Format decision

[Mike F.]

Since there's a lot of horsepower on this site, I thought I might try to nail down an answer to a question that I need to make a decision about.

If you were going to produce a program for cable HD and the channel requires a 1080i 59.94 master, would you shoot your field material in interlaced or, shoot progressive 1080?

This is being done on Panasonic P2 equipment because we won't get a Red in time and will be edited on adobe CS3.

Thanks for your opinions.

[Wayne D]

hi - used the P2 for 9 weeks at the rugby world cup last year. nice pics but please nail down your work flow. i was not supported on this and it came back to bite everyone in the butt big time.

keep your folder structure neat and keep on top of it. we had a 4tb drive and it just scrapped by. are you locked into the adobe edit sytem? FCP or AVD will help you manage you media management a lot better when dealing with file based acquistion systems.

also - we had a lot of trouble with the card reader that comes with the P2 system. we had used so many letter allocations with our drive partitions (windows XP) that we coould not use the slots as there where no letters left to assign to the cards.

as for your format - shoot for your delivery - 1080i....you'll save some hair and sleepless nights.

good luck - hope this helps.

ps - i think the RED system rocks and was very impressed with first (of many) job we just completed. no probs - smooth sailing all the way and a very very happy client.

[amrrahmy]

if ur moving the camera too fast, or shooting fast objects, go for progressive, and convert later.
i dont remember the camera limit so i'll give u 2 options since i dont think the camera can do 1080p 59.94:
1- shoot 1080p 29.97 if the camera can do it, that would make a smooth 1080i 59.94
2- shoot 720p 29.97 if the camera can't do 1080p 29.97. make sure that u use the right interpolation when upscaling.

[David Mullen ASC]

It just depends on if they want that "live" video look or the stuttery film look for the project. Part of the look of interlaced scan comes from the high sampling rate, so if you shoot 720/60P, for example, you can convert it to 1080/60i and it will look the same as if you shot it in 60i because essentially every field at 60i is a new motion capture.

So you have to decide if you want that 24P/25P/30P "film look" or the hyper-smooth 60P/60i look.

You could shoot the RED at 60 fps, not at 4K but at 3K or lower, and then convert it to 1080/60i somewhere down the line in post. If you want that look.

[Mike F.]

Thanks for info...the picture is clearing up for me now and as usual (for me anyway) the answer that works is an answer to a different question than I posed.

I asked what format was best, when the question should have been, "what decisions do I need to make to arrive at the right shooting format choice?"

Again, thanks,

[Wayne D]

i stand by last statement of shoot for delivery - that is shoot 1080i.