Re: Mastering 23.98 and delivering 29.97i "to the frame"

It's how offline primetime has been doing it for years - edit at 23.976, look at 29.97DF as the timecode.

The master TC tracks also track 25, 30 with no pulldown, 25 with pulldown etc. to have EDL's and such match the tape outputs as needed.

One of the major benefits of this is that the master output to tape has a continuous cadence for the broadcast encoder. At the time, I even designed in the LTC to be NDF so that the encoder could flag the "A" frame in a consistent pattern even though the timecode on tape was drop frame.

Once could do this by dragging the segments into a 29.97/59.94 project but a mixdown needs to be done first in order to preserve continuous cadence across edits. If you just open the sequence without a mixdown, each event gets its own cadence resulting in cadence breaks at edit points and possibly cadence mismatch for layers and nests in relationship to each other. I "think" each frame of each event starts with "A", but depending on duration, the output will not always be "D". There's a 80% chance that it won't be. And encoders have an even harder time when encoding when layers within segments have different cadences.

I also designed a method in the late 90's for cadence align (not implemented), where in a 29.97 sequence with 2:3 pulldown cadence it would align layers upon request by slipping based on the priority clip. This avoided the remove pulldown, make effect, and render 2:3 back out. Same for titles over 2:3 based material.


Michael

Michael Phillips