I am shortly on an overseas project where we will often be simultaneously using a Canon XF300, most likely shooting in 50i and a Canon 550d (DSLR) shooting in Progressive. Obviously the 550d is being used for it's shallow DOF capability + some timelapse.
As far as I know the 550d will not shoot in Interlaced, but it's not my camera so I'm not 100% sure.
I can flick the XF300 over to shoot in Progressive BUT thus far I've prefered Interlaced since most of my filming is done documentary style, often with a fair bit of movement in the frame. Last time I looked at Progressive on one of my older Sony cameras, it didn't handle those scenarios so well.
So here's the problem, I edit in FCP 7 and however I set up the sequence timeline one or the other of the P and I clips will come out juddery.
So I'm looking for advice here. Should I try shooting everything on the XF300 in P or can I post convert the 550d P footage into interlaced (is that even possible?) and if so should I use Compressor.... or is there something else out there that will do a better job, like MPEGstream?
what is your end product?
it seems likely that most people are shooting predominantly for the web these days at which point interlaced is simply redundant. Soot progressive, edit progressive, output progressive, upload progressive, watch progressive.
this is far preferable to the alternative of shoot interlaced, edit interlaced, output interlaced, upload interlaced, let youtube / vimeo deinterlace, watch progressive.
nobody other than you will see your editing monitors, think about the end audience and how they will see your product, rather than how it looks on the edit screens.
Thanks Tom, you have a point and to be fair I haven't given the XF300 a good blast on progressive yet. I'll shot some test rushes tomorrow. The only thing I need to double check is that P material shoot on the XF can be brought into FCP as 'native' through Log and Transfer. This option definitely works with interlaced material and means the file sizes remain the same rather than being more than doubled by ProRes. I have a fear that I've read somewhere that progressive material from the XF300 has to be converted to ProRes.
Rats! To shoot at full 1920x1080P res I can only shoot at 25P frame rate.... which is mega juddery. To get full 50P frame rate (ie not juddery) the XF300 has to be knocked back to 1280 x 720 res. This isn't usuable in my scenario since I often recrop or pan around inside the frame during post..... so I need the extra res!
Suggestions anyone? Maybe I can convert the Progressive footage out of the 550d into Interlaced?
25p isn't mega juddery.
if your cropping / panning about in the frame then your almost certainly destroying the fields anyway and you'll end up with 25p but comprised of blended fields rather than proper progressive scan.
really if your that bothered about smooth motion then shooting anything on a DSLR is going to cause issues as they produce nasty images which are absolutely jam packed with errors.
The one and only advantage of DSLR is their "cinematic" image look due to short depth of field. As cinema uses 24p then the arguments that you want smooth interlaced motion and a flim look from the DSLR are mutually incompatible.
I would suggest that you take a step back from the perceived wisdom of looking at the numbers and instead go and shoot some sequences at 50i and 25p, do the kind of post that is likely and then upload them to youtube / vimeo or wherever your end viewers will see the finished product from. Then review which looks best (ask some others to look too as your own opinion of what you think should work will cloud your judgement somewhat)
I can't understand why I am seeing judder on the LCD screen on the XF300 at 25P but not at 50P? The shutter speed defaults to 25 when you switch it over to 25P. However what I shoot at 25P looks reasonable (although slightly soft) when I put it through FCP and then export it as a QuickTime file played back on my desktop monitors (progressive). Which brings me to the next challenge.
The Blackmagic breakout card in my editing set up only handles 720P and not 1080P. So once again I'm seeing a juddery output here as well.... but I can live with that to a degree knowing it will be ok after it's uploaded to Vimeo or watched on a progressive monitor.
Part of the problem is I do not have an advanced knowledge of this technology. Previously I travelled the creative route more than the engineering one. So I try to read around the Net and make sense of info that often assumes some techo preknowledge.... and that means I miss the bleedin obvious sometimes:-)