very difficult decision/very difficult subjects to shoot

[Denis Buhot]

I was badly mistaken when I recently posted the wrong thing onto the wrong thread (jello effect, by wombat). My clumsy English added to the mess... However, thanks again to Graeme and others, who cared to reply and contributed very useful posts that did make sense (to me and possibly others). I'm very happy with my Red rep, no question. But I now understand that my unanswered questions were so specific that I could hardly get an answer at all. However, this board can be incredibly useful to anyone, and I think I am now able to make a rather painful decision, unless I still miss something and you advise me to change it (after reading the hereunder post-scriptum !).

No rocket-science here : and no point at all for those with a film background and/or mostly working in fully/partially controlled situations. Again, it's all about capturing high speed action in particularly adverse conditions with a Red one camera. I'm just seeking skilled advice, and hope it will benefit others.

Now... I have been naive enough to think, when I was still shooting video : okay, even high-end video will never give me the slo-mo I sometimes want, but I won't care, because I just HATE systematic slow-mo when it comes to fast action. I remember yawning at endless slo-mos of soaring birds, hunting lions... Poor me.. I had not realized that people SHOOTING FILM simply HAD to use slo-mo as a fallback solution. Because no way you will get a smooth real time action, unless you BOTHshoot 50 or 60 fps AND choose 50 or 60 fps as a time base for your entire project. Meaning extra-demands for sensitivity. Do I want a golden eagle display flight full-speed (some speed, indeed..) against its nesting cliff,with a framing that requires extra fast camera move... Hell of it... distance, lens, speed, background not totally out of focus mean that I'll have to shoot 48, maybe 60/70 fps, 1/120e or so. I shall have to reduce resolution to 3 or 2k to get this AND EITHER I shall loose the better part of the terrific speed and power I want to convey, by playing it slo-mo on a 25 to 30 frame rate/time base, OR I'll retain real or almost real time, but I shall have to use at least 48 fps as a time base for my entire project. Doing this (48fps as a choice for my time base), I must know that I shall not be able to capture anything like the female eagle on its night-roost waking up in the early morning, because 48fps will cause shutter speed to increase, and therefore light to be too scarce. And no way I can use a substantially faster lens than mine. Even if substantially faster lenses existed, weight would be the limitation then.

My decision is : No way I'd want to step back to video !! I'll be waiting for Epic-X before embarking in a new project. As for my current project, I'll stick to 25 fps as a time base, and go for slo-mo every time smothness will require a higher frame rate, in order to retain as much low-light shooting capacity as possible.

No ideal decision at all... Get me right, I'd just LOVE to be wrong.

(BTW... there are miracles in post, I'm told. And people like me don't worry about time or somewhat broken workflows. So, can anyone tell me : is there any way to match (in the same timeline/project) shots that are captured, say 25 fps, and others that are captured 48 fps or more, and yet retain normal, natural speed ? I know, why deliberately run into troubles ? You know my reasons by now. Any help/redirection to any other post I have missed will be much appreciated)


P.S. For those who care, and in case this PS could spare skilled, yet inappropriate reactions. Very difficult subjects *does not inevitably mean subjects that can only be captured with substantial travelling, logistics, money and technology . No additional lighting possible as a rule, no extra equipment to help you out (just one/two camera bodies, sturdy tripod, array of lenses from wide to very big). Just intimate, sometimes lifetime knowledge of a species, and... years. Sorry for the sexy part of it : your subject will do its utmost to stay away from you , not just tear you into pieces. No deadly green mamba around (some of us live in old Europe and are just happy with regular, rather harmless vipers) and, to be honest, NO living and no big money to make out of it

 

[Milan Spasic]

I'm not sure what the question is or if I can answer it but just couple of things that caught my eye.

1) If you shoot 48fps, you don't have to alter the time base of your project/timeline, it will remain 23.97 or whatever you choose.

2) If you are shooting a fast moving object you have to increase the shutter speed regardless of the frame rate.

3) I presume you are using a lot of longer focal length lenses for subjects like eagles so you would have hard time keeping the background in focus even if you wanted to.

Also, am I naive to think that shooting 48fps and speeding up in post 200% would give you smoother, real life speed image?

Like you said, if everything else fails, Epic is just around the corner so hang on!

Cheers,

Milan

 

[Denis Buhot]

thanks Milan !

thanks Milan !

I'm not sure what the question is or if I can answer it but just couple of things that caught my eye


1) If you shoot 48fps, you don't have to alter the time base of your project/timeline, it will remain 23.97 or whatever you choose.

2) If you are shooting a fast moving object you have to increase the shutter speed regardless of the frame rate.

3) I presume you are using a lot of longer focal length lenses for subjects like eagles so you would have hard time keeping the background in focus even if you wanted to.

Also, am I naive to think that shooting 48fps and speeding up in post 200% would give you smoother, real life speed image?

Like you said, if everything else fails, Epic is just around the corner so hang on!

Cheers,

Milan

Thanks for answering anyway .. this is a very particular field.. it's somewhat hard to figure out what situations really are... Adding my English doesn't help...

1- If I'm shooting 48f ps and over, not altering my project time base, say 25 fps for Europe.. Here I go for slo-mo playing.. right ? If I'm wrong, I'm definitely dumb !!

2- my purpose is to avoid stuttering of the background... I'm presently testing 48fps AND slower relative shutter speed, e.g.,1/50e... In case increased motion blur would help. Strangely enough, that seems a very unorthodox idea.

3- well, even with a 800mm, given eagle shyness and necessary distance and angle, given the framing you want (you must allow some space, if you want to keep it in frame when stooping down..), given the distance from the eagle to the cliff... the background will be sharp enough to stutter, believe me...

4- speeding it up... so as to retain normal speed rendering...worth trying.. thanks for the suggestion ! Question, how can you speed it up without altering the time base in your time line ? (that was my question, are there solutions in post )

Thanks again for your input !

 

[Tehben Dean]

In Final Cut Pro (I'm sure other editing software is the same) you can speed up or slow down clips regardless of timebase. So if your project timebase is 25fps and you shoot some of your clips at say 50fps for half speed slowmo and then decide you want one to play at real time you can just speed that clip up by 200% an voila!

 

[Denis Buhot]

et voilà !!

et voilà !!

In Final Cut Pro (I'm sure other editing software is the same) you can speed up or slow down clips regardless of timebase. So if your project timebase is 25fps and you shoot some of your clips at say 50fps for half speed slowmo and then decide you want one to play at real time you can just speed that clip up by 200% an voila!

thanks.. great news...I'm not on fcp, but that could be a reason to switch ! As to the final look once speeded up (stuttering background or not) ?... any idea ? My problem here is that testing is difficult.. if I'm given the chance to capture that shot, it'd better be ok, because it's unlikely I shall be given a second chance :-(

 

[Milan Spasic]

thanks.. great news...I'm not on fcp, but that could be a reason to switch ! As to the final look once speeded up (stuttering background or not) ?... any idea ? My problem here is that testing is difficult.. if I'm given the chance to capture that shot, it'd better be ok, because it's unlikely I shall be given a second chance :-(

Regardless of the editing software you are using, your project time base doesn't change with different frame rates. In other words, you can shoot 120fps or 48fps at 25p - your time base will always be 25p. You are basically creating more frames to work with, which equals smoother action. I've got decent results with speeding up the slo-mo footage to achieve this (in FCP).

Cheers,

Milan

 

[Jean Wallez]

In Final Cut Pro (I'm sure other editing software is the same) you can speed up or slow down clips regardless of timebase. So if your project timebase is 25fps and you shoot some of your clips at say 50fps for half speed slowmo and then decide you want one to play at real time you can just speed that clip up by 200% an voila!

I confirm,same thing in Adobe CS4.

 

[Nick Gardner]

Hi,

I think a lot of what you are seeing is just that you are used to looking at an interlaced image. The vast majority of the National Geographic footage that we all grew up watching on tv, from gazelles to elephants, was shot at 24 fps with a fixed 180 shutter on arri SRs, nobody seemed to mind the judder then. I know you are looking for a solution, and I am not trying to minimize your problem, but there has been an enormous amount of footage of the exact type you are talking about shot this way, and it was never a problem before. It just looks different.

Nick

 

[Jean Wallez]

Don't agree,there are specific situations where the camera can't do the trick.
For TV use in european countries,try this set up:
camera: 3K 16/9 50fps
CS4 or other: 3K 16/9 25fps and 200% speed up.
Export: hd1080 16/9 10 bit YUV 25p or whatever you want.

 

[Craig Parkes]

Buhot, something else to consider is working to deliver in 720p50.

This particular HD (delivery) format is designed to combat the very problems you are facing by having both progressive scan and 50fps playback, meaning that footage won't necessarily be slow motion, as you will get smooth playback and no more stutter than you would see in a 25i image (same as 50i, depending on whose specs you are reading).

Alternatively, shoot 50fps for 25i delivery (25 interlaced frames or 50 fields) and in post you simply interpret your footage in such a way that it grabs the interlaced fields from your 50fps footage. The way to do this depends on your NLE but if it's done correct again you will not experience slowmo and you will experience identical smoothness that you would expect for video.

This goes for both 1080i50 delivery or regular PAL delivery.

The only time this would be an issue is if you are delivering for a 24FPS film out, in which case you may find that some of the problems are mitigated by the 'triple flashing' the projector is doing.

For DCI out then I believe you can project at 48FPS a second, in which case you will just go through the regular 4% slowdown that regularly happens in PAL to film transfers (no one really notices it.)

When playing back on your computer, in a non proper post environment, you are slightly limited because you can't see proper interlaced playback, which is why I started by recommending 720p50 as a good finishing format for HD delivery because it's well suited to viewing on a setup without a broadcast monitor (no interlacing).

whatever you do DON'T deliver in a 25P format, that will exacerbate the issue. It's also one of the reasons why 25P is generally not an acceptable broadcast delivery format.

 

[Craig Parkes]

Hi,

I think a lot of what you are seeing is just that you are used to looking at an interlaced image. The vast majority of the National Geographic footage that we all grew up watching on tv, from gazelles to elephants, was shot at 24 fps with a fixed 180 shutter on arri SRs, nobody seemed to mind the judder then. I know you are looking for a solution, and I am not trying to minimize your problem, but there has been an enormous amount of footage of the exact type you are talking about shot this way, and it was never a problem before. It just looks different.

Nick

Hi Nick, the thing here is that work was likely done at the Telecine stage to minimize judder (in NTSC world due to Pull down and interlacing, in PAL world by interlacing and general conversion). This work would have been done by full time professionals with expensive gear and lots of experience at their disposal to minimize the effect as much as possible. Buhot needs to either be shooting at a higher framerate so he can be certain that this is minimized, or testing a post workflow right through to his deliverable to KNOW that the results he is getting will work for his delivery method.

They may have been shot the same way - but the workflow is likely to be very different, and at the moment sorting out an entire workflow that he is happy with should be Buhot's primary concern.

 

[Jean Wallez]

whatever you do DON'T deliver in a 25P format, that will exacerbate the issue. It's also one of the reasons why 25P is generally not an acceptable broadcast delivery format.

of course,my mistake,hd1080 10 bit YUV interlaced 50 i .

 

[Denis Buhot]

thank you all for your patience...

thank you all for your patience...

.. great input. I'm learning a lot and.. it seems my problem with stutter can be fixed some way in post. Relief...

As far as primary shooting is concerned, I get that my decision to stick to 25 fps as a time base for my project, with higher framerates for fast action scenes will not end up in systematic slo-mo, while retaining shooting capacity in dim light. Great, great news to me...

P.S Jean.. your name sounds familiar...have we met some place before ??

 

[Jean Wallez]

Planet Mars...eille?
Try and report...
Good luck!