I'm going to be renting a dvx100a for a music video. (I'm only renting it for two days to shoot it) I also have a canon GL2 which I know doesn't shoot progressive.

So here's my question...If I shoot 24p on the dvx can I use my gL2 as my playback deck to edit? Will it play the 24p format? If it does, will it play footage in fields to my computer? (I imagine this would defeat the purpose of 24p)????

Basicly I want to use the dvx to shoot it for those two days, and then use my gL2 for the editing deck to cut back on my rental of the dvx. Or will I need the dvx all the way through?

quote:

I also have a canon GL2 which I know doesn't shoot progressive.

But it does! It's referred to as "Frame Mode" and is available under auto mode as a preset. It is 30 fps, and not 24 however.

Yes, the GL2 will play back the footage in 24p progressive.

although the footage is 24 frames, it is still recorded as 29.97 (30) onto the DV. engineering forces it to always be 29.97, it just repeats some frames depending on which 24p mode you are shooting in.

Excellent! Thanks guys! But if frame mode is progressive does that mean when I'm capturing to PREMIERE that I should capture in progressive (No fields?). If so, this leads me to another question, will I be able to encode my dvd's in progressive? Will the dvd playback in a non-progressive dvd player and tv?

the movie mode switch on the gl2 only affects camera mode, not vtr mode. So it won't matter, especially because both cameras convert the progressive video to interpolated on the tape (to conform with the miniDV standard).

re: progressive DVDs, if you shoot in 24pA, and you conform the video and edit in a 24p timeline, you will be able to make a 24p dvd which will play in all dvd players (at 60i) no matter what (not taking into account dvd duplication incompatibilities). In a progressive scan dvd player it will also play in 24fps 480p if you have a high def television. Otherwise, it will play in regular 60i, even if it was shot 24p (no matter what). See all dvd players automatically convert 24p to 60i as most commercial dvds encode the video at 24p.

Hope that wasn't confusing. The answers to your questions are no, yes, and yes.

Frame mode on the GL2 is not progressive. The DVX takes a full image every 24th of a second. The GL2 just takes its interlaced geared sensor and imitates it with lower resolution. You lose resolution whenever you shoot in "Frame mode". The process is actually not that great. There are lots of articles on frame mode around the internet and how it works. Another bad thing, frame mode samples less color data than interlaced as well.

Wouldn't it be great if your $1000 frame mode capable cams were progressive?

Peace,
Rio

well technically, if you remove one of the interlaced fields from the video and interpolate the in between lines from the other field, you've got a progressively captured image. So it is progressive.

....and where did you learn that frame mode samples less color data? That doesn't seem correct, except that it's only using half the picture so it's only using half the color information.

Here is a little white paper that will explain it a whole lot better than I ever could (unless I plagiarized it). \

ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/Panasonic/Drivers/PBTS/papers/Progressive-WP.pdf