An official announcement of Star Trek: TOS will soon be upon us.... (1 Viewer)

[Zack Gibbs]

Except for all the ones that were, including Star Trek TNG and Max Headroom, which started in the UK but was retooled into the US series with largely a new cast, that was NTSC and shot at 30 FPS on film.

It was a cost saving measure because ( and I don't fully understand this so I didn't mention it) they altered both the cameras and the telecine machines to create film frames that were approx. 25% smaller than a normal exposure. Giving them 30 FPS but retaining the exact same length of footage as normally shot 24fps film.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Star Trek was NOT shot at 30fps, it was shot at 24. You can see the difference between 24fps and 30fps very clearly when watching.

Also if you look at the outtakes from TNG where you can see a slate, it clearly says 24fps. Again U.S. TV shows shot on film are shot at 24fps. Even the shows now that are being shot on HD are shot at 24p. The only shows shot at 30fps would be the news and game shows as they are shot on video making no attempt to look like film.

What you are talking about with frame size would be super35 that uses a 3 perf frame line so that the 1.85:1 image has no room above or below the frame that needs to be masked off. It still runs at 24fps.

Doug

 

[Zack Gibbs]

How about I'll just keep my facts, and you can keep your conjecture, and we'll just call it a day and stop derailing the thread.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Well mine is not conjecture. Again all you have to do is look at the slates for TNG or any of the Star Trek show or any TV show for that matter. By the way where are you getting your facts?

Doug

 

[RickER]

The way i know it is the way Doug says it. I think its a topic that has been touched more than once.

 

[Dave Mack]

What fact...?!?
That TNG was shot at 30fps...?!?!?!

 

[Edwin-S]

Why would TNG be filmed at video frame rates on film stock? Especially, since TV production has been trying to emulate the production values of film for years now.

 

[Dave Mack]

It's not. The industry standard is to shoot at 24fps. If it had been shot at 30fps (and I don't know of any telecines that run at that speed, either 24fps or 25fps...) there would be no 3/2 pulldown required. no flags on the discs and there would be no combing errors which are very apparent when the live action switches to video based FX on the DVD sets.

Shot on Film, Edited as Video

A fairly large amount of material these days is shot on film to get a film “look,” then transferred to video for editing and other post-production, as editing and post are much cheaper for video. Almost all episodic TV, music videos, and made-for-TV movies are done this way. This is a torture test for cadence-reading deinterlacers, as each scene will have the 3-2 cadence internally, but edits will more often than not break it, since the makers didn’t care about keeping the film cadence intact. In our test suite, we used More Tales of the City, which is a textbook example of this kind of material. However, you will find that most music videos and made-for-TV material will have the same problem. In addition, shows with lots of special effects have this problem all the time, because often the live action is shot on film and has a 3-2 pulldown pattern, but the effects are produced in a computer and have a 2-2 pulldown pattern. Overlaid titles like subtitles, show credits, dates and places (things that are shown at the bottom of the screen at the beginning of a scene like "New York City, 1856") also tend to work this way - the title generators used for TV are 2-2 coherent, and cause strange cadence glitches. We've seen problems like this on the X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and many other TV shows on DVD. Even films are not immune: the new footage on the special edition of Star Trek the Motion Picture has 2-2 special effects that screw up the cadence (and the flags).

 

[Douglas Monce]

Well said. I will say however that most modern editing software like avid or final cut pro are able to work completely in a 23.976 frame rate work space. Often times I'm called on to do moving slide shows from stills for my clients. All the editing and motion is done in the 23.976 frame rate and the 2-3-2 pull down is added when when it is rendered out to video or DVD. The result is that titles or moving stills done on my editing software all have that "film look" cadence. 5 years ago however that was not the case and very few NLE editing systems could work in the "24p" frame rate.

Doug

 

[ChristopherDAC]

No question that all Star Trek series were shot at 24 fps on film. I do know of some material which was shot 16mm 30 fps for intercutting with video, and especially mixing with video (there was a Wyndham Hill label music LaserDisc done this way), but that was very much a specialty product. Film shot for television has always been shot using cinema equipment, techniques, and standards.

 

[Douglas Monce]

All Star Trek except for the final season of Enterprise which was shot on 24p HD video.

Doug