Also Panasonic HC-X920, Sony HDR-PJ820, etc.

Argghhh, The NEVER ENDING upgrade, something else I don't need but soon won't be able to live without.

Glad I don't do this for a living...

Thanks for those suggestions anyway.

OldSmoke said, "So the statement 60i is brighter than 60p isn't always true or is maybe even a thing of the past with recent sensors and processing."

Actually it is how much brighter one can make the exposure, instead of just brighter. And that is because of the noise level. One would have to lower the exposure by 1 stop to reduce the noise with 60p.

I took my CX-900 outside tonight and let it shoot full gain at 60p and 60i. I took four videos. Two with the shutter at 60 and two with the shutter at 30.

The 60p videos have somewhat more noise than the 60i videos. Very noticeable! The 60p videos are also much sharper than the 60i videos. Also very noticeable.

When one looks at the noise patterns, they look the same but the reduced resolution of 60i makes the noise look much less noticeable.

So for the absolute best video in the darkest situation, 60i with reduced resolution is better.

Edit: I forgot to say that with 60p and 60i, the camera showed the same amount of gain, etc. But the noise level is where the BIG difference is. One has to reduce the AGC by one stop to get the lower noise at 60p and thus a video that is not as bright.

Then the statement should have been about noise, not brightness. And sharpness and noise can be traded one for another.

Well, if you take away half of the lines you also take away half of the noise.

One has to decide what is best for the situation.

An extremely dark venue may require that the settings should be changed from 60p to 60i to get an acceptable video.

My little cheap camera the 110 on low lux will look great in extremely low light with barely noticeable noise but if I use that setting with normal light, it will look like SD instead of HD because of the severely reduced resolution. It is a 60i only camera.

It all comes down to knowing ones camera and what settings to use for different situations if one wants the best videos.

"Well, if you take away half of the lines you also take away half of the noise"

and replace it with what? A smeared version of what's left. As I said, you trade sharpness for lower noise. Or in the case of 30p vs 60p, you trade temporal resolution for lower noise.

"It drops every alternate frame and it will look exactly like 30p."

if it dropped half of the frames, it could be throwing away half(?) of the bitrate, which is pretty serious.

for example, would you effectively be shooting at 14mbps instead of 28mbps... ouch.

unless every other progressive frame is recorded at a lower bitrate to begin with? never heard of that, and it doesn't jive with long gop encoding schemes.

"For 60i, the odd and even lines will be drop from the respective frames, it will looks as if shot at 60i"

since there aren't any more crt monitors, interlaced footage is at the mercy of whatever hardware deinterlacer is being used by the viewer.

sounds like 60i will be viewed at a lower resolution than if it was shot at 30p, no matter what.

there aren't any 1080p60 delivery standards, outside of youtube game footage, so it sounds like 1080p30 is the best choice for 1920x1080.

I like VidMus' experiment- thanks! I don't have a 60p camera at present, but I would probably do a test as you did to see-

As for 60i-

I just shot a belly dance recital video at 60i- as an experiment. I do this every year, and normally I shoot at 24 P, because I like the look of 24P much better. 60i just looks like VIDEO, and I find it very unflattering, cheap, and amateur looking, the difference is quite noticeable. But since this was a dance video, I wanted to see if it would actually look better as 60i. The motion always has looked fine at 24p- but anyway, I decided to experiment.

I rendered three different ways,
1) MAIN CONCEPT MPEG-2 DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen framerate 29.970 (default),
2) MAIN CONCEPT 24p MPEG-2 DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen choosing framerate 23.976 + 2-3 pulldown and also
3) MAIN CONCEPT 24p MPEG-2 DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen choosing framerate 30p.

I then burned to DVD (this is the purpose of this project, DVDs for the dancers). I'm not sure if my Samsung DVD player plays back progressive encoded DVDs or not (I'm guessing it does), or even if DVD Architect is encoding a progressive disc- but the differences between the normal rendered file and the progressive rendered file is substantial, and immediately discernible:

RESULTS-
1) The normal MAIN CONCEPT MPEG-2 DVD Architect NTSC framerate 29.976Widescreen looked like a typical video, home video. Just not very aesthetic or pleasing motion. Smooth, yes, but just...ick. Not filmic at all, looked cheap. I hate this look.
2) The MAIN CONCEPT 24p MPEG-2 DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen choosing framerate 23.976 + 2-3 pulldown looked far better, more pleasing, and nice and smooth motion also- but the rendering took twice as long, and Vegas crashed many times- I couldn't get the whole hour long program to ever finish completely without errors. Finally gave up:
3) Okay, so I then choose MAIN CONCEPT 24p MPEG-2 DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen choosing framerate 30P, and that looked as nice as the 24p, but rendered as fast as #1) (default for 60i), and rendered without any crashes.

I don't think I'll ever record at 60i again, because it's not necessary for dance, and doesn't look as good as 24P or 30P for the kinds of things I do. I don't film any other fast action things, and haven't missed it on any of my other projects. I'll continue to rely on 24P and 30P for all of my work.

70 various typies of videos on my Youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/neilslade