Bob, two things to add:

1. I know someone mentioned using 1/120th for 720p60 but the camera default for the HMC-150 is 1/60th. If you go to 1/120th you will have to run the aperture more open (shallow depth of field making focus more difficult) and/or increase gain (more noise). Except for special cases like the golf swing in my previous post, I always use 1/60. In the golf swing I used 1/1000 and a very bright day to minimize blur in the swing. I also did that because I wanted to capture some of the images.

2. It is very important to be sure deinterlace is NOT set to none in Vegas when you render.

Also, you asked this before and I'll attempt to answer but others will correct me if I'm missing something here. When I have 720p60 slowed 40% (i.e., 24fps) AND 720p60 regular speed, and am downsizing for DVD, I render using the 24p DVD template. Since it is for DVD, it will actually put this into a 60i stream but Vegas works out the 3:2 pulldown etc. Of course, you are only using 24/60th of you full speed frames when you do this.But I find it looks fine for DVDs.

/jerry

TeeTime

Thanks. I think I follow this, and will give it a try. Remembering that I'm doing wedding videos, a 1/120th shutter would be difficult indoors, as I'm already competing for light on this type of camera. (Much hungrier for light than my Sony PD-150). So your recommendation to stick with the 1/60th is good news.

Also, since I'm going to SD DVD, do you think I'm better off going 720/30P, and if so, what shutter speed? I really don't want to go to a 1/30th shutter speed, because again, I'll be fighting motion blur.

Thanks T2

Bob

Technically your shutter speed should be determined by what you intend to deliver, unless doing over / under crank e.g. slomo.

I'm assuming you'll deliver 30 frames per second, either as 30p or 60i and in both cases for a 180degree shutter, the shutter speed should be 1/60. Vegas should do a perfect job of converting 60p to 60i, it simply converts each frame to a field.

One reason you're facing an issue with motion blur is you simply have too much motion. Not only does that create the obvious issue of motion blur it also makes life difficult for the encoder be it mpeg-2 or H.264. End result is image quality is taking a double, no triple hit! You really need to not wave the camera around and invest in a good tripod or some other means of making smooth camera moves.

Motion blur is generally a good thing, the bride walking, the bubbles or the car driving off. The problem is as you wave the camera around the whole frame is moving and gets blurred. I've more than once switched the shutter Off and with a locked down camera it's quite a nice look, a little more ethereal but no problem pulling usable stills from it because I have not needed so much gain hence less noise and the rest of the frame is quite sharp as it isn't moving.

Reason I said "triple hit" before is firstly you have the motion blur from the shutter. Then the H.264 encoder has to do its motion estimation thing then after you have edited the footage you want to make a DVD, most likely using mpeg-2 compression which also uses motion estimation. You are adding compression artifacts to compression artifacts.


I fully appreciate the difficulty of using a tripod when you don't have a lot of cameras to cover a wedding, you simply don't have the time to keep moving the camera. On top of that good tripods are not cheap. That doesn't mean you can not look at other devices to help keep your camera stable and/or look at the really good tripods that are fast to move and light weight. They cost a lot, they'll outlast the next five generations of cameras though so they are a very good investment.

Bob.

>Also, since I'm going to SD DVD, do you think I'm better off going 720/30P, and if so, what shutter speed? I really don't want to go to a 1/30th shutter speed, because again, I'll be fighting motion blur.

If you want good slomo a nice compromise would be shoot 720p60 and 1/60th, then render to 30p, with 50% slowdown for the slomo.

If you don't have it, I recommend you order Barry Green's "The HMC 150 Book". It goes well beyond the owner's guide with excellent techniques for low light, focusing techniques, etc.

/jerry

farss

Very interesting. There are of course different scenarios/conditions throughout a wedding shoot. Chasing the bride and groom around outside (a true run and gun), my options I think are limited. I do have a fairly good tripods, Manfrotto with 501 heads (that's what my budget will bear...I know there's better ones out there). I recently gave up using them in the above scenario, but based on your input of the triple threat, perhaps I should re-think that.
The ceremony itself is not too much of an issue; both cameras are on those tripods, and I have not experienced motion blur.
The last condition is or course the reception, and lighting is always a challenge. I've gone from an NRG 12 volt battery belt (what a work out, but good light), to 5" LED light panel with AA batteries. Much lighter, but it the light is more narrowly focused. I use a tripod for one camera, and the "Multi-rig pro" for the other, with fairly good results. Mark VonLanken recommends the multi-rig.
My only other option as I see it is to invest in a Glidecam4000, and if I want to save arm fatique, splurge for the "Robo Cop" vest, sweat to death, but have reasonable good steadiness on the camera.
I'm interested in hearing more about you turning the shutter off. I'm not sure what is happening there, and what the implications are. If you could expand on that, that would be great.
I'm still a little perplexed by others input that varies; in the end I must take all this input, and experiment. I've been given lot's of advice, and appreciate it!

Thanks farss!

Bob