60i vs. 30p

Question

I feel like I've been getting some inconsistent info on which to shoot for my specific camera from searches on the web, so I thought someone here would have some better answers. Now some of you will jump on that first sentence and say "Well it depends on what your scene is" and I do somewhat agree but please read on. First of all, I use a Canon HF11 which shoots AVCHD at 60i, 30p, or 24p but records them ALL as 60i. The camera is not really important but the way it records is the issue. Forget about the 24p as I played with a few test clips, removing pulldown was a pain, and the footage looked bad. I've been shooting 30p 99.9% of the time. I read somewhere(posters credentials unknown) if your final output is TV, shoot 60i but if it's web/computer shoot 30p, this is even though it all comes out as 60i. My final output will ,in the somewhat near future,(50 years or less...) be an HDTV/BluRay player. In one place I read that for action scenes(motocross/car racing/etc.) you should shoot 30p, in another place someone said just the opposite, again credentials unknown. This is where I started to question things. In my own thinking, it makes total sense shooting progressive for action scenes. A single frame, even recorded as two interlaced fields, should be pretty "clean". For interlaced, a fast moving object may move enough in that 1/60sec to have that object in the two fields have jagged edges. Ok, so I think that pretty much leaves me with, why not always shoot 30p(recorded as 60i) or am I missing something that 60i has over 30p(60i)?

Answer 1

My personal feeling is that is the quality of motion. All of my stuff is home video. And if I deinterlace or shoot in 30p it looks less like video. I do not want a film-like look; I want a window into that time and place. 60i has that video effect. 30p does not. It does indeed depend on your intent. I wouldn't generalize about "action" or anything else. If you want it to look like a home movie, use 60i.
I've read many complaints on these forums about "problems" in the motion. I think many of these are people who wanted the 60i look (fluid motion) and deinterlaced. Perhaps this is because there is marketing hype that 1080p means "Full HD" and is "best". That's a load of garbage. You either mean 1080p30 or 1080p60, and they are two very different things. And one looks profoundly different than 1080i60.