My personal opinion with what I like to call consumer progressive is that it simply should not be. It has no business existing

Consumer cameras are built for consumers and given that fact, they need to be compatible with normal television sets. This means that any progressive that is shot must be output with pull down, lack the proper pull down flagging.... and other such complications that do nothing but muddy the waters.

If you want to shoot progressive then get a proper camera for the job

"I'm nervous about this AVCHD thing because people have problems with the editing, but again I don't see that there is much choice. "

Huh, there's plenty of excellent cameras that let you avoid AVCHD.

As someone else said here months ago, if we keep buying this junk they'll keep building it.

Bob.

[edit]:

Here you go:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/537980-REG/Sony_HDRHC9_1_HDR_HC9_MiniDV_High_Definition.html

The price is USD 799, heck I'm tempted to buy one to go with our HC5.

To be specific. Footage from our HC9 has been used by two broadcasters. ABC's "New Inventors" and TCN's "Home And Away". No complaints. Footage from our AVCHD camera was rejected as unuasable by another broadcaster. I'll admit the way they were trying to handle it wasn't optimal but they've used the same process before with good results with other camera.

We have the CX520, we have a CX550 on order. Both are very consummer'ish cameras and they are just fine for what they were made for. People who edit in camera and go direct to HD DVD on red laser DVDs. We even give them the Sony USB DVD burner as part of the deal and they are very pleased customers with what they get. None of them want to edit the footage, period.

...they need to be compatible with normal television sets.

You mean they should shoot progressive, then?

Or do you have a local store that is blowing out its remaining inventory of vacuum tube (CRT) TVs?

LCD, plasma, LED, etc. are all naturally progressive, and can only show interlaced video with interlacing by using expensive add-on technology that only exists in a few $4K professional video monitors.

Progressive display of interlaced video is fraught with challenges. From watching 1080i broadcast, you know it can be done, and amazing signal processing technology works OK most of the time.

But personally I can't wait for the last TV engineer to be laid to rest in a chained and padlocked casket with a garlic-encrusted stake run through it, and the remains cremated and distributed across multiple continents to be on the safe side, so interlacing doesn't come back.

Why? Interlaced video is a royal, nay, imperial pain in the butt for advanced post production, and it doesn't compress as efficiently as progressive, meaning file sizes increase for a given quality.

Joejon

I would never buy a HD cam that only shoots interlaced

The advantages of progressive clips over interlaced FOR EDITING are many
I never shoot interlaced because it was designed for broadcasting and not for filming

There are no advantages of interlacing over progressive
On 2 different features that were filmed in Cape town the production guys had to redo some digital scenes because of the judder in the panning of the interlaced sequences

You will get this in both progressive and interlaced but the interlaced is worse on slower pans
The shortfall of 25 frames cannot be fixed with interlacing.

Now sit back and feel the love

Edit .I rip all my AVCHD to DV 720p which is a breeze to edit and broadcasters love it

"Why? Interlaced video is a royal, nay, imperial pain in the butt

Are you kidding me?
I guess you missed that tiny little word.... CONSUMER camera? Did you see it that time? Why do you think they still include pull down on these cams? I mean if the world was full of nothing but lcd. led, plasma panels as you seem to suggest then it's all a terrible mistake isn't it.

The world is awash in LCD panels especially, and there aren't any CRTs sold since a few years.

Of course they still exist in many homes.

Increasingly, people are watching video on their computers, and that means consumer cameras are now finally shooting clean progressive formats for display on their solely progressive computers.

Consumers don't shoot for broadcast (where 1080i is a stopgap measure in the U.S.), and the web is now already the primary target rather than the TV set.

I agree that this has happened very quickly, and it has confused many who have been shooting interlaced DV formats for years.

[Judder is about the one advantage of interlaced over progressive. At a given frame rate, interlaced will have less judder than progressive. Progressive requires more skill, but the end result can look nicer.]

"The world is awash in LCD panels especially, and there aren't any CRTs sold since a few years."

Absolute TOTAL baloney.

We still purchase crt's to supply our clients... about 6 or 7 a month... and this is in Canada. Would you like to check out other Countries with lesser economies?

Even if they stopped selling crt's tomorrow, they last an average of ten years.

"Consumers don't shoot for broadcast (where 1080i is a stopgap measure in the U.S.), and the web is now already the primary target rather than the TV set."
Really?
You seem to have a major grasp on the pulse of the consumer. Who are you to have such a pulse?

Bottom line.... there are still a GREAT MANY crt's out there (we still have 2 of them in our house) and we're talking about consumer cameras that must be compatible with them.

Rob,

I apologize if I somehow was offensive to you.

I'm surprised that you are able to buy CRTs at any price, and even more surprised that you could find it economical compared to buying LCDs.

LCD HDTVs sell for $140 and up in the U.S. at least, and I haven't seen any NTSC TVs sold in a good while, the last ones got their final blowout during the transition to Digital TV here.

Can you share what your clients are using their CRTs for?

[...the web is now already the primary target rather than the TV set."]

I produce for consumers, so if I was wrong about what consumers do and want, it would cost me.

I spend a lot of time and money on keeping up with consumer trends, and do my own research to verify what I find to be potentially useful, so I don't just follow someone else's wishful thinking.

I'm shifting my mix from 100% TV content to 100% web on the consumer side.

On the institutional side, things move more slowly. There I don't anticipate getting rid of shiny disks completely until maybe 10 years from now. And they have CRTs for TV viewing (if not for computer use).

If you shoot progressive, you can easily render to interlaced with good quality. You see that every time you watch a movie on television.

Going in the other direction is more painful.

But you do what you have to do. I still get old video tapes (DV, S-VHS masters, etc.) that I have to do something with.

Coursedesign,

I would have to agree a bit with Rob. I think your death announcement of interlaced is a bit premature. First off, all of the DVDs that people own are designed for interlace. Think of how many mini-dv and other consumer cameras are still in use. People aren't just throwing that stuff away in this economy. Most people I know still have at least one CRT type TV, and are only replacing them when they die.

Now for production, yes I think progressive will gain popularity, but even 1080i, at least in my exposure, is chosen more than P. Eventually all of this will be mute because the TVs will be able to play anything you send them regardless of frame rate, resolution, etc, but we aren't there yet. I still have 3 VCRs that I use daily for time shifting. They are cheap and dependable.

I think when we will see the big shift will be in the next generation of people who are used to watching TV on computers and ipods, but the baby boom generation is still alive and kicking.

Dave T2

I'm not making a death announcement for interlaced, I'm just saying that for new production, especially when you expect to be able to reuse content, it makes sense to shoot progressive if you can.

I'm not saying to go toss your expensive interlaced camera in the nearest river either.

Just if you are selling to consumers, you really need to focus on how they are going to view it, and that may mean testing the best tools to deinterlace the kinds of video you shoot.

I am a bit shocked over how quickly people have gone from "OK, I'll wait for my DVD," to, "Can I download it now?" in the last 12 months, but I'm adapting my business to it.

That means releasing new content online first, and then on DVD, at a higher price to cover the cost of media, duplication, packaging, shipping and handling, sales tax, inventory costs, etc.

And the DVD is SD of course, while Blu-Ray hasn't exactly had a mass market penetration yet. I'd be happy to sell BDs, but I don't see enough of a market for my business in that, probably not ever. Downloads of course can be whatever size you want that you think your customers can play back on their computers without choppiness and without scrolling their screens :O).

I'm a baby boomer myself and sell to a lot of them, but the majority of my customers are in the late 20s - late 40s.

Are VCRs still sold? Not to consumers afaik. Even the tapes are difficult to find now. My last two S-VHS decks wore out a few years ago, and I decided not to replace them. The first one cost 1800 bucks, sigh, but I got a lot of mileage out of it.

The consumer future is not with any kind of tape or shiny disks, but using harddisk-powered appliances feeding HD from the Internet to disk, then that to TV. Keeping on the disk only what you really want to keep, and streaming the rest over your 3-5 Mbps Internet connection to your HDTV as the U.S. slowly passes Romania and Mongolia in broadband coverage rates (sorry, there was congressional testimony a few days ago that Mongolia had a better and more modern air traffic control system than the U.S.'s WWII era system).

Yeah,there are a few VCRs still being sold. Most are combo DVD/VCR units. My local drug store still carries VHS tapes.

Yeah, the change to online and streaming media is happening. I find it a bit disturbing, because these forms to me are almost disposable. I hope that people realize they need a reliable storage media if they want their kids to see their wedding and birthday videso. I can pull out pics of my great grandparents and look at them, but I have some DVDs from a few years ago that I can't play. Really scares me. Hundreds of years from now the archaeologists will be looking for the elements of our culture (movies, videos, etc) and not find anything because all of the data was stored on media that failed. I know I might be exaggerating, but I don't think much.

Dave T2

and in 200 years the suns goes nova and everything about earth and its vain inhabitants is forgotten...

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I have some photographs that have been practically destroyed in less than 100 years so DVD failure is no different. Things fail, big deal.

If you shoot interlaced in NTSC, then you have a temporal resolution of 59.94 individual images per second. If you shoot progressive, you will have 29.97 individual images per second. Until such time as 59.94 progressive becomes more common, shooting interlaced is preferred for video with any kind of moderate to fast motion. I can see the judder at 24 or 29.97 progressive so I shoot 59.94 interlaced.

(My Sanyo FH1 shoots 1920x1080 at 60p using h.264 at 25Mbps VBR to SDHC cards.)

"Things fail, big deal."

Less than a hundred years. Man, I'd want my money back. ;)

Dave T2

Rob,
So what is the disadvantage of having a consumer camera like the Canon HV40 that shoots 60i, 30p, 24p (in a 60i wrapper) and native 24p? It will do interlaced and progressive and inside an inexpensive consumer camera. I don't think that one should have to have a professional camera to be able to shoot progressive footage.

I think a professional camera should give you better glass, more manual controls, and a better build quality. Just because a camera is considered a consumer camera it doesn't mean we should be stuck with 60i as our only creative option.

I believe the idea of interlaced as being "consumer" and progressive as being "professional" is about 5 years outdated. Why not have both options at our disposal?

Hello DaveT2,
you left out a word and unwittingly provided a bit of comic relief in this string of serious philosophical contemplation. . .

I know I might be exaggerating, but I don't think much.

I think you meant I don't think . . . as it stands, I think you just insulted yourself ... (grin)

I'm not attacking, just humorously observing. . .and certainly not attempting to put words in your mouth...

Until that time... Earl J.

heh heh. Yeah, I did just insult myself. Thanks and I hope nobody else noticed that. :)

Dave T2

Well,
of course, if they didn't before ... they certainly will now... (grin)
I'll keep it short... maybe some will still overlook it...
Too bad there isn't a way to shrink the text... (wink)

Hello Joejon,
personally, I like progressive. It is more like film - yes, I am disregarding all the factors about viewing it on an interlacing device/monitor.
Why...? I work in a history office and our best collections of video come from 8 mm and 16 mm film exactly because they are both a series of individual still images strung together to provide the action. . . not much different than animated cartoons.
So, in the event we want a nice clear shot of an event covered by a piece of film or an old negative, we go to the film version, capture a single frame of it, and see what we can do with that for our publications. Why not the negative? In collections from the same family, the film is probably more protected - not in the sense of the protected from weather variations and that sort of thing - primarily because each successive layer of film is protected by the one that follows...
For a negative or 35 mm color slide, it may have been handled much more frequently (as well as much more aggressively) than the film. The film is probably shown more and exposed to the light of the projector, but it does not receive the touching, handling, and transfer of human oils as negatives or slides.
* * *
In any case, what does all that above have to do with the subject at hand? Maybe a little, maybe a lot, maybe nothing at all.
The film of the old days was the best first-generation format available... uncompressed and original ... in my mind, that is exactly why I use tape in the camera, regardless of whether I am shooting directly to hard drive or not... I keep those tapes as safe as I would recommend for 8 and 16 mm film.
Once edited, keep that edited version in an uncompressed format as it was presented on the delivered item... and expect to migrate it from one format to another when that happens...
In my mind, it would almost be worthwhile to take the digital version and re-convert it to 8 or 16 mm film ... since it has proven itself so durable with so little care over half a century and longer ... (grin)

I apologize for rambling and certainly didn't intend to insult anyone's intelligence - many of you have certainly been at this sort of thing decades longer than I ... I did want to voice a bit of experience I've gained working here in the history office at Fort Bragg.

Until that time ... Earl J.

EDIT: Reading the response by DaveT2 below... I hope I didn't appear to attempt to hijack the thread either - I was just voicing my tendency toward the progressive format and why...
and DaveT2's comment and citation strengthens my conviction that we might think about moving back to film for long term storage - until some more permanent digital format comes along... maybe some sort of card system like the old punched cards... one card for each frame of video with all the digital data in a punched code form... hmmmm...

To follow on Earl and my comments about archival media. I read this in the Jan/Feb issue of markee magazine. Caleb Deshcanel received the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award and here is one of his comments:

"Digital technology has been a quantum leap forward in film restoration technology, but I wonder if today's digital movies will be around for tomorrow's audiences"

Sorry, don't mean to hijack this thread, just thought it was interesting.

Dave T

JC: "Until such time as 59.94 progressive becomes more common, shooting interlaced is preferred for video with any kind of moderate to fast motion. "

John,
I've been considering a new Panasonic, the TM700K. It shoots native 1080/60p. On their website they say that progressive gives smoother more natural motion than interlaced in an active scene. Are they just blowing smoke?

This is from Panasonic's website for the TM700 wherein they extoll the virtues of 60p:

"This extremely dense image information creates intricate detail and silky smooth motion. Even when subjects move quickly, afterimages are minimized to create more natural images. The progressive method is most effective when shooting detailed designs where moir patterns tend to occur, or when capturing scenes during sports events where the subjects are intensely moving around."

I'm geting confused as I'm not highly technical on the various shooting formats. Is Panasonic just doing a sell job?

"On their website they say that progressive gives smoother more natural motion than interlaced in an active scene. Are they just blowing smoke?"

Well, sort of. There is no difference in temporal resolution between 59.94 interlaced (60i) and 59.94 progressive (60p), they are both 59.94 individual frames per second and will capture the motion equally well. There IS a difference in spatial resolution between the two, 60p has twice the vertical resolution. 60i has an effective vertical resolution of 540 pixels, 60p has the full 1080 pixels.

Otherwise, what they say about 60p is true. Personally, I think the "sweet spot" for temporal resolution is 60p. There is very little to be gained by shooting at a higher frame rate (unless you want to do slow motion.)