Is it possible to make a normal video on a video editor 24 frames per second, just like a movie?

Question

If I put a video I film on a normal camera and upload it to a video editor like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie and make it change the frames per second? Instead of it looking like TV shows, it looks like a Movie.

Is this even possible or have I got some wrong facts?

Answer 1

You can slow down the playback rate in most video editors... each one does it a bit differently. I use Sony's Vegas, and there's a standard slider on the properties page for any video clip that lets you dial in a play factor other than "1x".

However, that doesn't get you a movie-like look, really.. that's going to get you slow motion instead... you're still going to have 30 frames (60 fields) per second.. you're just "redefinition time" to make a second last longer (and thus, the video slows down in our timeframe). What you really want is to get those 30 frames compressed into the span of 24 frames, eg, no time change.

That's possible, and there are different ways to do it. The "bad" way to do it is to run an "inverse telecine" on your video. When a normal 24fps video is played for 30fps television, the video conversion people or your DVD player (most DVDs from films are 23.97fps) does what's called a telecine, or 3:2 pulldown, to convert 24fps progressive video to 60 fields-per-second interlaced video. There's a link below describing this process.

If you reverse that process, you get 24fps video. However, you're really cutting out some bits of motion, so your result can be jerky, depending on the content. This is simple enough given the right tools, but the results can vary.

Another way to do this is to do a full frame-rate conversion... basically, create interpolated frames to get you from 30fps to 24fps. That can work, it's not as jerky as inverse telecining a 30fps video, but you can get weird blurring artifacts. This is technically possible in any video editor that supports mixed video types: put your 30fps video on the timeline, enable de-interlacing and motion blur if your application supports it, then render out to 24fps video.

In Vegas, you can improve this look by enabling "supersampling" on the timeline.. that basically forces the video editor to render 60fps (or more) first, then sample down to 24fps. Supersampling can take some time... when I first used this Vegas technique to convert NTSC to PAL (25fps), it took my PC eight days of rendering for a two hour film. PCs are thankfully a bit faster today, but you could still take over a day.

There are commercial programs for frame-rate conversion, and hacker tools as well.. see links below. Your best bet by far is to shoot 24fps to start with... many new camcorders support 24p video.

The other question is why... you do get a bit more of a "film look" shooting in 24p, but some of that's lost at 60i even when you convert to 24p. The other reason is that you want to do a film conversion. In that case, the company doing your film conversion has their own frame rate conversion technology.  

Answer 2

In most video editing programs, especially the high end ones, you do this in the settings for the video sequence.

If you have already edited the movie, you can do a quick video conversion.  In Quicktime Pro ($30), you can convert the video from the current format to the same format except you will want to adjust the video properties to 24 frames instead of the current setting.

There are only 2 reasons why anyone would need to convert to 24 frames.  The 1st is if you plan to convert the digital video to cellulose film.  This keeps the digital movie in perfect sync with each film cel.  The 2nd reason is if you want to show the less smooth movement of 24 frames versus the standard television 60i/30p rate.  This can be a very nice artistic choice, but it can wreak havoc if you need to freeze frame a moment in the movie since movement will be much more blurred.

Yes, going to 24 frames will make Movement look very much like it would on cellulose film.  If you want the Colors and Clarity to look like a movie, well, you can pay with your camcorder's film/movie gamma settings or you can do it like the professionals do - adjust the color during editing.    The professionals call these adjustments: 'color correction' , but it is hardly ever a correction.  It is normally an adjustment from what the camera actually sees to an artistic choice of rendering the color, clarity, and vision of the intended story.  Lots of commercials, especially car commercials and commercials with models, will adjust a lot of color.  Think of it as Photoshop for video frames instead of photographs.  Color correction takes time to master, and there are a lot of online tutorials for your particular program and desired 'looks'.