Filming in Europe/Asia from the States

[ChopSticks]

Can anyone elaborate on the reason for PAL/NTSC? All the videos just mention if you're in Europe you should use PAL and if you're in US use NTSC. Also the anti-flicker 50Hz and 60Hz

How does this correlate for people in different regions traveling to other regions? If I record the beginning of a trip in the States with NTSC then fly to Asia and change to PAL will I be able to stitch them together in post? Same with anti-flicker. I know Mavic has an auto feature but some reviews mention it's not always right

 

[Cyberpower678]

Can anyone elaborate on the reason for PAL/NTSC? All the videos just mention if you're in Europe you should use PAL and if you're in US use NTSC. Also the anti-flicker 50Hz and 60Hz

How does this correlate for people in different regions traveling to other regions? If I record the beginning of a trip in the States with NTSC then fly to Asia and change to PAL will I be able to stitch them together in post? Same with anti-flicker. I know Mavic has an auto feature but some reviews mention it's not always right

PAL and NTSC are just video formats. If you live in the states, keep filming with NTSC. If you're in Europe switch your frequency to 50 Hz. The frequency is so the camera can adjust to the power line frequency of the region the. The US has 60 Hz. Europe and Asia use 50 Hz.


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[ChrisRL]

The reason for NTSC and PAL comes from the days when the scanning on the TV screens needed to be synchronized with that of the TV station. i.e. all the dots start at top left together, in pace with each other. The only widely available nationwide sync signal to trigger the start and the speed was, and still is, the national grid.

Hence in the US, which uses a 60Hz AC pulse, 24fps is used (goes into 60 neatly 2.5 times) for movies, and 30fps for TV, whereas in Europe it's 50Hz, so 25fps. Cinema was 24fps internationally, now it's digital, but still mostly acquired at 24fp for the film look.

The names are just that, names. NTSC started first, and was originally a black and white signal. When color TV was invented, the color signal was added onto the B/W signal, and also needed synching together, so the National Television Standards Committee said, okay, we'll take one frame per 10 seconds to use a s sync pulse, to keep the color signal together with the B/W carrier. Hence we lose one frame every ten seconds, which averages out at 29.97fps, or nowadays, twice that frame rate. Hence the controls on the TV for hue, etc., and the moniker (Never Twice the Same Color) that aren't on PAL TVs because that standard was introduced after color TV was invented and has the color signal integrated with the B/W. Hence (Perfection At Last)!

 

[ChopSticks]

PAL and NTSC are just video formats. If you live in the states, keep filming with NTSC. If you're in Europe switch your frequency to 50 Hz. The frequency is so the camera can adjust to the power line frequency of the region the. The US has 60 Hz. Europe and Asia use 50 Hz.


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Just curious, what would happen if I use 60Hz in Europe/Asia?

 

[Cyberpower678]

Just curious, what would happen if I use 60Hz in Europe/Asia?

You would see some flickering in your videos as a result of electrically driven lighting.


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[ChopSticks]

The reason for NTSC and PAL comes from the days when the scanning on the TV screens needed to be synchronized with that of the TV station. i.e. all the dots start at top left together, in pace with each other. The only widely available nationwide sync signal to trigger the start and the speed was, and still is, the national grid.

Hence in the US, which uses a 60Hz AC pulse, 24fps is used (goes into 60 neatly 2.5 times) for movies, and 30fps for TV, whereas in Europe it's 50Hz, so 25fps. Cinema was 24fps internationally, now it's digital, but still mostly acquired at 24fp for the film look.

The names are just that, names. NTSC started first, and was originally a black and white signal. When color TV was invented, the color signal was added onto the B/W signal, and also needed synching together, so the National Television Standards Committee said, okay, we'll take one frame per 10 seconds to use a s sync pulse, to keep the color signal together with the B/W carrier. Hence we lose one frame every ten seconds, which averages out at 29.97fps, or nowadays, twice that frame rate. Hence the controls on the TV for hue, etc., and the moniker (Never Twice the Same Color) that aren't on PAL TVs because that standard was introduced after color TV was invented and has the color signal integrated with the B/W. Hence (Perfection At Last)!

Would it be better use 24fps since it neatly upscales to 60fps?

 

[ChrisRL]

I mostly shoot 24fps for my own projects, but actually if I'm shooting for TV business rather than film for theatrical presentation, it's usually the other way around. I'll capture at the highest frame rate I can, because then afterwards I can easily downsample. Plus if I shoot at, say, 180 fps, every shot has the possibility of being used as a slow motion shot if needed.
Naturally one has to have the appropriate software to be able to do something like that.

For a film look, though, a shutter speed of 1/50 (actually 1/48) second is pretty much mandatory to get a convincing amount of motion blur onto each frame to emulate a pie-plate rotating shutter set at 180 degrees, which the film movie cameras, such as the Arri II's came with since the days before they had adjustable shutters.

Even after those days, it was necessary to stop an Arri, take off the lens, turn the shutter manually, to expose the shutter setting window, loosen a set screw or two, adjust the shutter angle, and then put everything back together again before the adjusted shutter angle (shorter exposure) could be used.

Then you had to mark the camera to let everybody know what angle the shutter was set at so nobody got the exposure wrong, etc. It was not easy to execute properly, especially at the end of a 16-hour work day (that part hasn't changed much), so, like slow-motion or non-crystal motors (cameras came with 24 or 25fps motors to shoot sound speed with, and that speed was controlled by a crystal, before computer days), it was much easier just to shoot at 1/48 or 180 degrees, and 24 or 25fps. Exposure was then just a matter of your film ISO and your lens aperture adjustment, that's all you had to work with. Of course you had to actually put a roll of whatever ISO film you wanted (between 64 and 400 ISO) into a camera and usually couldn't change that until the roll was done. So you'd better get that part right too, because even back then it was around $60 a second to but the stock and then put the film through the processing etc to be able to see what you'd shot. Typically the film labs would have small cinemas that you could watch your dailies, or larger productions would have a projector and an operator on location. That stuff had better be spot on, exposure-wise, or else you'd be out of work pretty quick sharp.

Nowadays, in the age of computers, broadcast standards like NTSC or PAL, frame rates etc don't really matter that much except for when you're actually lighting a shot, or when you're using a so-called broadcast medium, such as digital video tape (yes, that still exists, still very expensive), DVD creation, in which case the software will ask you what broadcast standard you want to burn your DVD or tape in, and what region of the planet you want to play back the DVD or tape in.

Naturally, if you prepare a film for on-air broadcast (wireless or cable), the network or the station will still want whatever you're giving them to be in their national standard, otherwise they'll have to pay for the conversion. Which, even today, is not cheap, if you're talking high quality broadcast standards.

 

[ChopSticks]

Thanks, but couldn't you technically also get the "film" look with 30fps @ 1/60 and some post color grading? or is it 24fps very noticeable compared to 30?

 

[ChrisRL]

Short answer: not convincingly.

Long answer:
The main elements that set the film look (movies) apart from the video look (news) are:
1) the dynamic range of the images. In a cinema we have between pitch black / illumination of the exit signs and however bright the projector bulb is, and the reflectivity of the 3M screen material. Typically 44 stops. TV and video are up to 16 stops these days.
2) the color timing, as you have mentioned, and
3) persistence of vision. 24/48fps is the standard in the cinema. It's 24 images pee second, each image projected twice. - the cameras have pie-plate shaped shutters, typically 180 degrees open, I.e half a pie, whereas the projectors have so-called butterfly shutters, with two roughly 90-degree slices missing.
4) film grain. Smaller than a lot of film look emulators want to add.

So if you are after a convincing film look, you have to do all four, and while programs like filmconvert do well in 2) and 4) above, you need a high dynamic range camera to get 1) - the current Arri digital camera shoots an equivalent of a 3-shot HDR original to extend Its dynamic range, and does 24. 25 or 30 of those per second I.e. 72-90fps. 3) is that 24fps progressive (not interlaced, that's TV) settling you mentioned, that most cameras can do.

Back in the day, Lucas and company did a medium-format 70mm iMax screen test shot at 60fps, to get the "ultimate quality movie, just like real life". The result: it looked real, just like UHD video looks like today. No 'movieness' left.

Video is s reality, news, actuality, selfies, Instagram,.
Film look is story, fictional, make-believe, dreams and tall tales.
The two are as chalk and cheese.

 

[Wacker2611]

Just curious, what would happen if I use 60Hz in Europe/Asia?

Nothing in my experience. I use NTSC exclusively and I'm well and truly in Europe(or I was). I wouldn't worry about it.


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