iFrame vs 1080/60p, Conversion, Cameras, etc.

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Level 1

6 points

iFrame vs 1080/60p, Conversion, Cameras, etc.

Hey all:

I'm geeky in a lot of ways, but I'm totally honest about the fact that I'm kinda ignorant about the latest video specs and tech. I've had my Macbook for about a year now and I'm now way in bed with iMovie and iPhoto. I've just bought a Panasonic HCV700K camera and I've shot some footage of the kids in iFrame format and also in AVCHD 1920x1080/60p. I can see the difference and it'd be nice to get the increased quality of the AVCHD. However, my understanding is that iMovie does not work with AVCHD without a conversion process.

So my question is this..... What is the future of editing in iMovie and how does it affect me? 95% of what I shoot is just silly stuff of my kids around the house. Occasionally, there will be some "serious" stuff like a school program or a church thing or something like that. When it comes to video, I'm not really a cork sniffer type that always has to have the highest quality. In fact, I'm really kind of thrifty when it comes to hard drive space.

Also, I still tend to like to burn DVD's. My kids are still little and they love to watch home movies of themselves acting silly or playing sports or whatever. So the ability to just toss in a disc and have them enthralled has some value even if it means that the video quality needs to be reduced get to DVD standards.

With all that being said, what should I be doing?

I really like the simplicity of shooting in iFrame and dragging and dropping into iMovie. But if most of my footage is going to get converted to DVD, is it worth shooting in AVCHD and messing with conversion and all that stuff? Or trying to pick and choose the destination in advance? Am I wrong in my understanding that standard DVD quality is a lower res than iFrame anyway?

Thoughts and/or suggestions?

Thanks

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Dec 10, 2012 8:45 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

AppleMan1958

Level 7

27,492 points

Dec 10, 2012 9:00 PM in response to fatnecks

If your camera has a setting for AVCHD 30P, that would be best. You can use it in iMovie and it will be very high quality. iMovie does not support 60P, and the only reason to work with 60P is if you need some very high quality slow motion shots. I would sugest AVCHD over iFrame, but if you like iFrame, that is fine.

DVDs are standard definition so either your AVCHD or your iFrame will be cut down in quality quite a bit to make a DVD. If you want to retain close to full resolution, I would suggest watching your movies through an Apple TV, and sharing them with friends and family through YouTube or Vimeo.

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Answer 2

fatnecks Author

Level 1

6 points

Dec 11, 2012 5:59 PM in response to AppleMan1958

Thanks for your help. I kinda thought I understood these things but it's nice to have some reassurance.

My camera has the following settings:

1080/60i (HA) (Average 17Mbps VBR)

1080/60i (HG) (Average 13Mbps VBR)

1080/60i (HX) (Average 9Mbps VBR)

1080/60i (HE) (Average 5Mbps VBR)

1080/60p (Max 28Mbps VBR)

iFrame (Max 28Mbps VBR)

I don't really understand the rates. Isn't the 1080 in reference to resolution and the 60i the refresh rate? If so, how are there 4 different quality rates at the same resolution and refresh specs? What knob are they tweaking to change the rate?

Also, if iFrame is a lower quality, why is it at such as high rate in comparison to the others?

I've confirmed that I can shoot in HG mode and import to iMovie. So 60i is apparantly OK, but 60p is a no go.

Thanks very much for your help!

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Answer 3

Dec 11, 2012 6:33 PM in response to fatnecks

In 1080, there are 1,080 rows of pixels and 1,920 columns of pixels.

P refers to progressive. Your 1920x1080 pixels all show up at once like a photograph, or like a frame in a film-based movie projector.

i refers to interlaced. In this scheme there are 30 frames per second but each frame consists of two fields. One file contains the odd numbered rows, and one field contains the even number of rows. 60i refers to 60 fields per second, but it is more useful to think of it as 30 frames per second.

Normally I would suggest that AVCHD would be better than iFrame, but I don't personally have an iFrame camera. The bit rate of your iFrame option is impressive, so I think you should try it to see if you like it.

You should shoot in either HA or iFrame. Try them both and see which you like the best.

You can shoot 60P, which is 60 progressive frames per second. In the real world, there are no televisions that can handle 60 frames per second, so iMovie will export 30 frames per second. If you are doing slow motion, you can slow down your 60P to 30P and have a very nice effect.

Having said that, there are people who have hacked iMovie to be able to handle 60P. You can also import 60P in Final Cut Pro X. See this blog post for an example of someone who has hacked iMovie. They did 50P because they are in a PAL country, but the principle is the same.

http://ianperegian.com/My_FZ35_38_Webpage/Edit_1080_50p_and_burn_a_disk.html

When these cameras first came on the scene, the SDHC cards in the cameras were quite expensive. You might pay $80 for a 4 to 8 GB card. Today I can buy a 32GB card for about $17, so I can shoot at the highest bit rate and never run out of space. They can achieve lower bit rates by compressing more and having lower quality.

It is best, in my opinion to shoot in the highest quality you can, because in the process of making your movie, you can always share it out in a more compressed format if you need to, but you can never add back in quality that is not there.

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Answer 4

fatnecks Author

Level 1

6 points

Dec 11, 2012 6:58 PM in response to AppleMan1958

Well I shot some video in 1080/60p and in iFrame and hooked the camera directly up to my 42" plasma.

The differences were clear that 60p was a blatant winner. But I haven't done the Pepsi challenge for HA vs iFrame yet.

I'm in total agreement about recording in a higher quality. But I also have to come up with HD space to store it all too. So as much as I'd love to just shoot everything in 60p because I can and because it's awesome, I probably can't afford to.

Did you understand my question about the quality differences between HG, HA, HX, HE? If it's the same number of pixels and the same frame rate, what's the actual difference between them that changes the file sizes?

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