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South Africa 25 frames per second?


Rainer Halbich

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I was wondering why thy use 25 frames per second in Africa for standard film, but 24p everywhere els?

And what is the meaning of progressive in 24'p'?

 

I was told by my lecturer that you only take 12 frames per second for animation and then you convert the 12 frames to 24 frames, Is this only in Africa or is this an international standard?

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They do that in South Africa because, I believe, it's a PAL country like the UK. 24 fps isn't a completely universal standard.

 

As for the 12fps animation to 24fps thing, it's a fairly common animation practice called "shooting on 2s." It is an economy thing. Results are nearly as good as 24fps origination with half the work. It does tend to fall apart with a lot of fast motion, though.

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They use 25 FPS in Europe a lot. The Soviet (which used SEACAM also 25 FPS) Kinor 35 H and C s had crystal sync settings for both 24 and 25 FPS. PAL video systems, as mentioned before, are 25 FPS so if you have a PAL video tap, as I do with my Kinor 35C (and which is a much better match than NTSC at 29.97 FPS), you don't run into any problems with the video also when projected back at 24 FPS the difference is negligible, it only adds 22 and a half seconds to a 90 minute film which is why I'll be shooting at 35 FPS when we go into production. B)

Edited by James Steven Beverly
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They do that in South Africa because, I believe, it's a PAL country like the UK. 24 fps isn't a completely universal standard.

 

Chris that's a curious thing to say. I would think that 24FPS is one of the only completely universal world standards. It's format agnostic even between PAL and NTSC countries. If there was one frame rate that works everywhere it's 24 FPS, which is why it was adopted in the HD formats.

 

Don't forget everywhere else in the world is 25FPS ASIDE from the US and Japan.

 

It's only a 4% sped difference to between 24/25, so usually what happens is the 24FPS stuff plays a little faster on TV, or a little slower in the cinema if shot at 25 FPS.

 

In fact, it's becoming more common here to shoot 25 FPS even for cinema release because it's easier to deal with the post, especially on the sound side of things.

 

jb

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Chris that's a curious thing to say. I would think that 24FPS is one of the only completely universal world standards. It's format agnostic even between PAL and NTSC countries.

 

I could very well be mistaken. Living in the US I have never dealt with anything except NTSC. I thought PAL countries pretty much always shot 25fps?

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I could very well be mistaken. Living in the US I have never dealt with anything except NTSC. I thought PAL countries pretty much always shot 25fps?

I can only assume the original poster is refering to video, as the film standard is 24fps anywhere.

Assuming he's talking about video, as a PAL country, 25fps is standard for any work to go to DVD, or broadcast.

You're correct, we always shoot 25fps unless we're shooting specifically for film out, or for an NTSC market. We've had clients from the US ask us to source NTSC cameras to shoot their footage on, rather than go through a standards conversion. :rolleyes:

 

And what is the meaning of progressive in 24'p'?

Refers to sequential line read/writes, as opposed to the odd field/even field pattern that is standard for interlaced video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_scan

http://www.adamwilt.com/24p/index.html

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I can only assume the original poster is refering to video, as the film standard is 24fps anywhere.

 

Hi Daniel,

 

no it's not. ;) There a large number of films shot here on 25fps and there almost always has been. As John said, the difference is only 4% so it doesn't matter that much. Most European film cameras (like my NPR) are crystal 24/25 fps.

 

Cheers, Dave

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Hi Daniel,

 

no it's not. ;) There a large number of films shot here on 25fps and there almost always has been. As John said, the difference is only 4% so it doesn't matter that much. Most European film cameras (like my NPR) are crystal 24/25 fps.

 

Cheers, Dave

Interesting...

 

Are they shot and distributed 25fps, or just shot @ 25fps and then mastered at 24fps?

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PAL is 25 fps, so they're transfered to video at 25 fps.

 

& 24 fps films are transfered to PAL at 25 fps.

I was not referring to film to video.

 

I was referring to film projects shot 25fps, intended for theatrical distribution. Does it remain 25fps, or does it get converted to a more standard 24fps?

 

There a large number of films shot here on 25fps and there almost always has been.
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Interesting...

 

Are they shot and distributed 25fps, or just shot @ 25fps and then mastered at 24fps?

 

Nope. It went 25 all the way. Most projectors here also run 25 fps as well as 24 fps. IIRC an old projectionist once told me they had projectors that ran only at 25 too.

 

Cheers, Dave

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I was referring to film projects shot 25fps, intended for theatrical distribution. Does it remain 25fps, or does it get converted to a more standard 24fps?

There isn't any conversion required. The same film can be run on a projector that cranks at 24 or 25. Years ago doing theatrical previews, a friend of mine found a theater owner who had rigged his projectors to run around 26-27 fps in order to squeeze an extra showing into a day, or at least get home a little earlier. ;-)

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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When shooting in a country where the electricity is set to 50hz, don't all films shoot at 25fps to sync the HMI lights to the camera? Or am I missing something here? I would think it's not just a video issue when using fluorescent lights and HMI lights off of the municipal power supply.

 

-bruce

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When shooting in a country where the electricity is set to 50hz, don't all films shoot at 25fps to sync the HMI lights to the camera? Or am I missing something here? I would think it's not just a video issue when using fluorescent lights and HMI lights off of the municipal power supply.

 

-bruce

 

 

As far as I know, it's 60Hzin South Africa.

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When shooting in a country where the electricity is set to 50hz, don't all films shoot at 25fps to sync the HMI lights to the camera? Or am I missing something here? I would think it's not just a video issue when using fluorescent lights and HMI lights off of the municipal power supply.

 

-bruce

If you are shooting with video being your final destination then yes, you would shoot 25fps with a 180 deg. shutter. If the project is for a worldwide theatrical release then you shoot in the standard 24fps with a 172.8 deg. shutter to compensate for the flicker induced from 50hz electricity.

If you were to shoot a television screen then you would revert to the 25fps/180deg shutter in order to stay synced (and tell the sound dept!)

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