Hi all, I am going to be working on a spot that involves sports broadcasters at during a live TV broadcast. The production company wants to shoot with the same camera the live broadcast uses (at 60 fps) to achieve a live effect and later switch to a more cinematic style with a different camera shooting at 23.98 fps. I don’t have delivery specs yet, but I would guess 23.98 fps. What would be the best way to convert the 60 fps footage to 23.98? Or any other thoughts. Any advice would be much appreciated.
If they want the sports stuff to feel live and you are able to deliver at 59.94, I would master the whole spot at 59.94. You can then just do a progressive timewarp (with duplicated frames) on the 23.98 to get it up to 59.94. That way you get to keep your high framerate sports vibes and still have your 23.98 cinematic feel.
This 100% depeneds on the delivery specs. I’ve done tons of these kinds of spots, and it’s always a compromise. Im under the impression that there are very few places that accept 60fps deliverables.
The magic numbers are 40% timewarp or 250% timewarp. that’s 24/60 and 60/24, respectively.
There is never a world where you can ship a spot with native 60fps footage in it. All the delivery houses/distribution places are based/built on 24fps or 30fps.
I’d recommend shooting 24fps stopped down as much as possible to increase depth of field and a skinny shutter…like, maybe a 45 degree shutter.
Any station broadcasting on in the US is either 1080i or 720p, no? I haven’t paid close attention in at least a decade but I don’t remember there being another wave of transmitter upgrades and all that jazz like happened with the big switch to HD. Whether you can give ER or whomever one deliverable that’ll work correctly everywhere is another story, but it should be possible to do what they’re wanting to on TV.
I have since found out that the spot will be delivered Extreme Reach (it’s only going to Fox). Probably 15-25% of the spot will be the 60 fps footage and the rest at 23.98. I will certainly advise production company to shoot everything at 23.98, but they seem pretty adamant about shooting at 60 for the footage they want to look like live broadcast. If we are to finish at 23.98 I am concerned that the 60 fps footage will look steppy 40% timewarp. How should I avoid that? Maybe ML timewarp or Topaz video could eliminate steppiness? Thanks for all the advice.
In order to maintain the 60 fields per second that is sports, you will need to conform the spot at 60i and add a 3:2 pulldown to the 23.98 footage. Since all non-broadcast deliveries need to be progressive, you will need to make 2 versions.
It doesn’t matter if it’s sports or studio, if they want to maintain the 60fps, you need to work in 60i. If you can’t deliver 2 masters someone has to compromise.
OK, thanks. I do not necessarily think they are concerned with keeping the master at 60, they just want the footage to have that look and then transition into a more “cinematic” look that the 23.98 footage provides
This is exactly the point. They don’t get to lean on frame rate for cinematic look with a single framerate deliverable.
You also don’t need to worry about anything feeling step when you standards convert the 60 to 24 or the 24 to 60. For years we used to work at 24 and then time warp 40% and change the time code fro run at 60 and send it to whomever had the Superb Owl that year. Your brain is so used to Timewarp set to Mix causing problems, but, not when you get to Timewarp set to Mix AND also change the timecode flag at the same time.
In this day in each, it’s easy as heck to test this. Heck your iPhone shoots in 24 and 60. Do a quick test and you’ll instantly see the problems in Flame.
So, in summary, you don’t get to lean on frame rate. All frame rates will effectively be homogenized (@Phil loves that word) but what DOES get changed is the effective’ shutter angle of your footage. As in, 24fps material that gets 200% timwarped from an 180 degree shutter effectively becomes a 90 degree shutter.
So, in other words, you might as well shoot all of this at the same frame rate, and then shoot normal shutter at 24fps for the normal commercial look, and shoot a 72 degree shutter for the broadcast look. 180 degrees x 0.4 = 72 degree shutter.