Slow motion 50fps
by Scott Mouat
on
Jun 29, 2009 at 1:46:01 am
Hi All,
Im looking into equipment for a bird shot in August and im keen to get a cam that gives me over cranking. We want the show 1080 25p and ideally HD 422, however the HDW series doesnt seem to have variable frame rates, The new PDW 800 does but only in MPEG HD not MPEG HD 422. Varicam does but only in 720p. Would be great to hear from anyone who has overcranked 1080 25p footage with good or bad results and could advise on a possible solution.
Re: Slow motion 50fps by steve phillipps on Jul 2, 2009 at 8:31:00 am
There's not much you can do with 1080/25P footage for slomo. Shooting 1080/50i and de-interlacing is an option (gets you half res just like the PDW800 does in camera).
Best thing at present is shooting 720. The Varicam 2700 will go to 60fps and the choice of wildlife productions at the moment (ie everything high end BBC Natural History Unit).
The PDW700 will do 720/50P which you can then conform to 25P for slomo, but I'm not convinced either in the simplicity of the workflow or the quality. However it does mean that you can shoot the majority in 1080 and switch to 720 for slomo. That's why I bought one, but for wildlife the slomo is so important I'm less than sure I made the right choice.
As for the 800, where does it say that overcranking is not HD422?
News to me.
Steve
Re: Slow motion 50fps by Scott Mouat on Jul 3, 2009 at 2:17:13 am
Hi Steve,
Thanks for getting back to me. I thought the varicam was the only option but had my fingers crossed for the PDW 800. However reading between the lines in the brochure it indicates it does slow and quick motion but in brackets next to it indicates in MPEG HD mode only.
Further up on page 4 it indicates it has 4 recording settings MPEG HD 422, MPEG HD, MPEG IMX and DVCAM. Im sure i read somewhere that the MPEG HD is 420 not 422 (but i cant remember where).
So i guess if we need 422 HD its still going to be shot at 720p and prob on the varicam?
Hope this info is right if not please let me know.
Re: Slow motion 50fps by steve phillipps on Jul 3, 2009 at 11:56:26 am
Right, I hadn't seen that document, the one I had was the early brochure.
It's possible that when it says MPEG HD is might mean HD422, ie just not the other modes like DV and IMX. But it does seem to imply just HD rather than 422, you're right.
The other possibility is that it doesn't needthe same data rate and colourspace as there's only half the info per frame?
Need to get to the bottom of this, thanks for spotting it!
Steve
