Progressive filming

[Frank Burch]

My camcorder offers various recording modes including progressive and "cinema". The handbooks never explain the different modes in detail so I suppose most people simply use the preset mode 1080i (interlaced). I did make a little test to see what the difference was between i and p, but didn't see much difference so I stuck to i.

Question: does anyone use p mode? If so could you give us some information on the subject? What about professional camcorders like the ones you see camera men walking around with on their shoulder? The BBC animal documentaries, are they shot in p or i?

[skier-hughes]

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/televisions/0,3 ... 310,00.htm

[Frank Burch]

Thanks for the link Graham, but it does not fully answer the question: to shoot p or i?
"The news that 1080p could be available via Freeview HD is really rather exciting. For movies and high-quality drama it's fantastic, because that material is well suited to 1080p25."

Now that is something I have never understood.
Why is p better for movies? In any case I seldom watch movies but mainly documentaries and I certainly never make a movie myself. So the question remains.

[skier-hughes]

p for movies because they show it from a projector with film and you get one frame to show, can't show interlaced that way.

[Frank Burch]

After hunting around on Internet I am beginning to understand the difference between p and i, progressive and interlaced. The image in movement will have a "combed" effect in i, whereas it will be "blurred" when using p. Blurred looks more natural, is more "pleasing" they say. They also speak of "cinema effect", but I have no idea what that means.

Most important they say that shooting in p is more difficult. The camcorder must be held very steady, panning must be very slow etc.

[erdna]

Hi Frank,
I mentioned about the p possibility with your camcorder in the "interlacing and pixels" thread. You experienced lower quality in the p mode... There is more to be written about how different camera's "produce" their p mode, but that's somehow a bit off topic w.r.t. this forum. Just this about film mode: in general it combines p mode with a specific tranfert curve(gamma), often applies low pass filtering and color correction (electronic masking). All this in order to mimic pellicule filming.
I have a couple of camcorders (DV,HDV,AVCHD) and since some month also a Panasonic GH1 combo camera. It takes beautiful FullHD (1080p25) mode video. Also jpeg images out of my video footage are much better than what I can get with de-interlaced images from my other HD camcorders.

[Frank Burch]

I suppose it depends on what you are shooting. For me it's animals and birds and landscape during trips to USA, Australia, South Africa, etc. I believe progrssive would not be so suitable for this sort of video. I do get a bit of "twitter", but I also notice that even in professional documentaries.

As for stills I don't use the camcorder but prefer to grab my Panasonic FZ 28, which is in fact a so-called "bridge", which I did not want but I wanted the 15 x zoom. For the price I think it's a great camera.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

Maybe you could tell us the make and model of your video camera, then we could google and find what formats it supports.

[Frank Burch]

Canon HV20 (same as HV 30). It can record in progressive mode and in "cinema".