Video quality...60i vs 60p

Mobious

Is there a real difference in terms of quality of the video? 60i vs 60p?

oblioman

To me understanding, no. But have been told by a couple of sources to shoot everything in 60i - and beautify in editing.

m2008

well, for me it is great difference.
try Splash Lite and some footage 60i from camcorder.
check Splash 1080i to 1080p conversion.
the video is absolutely smooth!

i love this feature.

David M

I tried Slash. It does work great. I was using high quality Cineform avi to watch on my computer but Spash looks even a little better and plays very well with the MTS files.

oblioman

Splash is merely a viewer. The OP was inquiring about shooting modes (from a previous post). Splash might be cute,,,but VLC is ruggedly handsome.

David M

Personally, I don't see any difference.

m2008

i see maybe a small difference... i saw some sample of sanyo camcorder, both 60i and 60p. maybe 60p is a little bit sharper - maybe.

the difference is in playback... 60p is smoother... but as i said having Splash makes 60i to 60p and its smooth as a silk.

Im not sure what oblioman meant about VLC, i find it not good for HD playback :/ (poor performance and quality).

hazydave

It's not so much a quality issue as an information issue. At the same spatial resolution, 60p contains twice as much information as either 60i or 30p.

Which is the better "quality".. depends on what you're shooting. If you shoot at 60p, that's great for sports and other fast motion, but currently, you have to change to something else for viewing, say, on a disc... Blu-Ray can do 1080/60i, 1080/24p, 720/60p, etc. but not 1080/60p.

If you want something that looks "like video", you probably want to shoot in 1080/60i. This is going away a bit, since good computer video players, and all digital TVs, use a variety of tricks to make interlaced look progressive, since they don't have interlaced displays. This is more difficult to deal with for computer video, which is assumed progressive. When you take interlaced video and play it on a progressive display, you get effects like "mice teeth"... you see motion from one field to the next (if you don't fully understand why this happens, you need to do some homework on interlaced video). Software can reduce this, but it does so by interpolating and blurring... if you know you're shooting for computer playback, it's better to shoot in progressive.

If you're shooting to look more "like film", shoot at 30p or 24p, whatever your camcorder supports. That'll be more jerky, less smooth... it only contains half (or less) the number of frames per second.