read 30p would give better low light sensitivity w/o being too jittery with motion and 60i would be good for faster motion and outside. Does that sound correct?

[darkprints]

Originally Posted by Taky

30p is not for web. It's the stupid canon marketing couldn't come up a better way to sell 30p. I have been using the Frame mode in GL2 to shoot wedding. The mode gives you a progressive footage in 29.97fps. It has a file-like look instead of video-like look. It makes the video instantly a rich expensive film-like output. No more comb lines. No need to deinterlace for PC playback.

Another reason to have 30p is to have film-like output without dealing with pulldown and the stuttering in 24p.

Why is 30P not for web?

What would be better for web?

[Lunchbox]

Originally Posted by darkprints

Why is 30P not for web?

What would be better for web?

sorry! i meant to say '30p is not ONLY for the web.'

[erikjohnnn]

Originally Posted by blazer003

When you go into menu the second down is REC/IN Setup (at least on my HV20), you should see HD Standard as the top option with HDV, HDV (PF24), HDV (PF30), DV (WIDE), and DV (NORMAL).

It never hurts to check. Personally, if I were in your situation, if I were going to edit it I'd probably shoot in 30P (HDV PF30), and if you are just planning to pop it in the camera and play it later, 24P is a touch more artistic, maybe with cine mode on to get a little more washed out colors.

But ultimately it's all your own preferences, and I might change my mind once I got out there and actually saw the setting.

Just my 2¢.

I'm confused.. I just got my HV20 and when I go into this menu, I only get 4 options: HDV, HDV (PF24), DV (WIDE), and DV(NORMAL). How do I get the 30p setting? Thanks

[Lunchbox]

Sell your HV20 to buy an HV30 then you will get 30p.

[Grieg]

So, which one is the best? HDV Standard, HDV 30p or HDV 24p (with or without Cinematic look selected)?
I would like to obtain the quality of a Blue Ray film for my pictures. I just bought my HV30, read the manual (for 2 weeks?!) and concluded that I don't know what to choose from the 3 options and then watch the film on a Plasma Panasonic (HD Ready). In time... I will try them all, but please tell me which one is to be considered the best in order to have the highest HD quality?

[Erik Bien]

Hi Grieg, and welcome to the forum!

Let me take a page out of matthias' book and answer your question with another question: which is the best color, Red, Green or Blue? I know in time you might want to try them all but in the meantime, which is to be considered the best?

Every one of the modes you mentioned will give you "HD quality." It could technically be argued that the 30p and 24p modes, being progressive, will give you higher vertical resolution than "standard" 60i interlaced HDV, but it's also true that fast motion might not be as smooth in the progressive modes as in interlaced.

In the end, it's basically an artistic choice: people shooting fast-action sports detest the 'strobiness' of 24p, while shoestring indies rarely use 60i for anything but slow motion. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the best way to learn about the impact of motion rendition on your footage is to go out and shoot something; once you've captured the same high-motion scene in each of the various cadences and looked at the results on a monitor you'll "get" it in a way you just can't by only reading about it.

[racer-x]

You'll never know what the best shooting mode for you is until you try them out yourself......................

"The Best" is a relative term. The best for me is 60p. Good luck trying to figure that one out.

[Grieg]

Thank you for your answers!
So, what will be, will be. I'll just take the camera out, although the rain doesn't stop. Maybe I catch some rain drops (24p) or my 4 year old boy smiling before he gets wet on the bycicle (60i)...
No web intentions (30p), but... who knows?

[Bif]

Grieg, as has been pointed out, any of the settings will give you pretty good HD results. I just got the HF100 which also does 24p, 30p, and 60i (default).

After running some tests, including burning SD DVD, rendering to various file formats etc I settled on 30p for these reasons:

I have no need for interlacing, I have no tube type TV's left and most everyone is replacing their TV with widescreen LCD or Plasma that can show progressive.

Standard def DVD's I've burned from HDV and AVCHD shot in 60i show interlacing artifacts on all of my TV's. 30p looks a whole lot smoother.

I combine 30p with Cine mode (muted contrast and colors for a dynamic range that looks more like film captures these) and to me it looks more like the way film media has worked for me in my career as a professional photographer. I like the look.

Interlacing is a "leftover" from the way it had to be done for the old raster scan TV's to work.

Basically what you need to do is step outdoors and try each of the modes out on similar subjects, come inside, capture to your favorite NLE and burn comparisons to DVD. Pop it in your player and evaluate on your TV screen. And hook up your cam with HDMI cable (or component cables) to your TV and check it out that way.

[2Bdecided]

Originally Posted by Bif

Standard def DVD's I've burned from HDV and AVCHD shot in 60i show interlacing artifacts on all of my TV's. 30p looks a whole lot smoother.

Either you've completely messed up making the DVDs, or your TVs are useless - do they show "interlacing artefacts" when you watch the news?


My vote, having young children and no desire for stuttery footage, is standard HDV (60i).

Cheers,
David.

[Bif]

Main TV is a JVC 42" LCD 1080p capable. All broadcast looks fine, commercial DVDs and SD DVDs I've been burning look fine. Other TV is a 19" LCD capable of 720p that I use in my editing room for quick check of burned disks. Interlacing artifacts did not show up until I moved up to HDV and AVCHD cameras.

One thing I've been doing when burning disks is to check the "Use progressive scan encoding" box in the settings dialog box of my NLE. I've tested SD disks done that way both with players hooked up with component cables and one hooked up with SVideo cable and everything looked fine. Video generally looked a tad sharper with progressive scan encoding than without.

It's just recently I added one of those "upconverting" DVD players and used the HDMI hookup.

I just spent a weekend doing video at an old fort during the annual event with plenty of re-enactors and shot that in 30p. Cavalry charges look OK to me, motion did not look overly choppy.

[Braceface]

Originally Posted by 2Bdecided

Either you've completely messed up making the DVDs, or your TVs are useless - do they show "interlacing artefacts" when you watch the news?


My vote, having young children and no desire for stuttery footage, is standard HDV (60i).

Cheers,
David.

Hear, Hear,

[rewn]

Soo... we just got a HV30 today, my missus is taking it overseas next week on a 6 week European adventure with her girlfriends ... without the luxury of testing and seeing which one is best, am I best to just leave it at the standard HDV , or go 30p ?

I'll be editing them (somewhat ) when they get back and making DVDs for all the girls.

[glegaguy]

Unless your other half is used to the manual settings, my advice is just to shoot Standard HDV interlaced in full auto mode