Film everything at 60fps?

[Craig Mason]

I am wondering what people think about acquiring and editing footage at 60fps for all kinds of jobs. Is the future delivery of video going to be at higher framerates? If so, does it make sense to be capturing everything now at higher framerates? So you can delivery video at 1080/60p or 4k/60p for playback on YouTube and if you need to you can render down to 30fps for TV playback. What are the pros and cons? If you shoot everything at 60fps, doesn't it give you more flexibility and help future proof your video? What do people think? What are the disadvantages of shooting everything at 60fps?

 

[Alberto Guglielmi]

Audio sync issues?

 

[Craig Mason]

What issues would they be? I think one second of audio at any sample rate is the same as one second of video at any frame rate.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

For better or worse, your "look" would be effected. Motion blur, for one thing.

 

[Bob Gundu]

I guess you loved the Hobbit!

 

[Michael Tiemann]

I am wondering what people think about acquiring and editing footage at 60fps for all kinds of jobs. Is the future delivery of video going to be at higher framerates? If so, does it make sense to be capturing everything now at higher framerates? So you can delivery video at 1080/60p or 4k/60p for playback on YouTube and if you need to you can render down to 30fps for TV playback. What are the pros and cons? If you shoot everything at 60fps, doesn't it give you more flexibility and help future proof your video? What do people think? What are the disadvantages of shooting everything at 60fps?

Here's an article from about 2 years ago that looks into that question. TL;DR: there's an uncanny valley between 24fps/180 degree shutter and 120fps/360 degree shutter. The 48 and 60 fps rates look video-y to our eyes (not in a good way) that kinda wrecks the wonderful illusion of cinema. (It's fine for sports, but that's a different genre.) However, if you can get to 120fps with a 360 degree shutter, then you can digitally reconstruct the buttery-smooth blur of 24fps (by digitally merging 2.5 frames) but you can also support the option to play back at 60fps (selecting every other frame for 180 degree shutter) or 120fps (with an amount of motion blur that's not "unnatural" because our eyes cannot "see" that fast anyway). And if you are doing motion capture, you have a reasonably crisp 1/120th of a second to stop the motion, vs. 1/48th if you were shooting at 24fps.

So, in answer to your question, get a WEAPON CF and shoot everything at 5K WS 120 fps @ 360 degrees and have fun!

 

[Craig Mason]

Personally i have always shot at lower frame rates and only used HFR stuff for slow motion. But I am actually curious about this but haven't tested it on enough different kinds of footage - how different visually does higher frame rate footage 50/60fps look when its converted to 25/30fps through frame removal. Obviously shooting at higher shutter speeds effects the footage. What other difference are you likely to see when footage is downsized?

 

[Craig Mason]

Thanks Michael, that's a really interesting answer. An exert from the article you referenced is pretty interesting

""I have been shooting at 120 fps, using a 360-degree shutter in the camera. This makes it possible to digitally merge any number of adjacent frames in order to recover the appropriate amount of blur necessary for 24 fps display. Keep in mind that the movie medium we are accustomed to has used a 160-200 degree shutter, resulting in the "texture" that we know as movies (not television). Having shot material at 120 frames with a 360-degree shutter, it is a simple and perfect conversion to digitally merge three frames into one, and delete the next two frames, thus resulting in a 24 frame movie without any artifacts, and while retaining the normal blur."