Framerate

[thephoenix]

hi all

i am pretty sure there are some subjects about it but i guess i am not good with the search.

i did some shots in 23.98fps on my xt3 as well as some in 59.98 to get slow mo

a friend told me it was better to shoot in 25 for flicker as i am in france but also for colors purpose.

also told me i can mix 23.98 25 and 59.98 there shouldn't be any problem. i know it is not good to mix 23.98 and 30 though.

so let's talk about framerate, which one do you use and why ?

not talking about the high framerates that obviously we shoot to get slow motion.

if there is a good youtube about it i'll appreciate.

still need to learn.

(and if a subject exists i am happy to get a link and go read it)

a first one about mixing framerates

 

[KnightsFan]

You should shoot with your distribution frame rate in mind. If you are shooting for PAL televisions, then you should shoot in 25 fps for normal motion. If you want 2x slow motion, shoot in 50 and conform to 25. If you want 2.3976x slow motion, shoot in 59.94 and conform to 25, etc. (I know you aren't talking about slow motion, I just mention it to be clearer)

Essentially, at the beginning of an edit you will pick a timeline framerate to edit in, based on artistic choice or the distribution requirements. Any file that is NOT at the timeline framerate will need to be interpolated to some extent to play back at normal speed. Mixing any two frame rates that are not exact multiples of each other will result in artifacts, though there are ways to mitigate those problems with advanced interpolation algorithms. So you shouldn't mix 23.976 and 59.94. If you have a 23.976 timeline, the 59.94 footage will need to be modified to show 2.5 video frames per timeline frame. You can't show .5 frames, so yoy have to do some sort of frame blending or interpolation, which introduces artifacts. Depending on the image content, the artifacts might not be a problem at all.

The same would apply for putting 23.976 footage on a 29.97 timeline, or any other combination of formats.

The only way to avoid all artifacts completely is to shoot at exactly the frame rate you will use on the timeline and in the final deliverable, or conform the footage for slow/fast motion.

[thephoenix]

thanks.

i shot 23.976 because in my mind it is the "standard" for movies even if my project is not going to be a movie...

i am shooting for youtube and vimeo, not sure what their standard is, probably 30fps ?

to get slow motion in my 23.976 timeline what should i shoot ? i thought 60fsp (59.94) was ok if slown down by 40%.

sure thing i that i already have some rushes in 23.976 so i am kinda stuck with it on this project.

 

[BrunoCH]

5 minutes ago, thephoenix said:

 

i shot 23.976 because in my mind it is the "standard" for movies

 

24 

+1 KnightsFan

 

 

[thephoenix]

just watched it.

my bad, 24 is the standard.

so what should i shot at to get smooth slow motion content as i am now stuck with 23.976 ? will 59.94 be ok ?

[KnightsFan]

24 minutes ago, thephoenix said:

am shooting for youtube and vimeo, not sure what their standard is, probably 30fps ?

to get slow motion in my 23.976 timeline what should i shoot ? i thought 60fsp (59.94) was ok if slown down by 40%.

Youtube will play anything. If you shot 23.976, then stick with that. I don't know for certain, but i bet vimeo will also play anything. The only time you really have to be careful when deciding which format to use is with television broadcast or specific festivals, since modern computers can play anything.

For slow motion, you can shoot anything higher than your timeline frame rate and conform it. If your NLE has the option, you should conform footage instead of manually slowing it down. That way you will avoid any frame artifacts in case your math wasnt correct. But to directly answer the question, slowing 59.94 to 23.976 is a great way to get slow motion.

[thephoenix]

What do you mean by conformig footage  ? 

sorry for silly question but i am still learning 

[Mokara]

2 hours ago, thephoenix said:

thanks.

i shot 23.976 because in my mind it is the "standard" for movies even if my project is not going to be a movie...

i am shooting for youtube and vimeo, not sure what their standard is, probably 30fps ?

to get slow motion in my 23.976 timeline what should i shoot ? i thought 60fsp (59.94) was ok if slown down by 40%.

sure thing i that i already have some rushes in 23.976 so i am kinda stuck with it on this project.

 

The people who tell you to shoot at 24p because that is what movies are shot at don't know what they are talking about. Shoot at the framerate you expect it to be displayed at. 24p works for movies because movie projectors display 24 fps. But if you try to display that on a device operating at a different frame rate then expect problems unless you do sophisticated interpolation (and if you are going to do that, you might as well shoot a the proper frame rate to begin with - far fewer problems later on).

If you are not shooting footage for cinema distribution, shoot at 25/30 - 50/60 fps (depending on where you live) if it is for commercial TV distribution, or 30 - 60 fps if for anything else. Flat panel TV sets (but not CRT panels) automatically adjust their frame rate to match the input (cell phones probably do this as well), but computer monitors and on-line video hosts do not - they run at 60 fps (or whatever you have manually selected the frame rate to be), anything else will have frames duplicated or removed which can result in serious visual artifacts. Broadcast TV sources use a fixed frame rate and any content shot with a different frame rate has to be re-rendered using sophisticated interpolation to generate something that is watchable.

As a general rule of thumb, shoot at 30/60 fps and you should be ok for most viewing devices if you are not shooting commercially. For broadcast TV shoot at the PAL or NTSC standard, depending on where you live.

[KnightsFan]

1 hour ago, thephoenix said:

What do you mean by conformig footage  ? 

sorry for silly question but i am still learning 

Not a silly question at all. Basically it just means to tell your editing software to play the frames in the file at a different rate. Example: if you shoot for 2 seconds at 60 fps, you have 120 frames total. If you conform to 30 fps, it is like telling the software that you actually shot at 30 fps for 4 seconds to get those 120 frames. Now as far as the software is concerned, its a 30 fps file (which happens to look slowed down).

So for slow motion, I find it easiest to select all the high frame rate files in your bin before putting them on a timeline, and conforming them to the timeline frame rate. Then when you drag it on the timeline, it will be slowed down automatically.

[kye]

5 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

Not a silly question at all. Basically it just means to tell your editing software to play the frames in the file at a different rate. Example: if you shoot for 2 seconds at 60 fps, you have 120 frames total. If you conform to 30 fps, it is like telling the software that you actually shot at 30 fps for 4 seconds to get those 120 frames. Now as far as the software is concerned, its a 30 fps file (which happens to look slowed down).

So for slow motion, I find it easiest to select all the high frame rate files in your bin before putting them on a timeline, and conforming them to the timeline frame rate. Then when you drag it on the timeline, it will be slowed down automatically.

I just operate under the concept that you choose your base frame rate and carefully match it to shooting normal speed clips, but when shooting slow-motion you just conform it properly and it kind of doesn't matter in a way.

For example, if you're on a 25fps timeline and you shoot 50p slow-motion then it will conform to 50% of real speed, but if you shoot 60p it will conform to 40% of real speed.  I'm not really sure there would be that many situations where a 50% speed shot is required and a 40% speed shot wouldn't also be acceptable.  In that sense I kind of view 50p and 60p as being the same,.

[KnightsFan]

1 hour ago, kye said:

I just operate under the concept that you choose your base frame rate and carefully match it to shooting normal speed clips, but when shooting slow-motion you just conform it properly and it kind of doesn't matter in a way.

For example, if you're on a 25fps timeline and you shoot 50p slow-motion then it will conform to 50% of real speed, but if you shoot 60p it will conform to 40% of real speed.  I'm not really sure there would be that many situations where a 50% speed shot is required and a 40% speed shot wouldn't also be acceptable.  In that sense I kind of view 50p and 60p as being the same,.

Totally agree, thats one reason its easier to conform rather than manually slow down. You conform TO the desired framerate so you never have to wonder whether you need tk slow by 50 or 40 percent.

[thephoenix]

9 hours ago, Mokara said:

The people who tell you to shoot at 24p because that is what movies are shot at don't know what they are talking about.

As a general rule of thumb, shoot at 30/60 fps and you should be ok for most viewing devices if you are not shooting commercially. For broadcast TV shoot at the PAL or NTSC standard, depending on where you live.

i don't think anybody told me to shoot at 23.976, i think it is my stupid artistic brain that took over my logical brain.

at the moment i only shoot personal stuff so i basically do whatever i want, and allows me to do the mistakes now (which is better than doing them on a job) ?

i think i will stick to 24 for my personnal work as i like the smoothness of it, don't like the crispy footage of 60 and kinda like the blur in the movement.

not sure there is much difference between 24 and 25. 30 i never tried.

do you know if youtube / vimeo keep the original frame rate or if they "convert" the footage in a different one to comply with their standards ?

[thephoenix]

still thinkin and learning about framerates...

i have this project i am shooting on monday.

i want to shoot a character and want it to be slow motion, let's say about 50% maybe less.

i also want to have cuts with footage that will be regular speed i mean that i need this images to be fast. these footage are in 30fps, already have them and i cannot reshoot them because coming from a trip i did in december.

so if i set my timeline at 30fps and shoot on monday at 60fps it will look slow by 2x right ?

what if i want the 30 fps footage to go faster ? can i accelerate in resolve or premiere ? will it be jerky ?

i think i could set the timeline to 48fps for exemple then the 60fps would be slow and the 30 would be fast but something is telling me this is not a good id.

what is your advice ?

[Mokara]

On 3/14/2019 at 12:14 AM, thephoenix said:

i don't think anybody told me to shoot at 23.976, i think it is my stupid artistic brain that took over my logical brain.

at the moment i only shoot personal stuff so i basically do whatever i want, and allows me to do the mistakes now (which is better than doing them on a job) ?

i think i will stick to 24 for my personnal work as i like the smoothness of it, don't like the crispy footage of 60 and kinda like the blur in the movement.

not sure there is much difference between 24 and 25. 30 i never tried.

do you know if youtube / vimeo keep the original frame rate or if they "convert" the footage in a different one to comply with their standards ?

It is not an artistic brain, it is a Pavlovian response to the fact that movies have traditionally been shot at 24p while ignoring the fact that nobody outside of a cinema (or a BluRay/DVD disc on a TV) views anything at 24p. You see stuff you admire and try to emulate it without understanding WHY things are shot like that.

There is a difference between 24p and 25p. Because of frame mismatch there will be a stutter twice a second (unless you are viewing in a cinema or from a BluRay/DVD disc).

[KnightsFan]

On 3/14/2019 at 2:14 AM, thephoenix said:

not sure there is much difference between 24 and 25. 30 i never tried.

There is not much visual difference between 24 and 25 if you stick to one or the other, but you should not mix and match them. Use 25 for PAL television or 24 if you want to use the film convention. 30 is slightly different on scenes with a lot of motion.

On 3/14/2019 at 2:14 AM, thephoenix said:

do you know if youtube / vimeo keep the original frame rate or if they "convert" the footage in a different one to comply with their standards ?

I am almost 100% certain YouTube keeps the original framerate. I think they can even do variable frame rate? I could be mistaken on that one though. I would be very surprised if Vimeo converted, but I don't use Vimeo so I am not positive.

1 hour ago, thephoenix said:

so if i set my timeline at 30fps and shoot on monday at 60fps it will look slow by 2x right ?

Yes, exactly.

1 hour ago, thephoenix said:

what if i want the 30 fps footage to go faster ? can i accelerate in resolve or premiere ? will it be jerky ?

You can speed it up. If you speed it up 2x it will look a little jerky simply because it is essentially a 15 fps file now. If you speed it up to some weird interval, like 1.26x, then there will be frame blending and that will probably look pretty bad, depending on the content of your shot (a static shot with nothing moving won't have any issues with frame blending, whereas a handheld shot walking down a road will look really bad).

1 hour ago, thephoenix said:

i think i could set the timeline to 48fps for exemple then the 60fps would be slow and the 30 would be fast but something is telling me this is not a good id.

Technically, yes, you can do that. If you want your final product to be a 48fps file, and you are sure such a file is compatible with your release platform(s), then it should work. I think that it is a phenomenal idea to try it out as an experiment--but definitely try it out thoroughly before doing this in a serious/paid project--there is a very good chance it will not look the way you expect if you are still figuring stuff out.

Also, for any project, only do this if you want the large majority of your 30fps clips sped up. If you want MOST to be normal speed and a COUPLE to be sped up, then use a 30fps timeline and speed up those couple clips.

 

If I were you, I'd go out one weekend and shoot a bunch of stuff in different frame rates, then try out different ways of editing. Just have fun, and try all the things that we tell you not to do and see what you think of our advice!

[thephoenix]

Thanks for all the answers.

Funny thing is that premiere doesn't seem to have 48fps timeline. I get 50 but not 48.

Did a quick try and my 30fps footage looks ok. And technicaly 1t fps can be a good option for the speed feeling, i know some productions do that to get the speed feeling.

I'll do some more tests tomorrow.

And yes i want all my footage to be speed up or slow. i understood than i cannot have both for the same fps in the same project.

You're right i have to do some tests, looks like fun and a good way to learn.

Just needs some time to do it.

 

[thephoenix]

so i did a few more tests and it looks like 30fps is gonna be the setting for my next project timeline.

the 60fps will be slown down by 50% and the 23.976 will be accelerated by about 25%, and 30 fps will remain the same.

it looks ok in premiere