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Sony’s NX70 camera to receive its missing 29.97p framerate via free firmware update

29.97p is a vital framerate for producers in ex-NTSC countries. I’m glad Sony has recognized this fact and is finally adding it to the NX70.

By Allan Tépper | December 25, 2011

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Sony has just announced that the NXCAM camera model known officially as the HXR-NX70 (often followed by a regional suffix) -but colloquially known simply as the NX70- will receive the vital 29.97p framerate via a free downloadable firmware, sometime in the first quarter of 2012. Well, let me get a little more specific: The 59.94Hz segregated versions of the NX70 will get 1080PsF29.97. This article will explain how vital this framerate is for many producers in ex-NTSC countries, and cover some other improvements included in this update, together with a few that are still missing.

This is not a review!



This article is not my promised NX70 review. That will still come sometime in the future, after Sony sends me a review unit, which has been promised by Sony, but has not arrived yet. This article is simply about the additional framerate added to the 59.94Hz segregated version of the NX70, its vital importance, and the other improvements included in the firmware update.



This article is not part of the PsF’s missing workflow series!



This article is not part of the PsF’s missing workflow series, which will continue very soon (and there are several episodes pending).



Framerates the NX70 (59.94Hz segregated version) has had so far



So far, the 59.94Hz segregated version of the NX70 has included:




  • 1080/23.976p (progressive) (Called “24p” in the camera’s menu.)

  • 1080/59.94p (progressive) (Called “60p” in the camera’s menu.)

  • 1080/59.94i (aka 29.97i) (interlaced) (Called “60i” in the camera’s menu.)



Reasons why you might want to shoot 1080/59.94p



Even though 1080/59.94p is not recommendable for general distribution (no over-the-air HDTV ratified standard supports it; Blu-ray video disks don’t support it; I wouldn’t presently recommend it for the web), here are some reasons why you might want to shoot in this mode:




  • For final distribution in 720p59.94, especially if you’d like to be able to pan or blow up (magnify) without loss.

  • For 2.5x slow motion when the final project is 23.976p, or 2x slow motion when the final project is 29.97p. No time-consuming rendering is required for this type of slow motion: You just have to conform it to the target framerate of your project. This is easily done directly both in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 and Apple Final Cut Pro X. (If your camera doesn’t have this mode… or if you didn’t know in advance what scenes needed to be slow motion, this can also be done very well in post with modern software that adds the “missing” in-between frames, but it takes longer than shooting it at 59.94p.)



REMINDER: Why I no longer recommend 720/50p or 59.94p as a final project format, unless…



There was a time when -for non-dramatic TV productions that weren’t going out to film- my favorite combination (for the sake of smoothness) was 720p50 (ex-PAL countries) or 720p59.94 (ex-NTSC countries). The reason that it was my favorite is because it offers the absolute smoothest progressive playback. The reason I stopped recommending it will be quite familiar to anyone who read (and remembers) my 2010 article Why the iPad will dictate your shooting framerate & shutter speed. To summarize:




  • iPads, iPhones, and most (if not all) other phones and tablets have a maximum playback framerate of 30 fps (i.e. 29.97p or the non-standard 30.000p from some DSLRs).

  • It is unlikely that you can prevent (even if you wanted to do so) someone from watching your content on one of these mobile devices… and in many cases, you probably encourage it.

  • Spatial resolution (pixel count) is very easily downscaled to fit mobile devices, so it’s no problem to create smaller mobile versions of your HD content. However…

  • Temporal resolution (framerate) is not easily downscaled without drastically changing the look. If you downscale 59.94p-to-29.97p (or 50p-to-25p), the result is jarring, because the original relationship between framerate and shutter speed -which in combination determine the temporal look of the video- is destroyed (unless you carry out an elaborate frame-by-frame process in After Effects).



That’s why nowadays I generally recommend production framerates between 23.976p and 29.97p (which of course also includes 25p), unless you are specifically producing for networks like ABC, ESPN, Fox News, Fox Sports, NRK, VRT or some other network that broadcasts 720p50 or 720p59.94 due to their preferred emphasis on temporal resolution over spatial resolution, which certainly has its merits. If you are, then of course you can shoot 1080/59.94p (for those in the ex-NTSC countries) or 1080/50p (for those in the ex-PAL countries) and then simply downscale to 720p while retaining the exact original framerate. (The new firmware for the 59.94Hz versions of the NX70 will also add 720p59.94, so the downscale will no longer be necessary if that’s your situation. Presumably, 720p50 will also be added to the 50Hz versions of the NX70 via a similar firmware update. At publication time of this article, there is sadly still no word on a WorldCam update or version of the NX70, but we can still hope!)



The importance of 29.97p



If you are in an NTSC or ex-NTSC country (like the USA, Japan, Canada, or any Latin American country other than Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) and want a dramatic “24p” look (or would like to transfer your video to 24fps film fairly easily), then by all means, shoot in 23.976p if you are shooting tapeless (or, if you are shooting on tape, see my 2008 article When 25p beats 24p…). However, if you are in an NTSC or ex-NTSC country (and want to produce the smoothest HD possible (without having a consistency problem when your video hits a tablet or phone, as explained in the prior section), then 29.97p is probably the absolute best progressive framerate for you. It’s relatively smooth, plays back fine on the iPad and iPhone, and plays fine on the web! (23.976p and 25p also play fine on the iPad, iPhone, and on the web, they’re just not as smooth as 29.97p.) This is probably the reason why Sony has decided to add 29.97PsF to the NX70. Perhaps its absence up-until-now is the reason why they hadn’t shipped the promised review camera to me so far. Who knows…



Other improvements included in the NX70 firmware upgrade



In the USA, Sony is adding the following improvements to their regional version of the camera:




  1. Enhanced performance of zoom rocker operation (Selectable zoom speed).

  2. Dual Recording Mode enables simultaneous HD recording to its 96GB internal memory and memory card.

  3. Added 1920x1080 29.97PsF and 1280x720 59.94p recording modes.

  4. The EXPANDED FOCUS and HISTOGRAM buttons are now assignable keys.

  5. Added Last Scene Review feature.

  6. The Display ON/OFF button now also controls display of the Face Detection Box onto video output.

  7. Display ON/OFF optionally overlays Zebra and/or Histogram display onto video output.



What’s still missing from the firmware update









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Comments

Burn-E: | December, 29, 2011

“If you downscale 59.94p-to-29.97p (or 50p-to-25p), the result is jarring, because the original relationship between framerate and shutter speed -which in combination determine the temporal look of the video- is destroyed”—Can you elaborate on that? With 60p and shutter speed of 1/60 and shorter you have 60 unique frames. Considering that “standard” shutter speed in the cinema world has been 1/2 of the frame rate, 1/60 perfectly works for 30fps as well. Just drop every other frame, and get film-look from video look. Easy and not jarring. I render upload my 60p and 30p on Vimeo and YouTube as 30p and have no problems with the look.

On the other hand, if using slower shutter speeds like 1/30 you get double frames, so dropping every other of them does not change anything in the look.

Also, YouTube has variable frame rate (VFR), so if you upload 60p, you can get up to 55fps in some scenes (I checked with my own videos), but the average frame rate will still be around 30fps. This means that uploading 60p makes sense if you have fast scenes and you want YouTube to add more fps in these scenes. Also, YouTube and other sites constantly upgrade their encoding, and I hope that in a year or two they will enable 60fps feed. If my video has already been uploaded at 60p, they will re-encode it into 60fps and it will have the original look. If you have uploaded it in 30p, then you will never get 60fps from it.

My point: there is absolutely no reason to shoot 30p if there is a possibility to shoot 60p. 60p rendered into 30p will look exactly the same as 30p would look like if originally shot at 30p. And you get half-speed slo-mo for free. The only consideration is potential tiling and other artifacts, considering that 1080p60 needs more bitrate, and 1080p30 @ 24 Mbps may look better than 1080p60 @ 28 Mbps, but this is the ONLY issue.

Allan T: | December, 29, 2011

Burn-E,

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your question.
I imagine that you are currently shooting 720p59.94 at ±1/60 shutter speed (not 1080p59.94 at ±1/60 shutter speed), but that doesn’t affect what we are discussing. Your example is perfect, and allow me to clarify what I meant, but first let me state that if you are shooting primarily for a network like ABC, ESPN, Fox News, or Fox Sports which broadcasts 720p59.94, I completely agree about the shutter speed you are using (±1/60) since it will look very good on a device like on an iPad, because it will become 29.97p with ±1/60 shutter speed, which is considered a “standard” relationship, as you even stated. I am not saying that the version of your footage will look “jarring” when seen *only* on an iPad. I am saying that the look will be inconsistent between the footage seen on an HDTV set and on an iPad, since on the HDTV set it will play 59.94fps, while on the iPad, it will play 29.97fps. If you are shooting for a network like ABC, ESPN, Fox News, or Fox Sports, your primary concern is the image to be broadcast there, and the iPad is secondary. However, the situation is quite different for producers whose clients are industrial, and they often compare the look on both screens. That’s why -for those situations- I recommend shooting directly in 29.97p at (for example) ±1/60 shutter speed , since the look on all screens will be consistent, and the client won’t be asking: “Why does it look so different here than there?” (Readers in ex-PAL countries would shoot directly 25p at ±1/50 shutter speed to achieve a similar result.)

Thanks again for asking!

Allan T

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