Re: editing 24p, 24p adv, and 60i footage

[Shane Ross] "Wrong. Not if you are going to output back to SD tape. What would be the point? Tape runs at 29.97, so why would you capture and edit at 23.98, only to go back to 29.97? What is the possible benefit?"

Editing at 23.98 and THEN going back to 29.97 adds new pulldown with clean, continuous cadence. What's the benefit you ask? Cutting in a 29.97 timeline will destroy the cadence at every single edit point unless all edits are made at the A frame. Depending on the speed and frequency of the edits, the results can be pretty bad on most consumer TV sets. Unlike our CRT broadcast monitors (which bad cadence is not detectable on), all digital displays (LCD, plasma, etc.) have to deinterlace everything first.

Some have expensive scalers to cover up our mistakes. There is a specific feature marketed as "Bad Edit Detection" seen in high-end consumer video processors like the DCDI. Google it. Those "bad edits" are the result of the editor's workflow you just described. Yes, it is completely common and standard practice to still do this. I guess many people figure to leave it alone since everything will be HD soon enough. Too complicated to fix. But I have dealt with one QC person who checks for clean cadence and also makes sure the A frame is on 00.

[Shane Ross] "If you are going to shoot on DVCAM tape, and end up with a DVCAM master or other SD tape master (digibeta), then shoot and edit 29.97. Shoot 24P or 30P if you want the film look. I fail to see any benefit to shooting and editing 24PA for outputting to tape."

Completely different topic. But on this I'm sorry you're completely wrong. Even if you edit, master, and view the footage at 29.97, shooting it at 24fps still has a completely different look to it vs. shooting at 30fps. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding you, because I cannot fathom how you could disagree with that. Watch a film on TBS on a little 13" TV. Then switch to a rerun of Married With Children. The difference is night and day. And I'm not talking about the color or the grain. I'm talking about the motion. It's the difference between watching a movie, and watching the "Behind the Scenes" of the movie.

Same thing with HD even. Turn on HBO HD and watch a movie for a minute. Then switch to Discovery HD (which likely has a show on shot at 1080i 30fps on a 1st gen HDcam). Even though both are brodacast at 1080i60, one was shot at 24 and the other at 30. Completely different look.

Why do you think so many video cameras allow you to shoot in 24fps? Its not just for people going out to film or HD. It's because of the look, which is blatently appearent even on a crappy old NTSC TV set.