Frames, Fields, 24p, and Plugins...eeek!
by LumerianFeast
on
Aug 9, 2007 at 3:16:44 am
A few days ago I posted this problem: http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/949653. In a nutshell, I noticed that when I brought my captured clips (24p HDV) into Final Cut, the quality was greatly diminished, and diagonal lines in particular became very blocky, even though the original clips were very sharp. I've made a little bit of headway and was hoping someone here might have some further advice.
It appears that the problem is one of frames and fields. I think I've got this right: the 24p is of course caught in a 60i stream, and when importing into Final Cut I think I was getting only part of the progressive frame. I downloaded the Nattress plugins, and have some success: the images suddenly become crisp again! This happens when I apply the "G Film Converter" plug in. The problems now are:
-- The Natress plugin seems to erase my color corrections.
-- The Natress plugin wants to convert the 24p back to NTSC (it doesn't seem to offer the option to just keep 24p as 24p), so a fifth frame gets added and frequently has interlacing artifacts (all this after I had to do a Reverse Telecine in the first place to get the 24p clips!)
-- I'm a little daunted by the notions that (A) after I've edited a short, I'll have to apply Nattress to every cut and (B) everything I've written here seems to imply that Final Cut actually CAN'T import 24p HDV Quicktime clips without a plugin! It automatically messes with the clips as soon as I pull them in. Surely this can't be the case. Have other people noticed that 24p HDV clips won't go smoothly into Final Cut without some kind of plugin? Is there another plugin I should be looking at to address this issue?
