I made a little TC2 video

You have it easy with CRTs... Try large LED screen walls, just impossible with a rolling shutter camera. These things drive R, G and B as a charlieplexed matrix and a completely random frequency so you basically just get different rainbow colors in different panel locations at any possible shutter speed setting, but never the picture as you're supposed to see it. Blah. Maybe some LED screen manufacturers care about the "filmability" of their stuff but it's definitely not the case of the one I was _supposed_ to be filming last week 😣 Here's to hoping we finally get affordable global shutter cameras one day...

Kilrah

"You may even be able to do it with your phone, if you dig into the settings" -- or if you have an Android device, look into Camera FV-5 and Cinema FV-5, for stills and video respectively. They offer no-cost, feature-limited versions but the point is that they give you fine, manual control of the full functionalist of the DSLR in your pocket! Fascinating video, as always. (Stephen Bell, I feel your pain. Having had the frustration of attempting to do the reverse -- take a PAL source and burn to an NTSC-standard Region 1 DVD -- it's.. a nightmare, at best. And that's without even getting into out-of-region console game imports!)

Phia Westfall

Okay, okay, I admit -- you got me with the deadpan answer and the end title music; the timing was about perfect for you to cut back to content just about right as I got done laughing and checking the scrubber UI to tell me if that was the real end or not. Consider actually rolling credits for some added authenticity on the joke. ;)

Travis Snoozy

Most dashcams also have a 50Hz / 60Hz filter, which stop strobing from street lights. I really wish my PC monitor offered 50Hz support as 50p video motion does not look as smooth as on a TV, such as with panning or scrolling credits, whereas 60p video looks fine. Most CRT monitors often offered 75Hz and 100Hz, which worked great for smooth PAL playback.

Seán Byrne

I had a national news program record my CRT computer screen for a segment, and i noticed the camera person fidgeting with the settings for a bit. When I asked what they were doing that for it was exactly this reason, but they were able to match the odd refresh ratio of any screen.

Hi Alec, Quite interesting. Thanks for sharing it with all of us. Have a great day! VGC

Vincent G. Calvacca

Thanks, this was informative. I've had similar (but worse) problems trying to convert Super 8 film to video via an ancient projector (bought by my father in 1972?) and a less-than-professional video camera. The projector frame rate is determined by an adjustable friction wheel and is unstable. You get a variety of effects in the video without changing any settings!

Michael Steeves

P.S. Re the done camera thing, it's not that I want to use a drone camera to record a TV screen, but I do want to burn PAL standard DVDs for my region 2 player without frame rate conversion in the editing software and the subsequent jerkiness on smooth pans etc.

Stephen Bell

If you have a camera such as the one on my DJI Mavic drone, there is one overall setting: PAL or NTSC in a top level menu. In the menus below that, there are appropriate choices for each region. PAL has choices of 25 FPS and 25th and 50th second, etc. GoPro is similar. Sometime, you might explain why we still have PAL and NTSC regions when HD and UHD have never even seen a colour burst! I never did understand that. :-)

Stephen Bell

Hey Alec, I just wanted to let you know that the thing you said about the NES only outputting one field and being invisible half the time when filming a CRT at 1/60" isn't accurate. The NES, as well as all consoles into the 5th generation, uses a special output mode called "240p" in which 60 times per second, via modified timings, every field is odd. What you said at 4:10 or so would imply that the image was flashing 30 times per second, which would be unbearable!

Wrenly Bewick

What camera do you use? Is it a DSLR or are there some low end video cameras that allow for adjusting shutter speed?

Kajico

I’m in a PAL region (New Zealand). And yes for cameras that do allow adjusting the frame rate, 25fps and 50fps are common options. If only to avoid weird strobing flicker off lights powered by 50Hz mains. 24fps is also common (to match movie rates). But 60 fps, 30 fps and 29.97 fps especially are less common here. Obviously a bunch of devices have fewer options, if any, on their video recording. And some built for a “worldwide” market might only do, eg, 29.97 fps. Ewen

Ewen McNeill