24 to 29.97 to color to 29.97?
by Bill Scheerer
on
Jun 30, 2009 at 7:09:14 pm
I have RedOne footage shot at 23.98 and I would like to be able to edit in a 29.97 timeline since it is a spot going to air and my client monitor only displays 29.97 signal.
So far so good, all of the above works just fine until I send it to color and then bring it back into FCP. I seems to have done the 3:2 pulldown again after color making the footage out of sync with the audio now.
Is color doing another pulldown when I send a 29.97 time line with 23.98 footage, and can it be avoided with out doing a quicktime mixdown of the footage since I don't want to loose the "RED" room inside of color? The color settings say the project is 23.98 even though is was sent from a 29.97 timeline and of course the frame rate is already locked when I send it from FCP. I have looked back in the posts but have not seen anything on this, sorry if it has been covered
Re: 24 to 29.97 to color to 29.97? by Noah Kadner on Jun 30, 2009 at 7:20:17 pm
You can't just drop 23.98 into a 29.97 timeline and magically get 29.97. Instead, edit at 23.98, finish at 23.98 in Color. When it comes time to make the 29.97 version go to someone with an AJA or Blackmagic card and play out the timeline to tape- the proper pulldown will be added and everything will look great. Your way it won't. :)
Re: 24 to 29.97 to color to 29.97? by Bill Scheerer on Jun 30, 2009 at 7:43:19 pm
Thanks for the quick reply.
I am working with the 23.98 footage in a 29.97 sequence and the 3:2 pulldown is working as it should.
The double pulldown after going to color is my problem. I was hoping to find a check box I was missing in Color preferences that deals with this frame rate problem. When I don't have clients in the room I do work in 23.98 until output, but with clients they want to see what is going on in their monitor while we cut the spot which is forcing me to work in 29.97 from the start.
I have an AJA LHe card and the playout of the 23.98 footage in a 29.97 timeline works well.
Re: 24 to 29.97 to color to 29.97? by Joseph Owens on Jun 30, 2009 at 7:48:36 pm
Pulldown is actually the speed being "pulled down". Its what happens when you shoot film, and I mean the celluloid kind, at 24.000, and telecine it at 23.976 to video, whether you record it natively to an HD format or... and this is where the confusion lies... with 2:3 cadence to 29.97. The inserted 2:3 field cadence is now referred to in the vernacular as "pulldown", but what is being "pulled down"? The speed. Even Panasonic refers to their 2:3:3:2 cadence approach as "Advanced Pulldown", so even the people who should know better are adding to the confusion. What's worse with them is the 59.94 timebase.
The issue at hand though is that COLOR takes things at face value. When you drop anything onto a timebase, whether it was 23.98, 29.97, 25, 59.94... whatever, it gets processed at whatever timebase COLOR gets handed in the XML. Compounding this, its not particularly sophisticated in the way it counts... that is, it does acknowledge the IN timecode of a clip (hurray!), but after that, it counts like this: another frame, another frame, another frame. Because at its core, COLOR is a sequential image process, and treats frame rate as if it were just a number in the header of a dpx or TIFF file. This is why the Long-GOP formats were such a disaster and unsupported for a long time.
Editing 23.98 in a 29.97 sequence is not even recommended by Final Cut. The "open sequence" is a joke. Try dropping a 23.98 sequence into a 29.97 timeline sometime.
No, the best approach still is to keep things as native as possible -- really the numbers are not different over a :30 duration spot, so all this frame translation is utterly worthless and troublesome.
At least you aren't trying to go the other way, dropping 29.97 into a 23.98 --- now that is the definition of ugly. Even uglier though is trying to edit previously cadenced material in another timeline. What circumstance is this? Editing "2:3 over 60" source media on a 29.97 timeline. What do you think the odds are of keeping the "pulldown" coherent?
Re: 24 to 29.97 to color to 29.97? by Bill Scheerer on Jun 30, 2009 at 8:30:10 pm
The next frame, next frame, next frame counting is good to know and explains alot.
If as you say "frame translation is utterly worthless and troublesome" then what is your recomended method of using 23.98 footage in an on air commercial?
I don't create these situations for myself, I have enough people doing it for me every day. I'm just trying to find solutions.
Re: 24 to 29.97 to color to 29.97? by Will Keir on Jul 13, 2009 at 1:18:48 am
Reading this post spawned a couple questions, if I may...
So if a 23.97 fps short film is going to be put on a DVD, I have to make it 29.98. I can't just burn it to DVD at 24? And to do this I need a Kona card or a MXO2 to do it?
So most peoples DVD/TV system displays at roughly 30 fps? Or can most TV's play both 24 or 30? What about footage shot at 60 fps? I have to drop it down to 30?
It's great reading all the information and questions on COW, I just wish reading them didn't make me have so many more questions.
