Best resolution to shoot in, for later conversion to 24p

[cstegner]

Been reading quite a bit but this is my first post.

I have a Sanyo HD1010 that shoots in these HD resolutions

[Full-HD]: 1920 x 1080 (60 FPS*6 14 Mbps),
[Full-SHQ]: 1920 x 1080 (30 fps/12 Mbps),

[HD-HR]: 1280 x 720 (60 fps*6/12 Mbps),
[HD-SHQ]: 1280 x 720 (30 fps/9 Mbps)

In post production I want to convert all the footage to 24p to get that film look and I'm wondering what the best resolution to shoot in would be.

I got a new computer that can handle any of the resolutions without much of a problem so it really comes down to best quality.

 

[directorik]

Since "best" is often subjective you could do the following:

Shoot 3 30 second scenes in each resolution. 1 in bright
daylight, 1 in studio lighting, 1 in a dark environment
(something with a lot of black area). That would be a
total of 12 30 second scenes or 6 minutes of footage.
Then convert all the footage to 24p. You will then see
exactly what each setting gives you.

It's be really cool if you then told us about the results.
It would great to know what you feel works best and
even see a few seconds of the final results.

 

[cstegner]

That actually sounds like a great idea. Definitely worth the 30 min of work to figure out definitively which is the best (at least with my camera) before putting in days and days of work.

I'll be sure and post up the results.

But I take it there is no specific answer to which deinterlaces best to 24p? 30fps or 60fps?

 

[MistaDobalina]

I would REALLY like to see the results as well if you could post up short clips of your results please!

 

[Arasian]

Without knowing the exact specs of your camera, I have a feeling that the 60 is 60i, while the 30 is 30p (interlaced vs progressive).. Since you're going for 24p, shooting in 60 would only give you the added toil of de-interlacing your footage, which you could have done in camera in the first place with 30p.

Also, I'm not sure (meaning that I really don't know) if converting 30p to 24p will really give you that 24p look. 24p evenly spaces the 24 frames across a single second. To convert 30-24, you'd just be dropping out 20% of your frames. I'm not sure if this would result in "ooh pretty" or "just plain jittery".

You might try using a program with adaptive retiming like Shake or Compressor to do your downconversion, as that would offer better retiming than simply dropping 1/5th of your frames.

Curious to see what your results are.