The Beauty of 24p

Back in the old days of traditional film, nearly all productions were recorded at 24 frames per second. This standard gives the look of film that you are accustomed to seeing in a movie theatre for any major motion picture. When broadcast television came along, there was limited bandwidth for broadcast, so engineers came up with a clever way to interlace the lines on the screen, and fool your eyes into seeing the entire picture. Rather than broadcast at 24 complete frames per second, they devised a method to only broadcast every other line on the screen, 30 time per second, for a total of 60 interlaced frames (60i). This 60i format is responsible for the look of video that is shown on broadcast news and sporting events, and very likely, your personal video recorder.

As technology has improved, it is now possible to shoot and replay High Definition footage at a true 24 frames per second, which has the look of traditional film, as in any major motion picture. The Panasonic HVX200 cameras that we use record this footage directly to a digital flash storage, exactly like many digital still cameras use today (only much larger). The benefits of shooting straight to digital are many - no tapes and no dropouts, instant review of footage, reduced cost, and the ability to edit without reduced picture quality - almost instantly. While many call this technology digital video, we prefer to call it digital film, because the end product (which our customers actually see) looks like film, and not at all like video.