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Is reverse telecine really needed?
Hello,
I am editing some clips together from an animated television show that was originally filmed on 35mm at 24 fps. The footage was telecined years ago to Digi Beta 29.97 drop frame. I am using these digi-betas to create a sort of clip show montage of the best moments. I will layback to Digi Beta at 29.97.
Do I need to reverse telecine all of this footage FIRST, get it into a 24 fps time line, and then re-introduce the 3:2 pulldown on my new clip show master? Seems crazy that I would but I just read this from the FCP manual “In general, you should avoid editing 29.97 fps pull-down footage. Instead, remove the pull-down of your footage first, edit at 23.98 fps, the reinsert pull-down during output” I have been editing stuff like this for years and have never thought about it. Looking back at some of my old projects I can clearly see that the 3:2 cadence is indeed off. Does that matter if you are watching this stuff in NTSC? Has my stuff been wrong all this time?
Your input is appreciated.
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10 Replies
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[Patricia Morgan] “Do I need to reverse telecine all of this footage FIRST, get it into a 24 fps time line, and then re-introduce the 3:2 pulldown on my new clip show master?”
No. It would be pointless to do so. Your source tape is 29.97, you need to master to 29.97…why leave that frame rate? TV shows did this all the time. Telecined film to tape at 29.97, and then mastered at 29.97. We edited 29.97 from start to finish.
[Patricia Morgan] “Seems crazy that I would but I just read this from the FCP manual “In general, you should avoid editing 29.97 fps pull-down footage. Instead, remove the pull-down of your footage first, edit at 23.98 fps, the reinsert pull-down during output””
#1…this is an Avid forum, and you will be editing on an Avid, so why care what FCP does?
#2… I’d not do what the manual says. I’d capture the tape at 29.97, and output at 29.97. Removing pulldown is an unnecessary step and might lead to possible issues down the road. The main one being proper show timing. 23.98 doesn’t have drop frame code, so you can’t properly time out an edit without doing a bit of math.
[Patricia Morgan] “Does that matter if you are watching this stuff in NTSC?”
No.
[Patricia Morgan] “Has my stuff been wrong all this time?”
I doubt it.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
AFAIK, you don’t HAVE to, but it’s a cleaner way of working.
If you don’t remove pulldown and keep working in 29.97, your final sequence will not have a consistent 3:2 pulldown.
If you do remove pulldown, then work at 23.98, then playout to 29.97, your final sequence WILL have a consistent 3:2 pulldown.
The advantage being that pulldown can more easily and correctly removed from your sequence, either in any subsequent editing, or for example by displays or projectors that are capable of doing inverse telecine and display 23.98p.
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Not sure about the timing issues, as Avid allows you to work with a 29.97 DF master timecode, if you like.
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The timing issue is with 23.98 sequences. 23.98 is NDF only.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
But if you set your MTC counter to 29.97DF, what would be the problem?
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Meaning this:
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AH…true. Avid does have that BIG advantage. I forget about that.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Job ter Burg] “The advantage being that pulldown can more easily and correctly removed from your sequence, either in any subsequent editing, or for example by displays or projectors that are capable of doing inverse telecine and display 23.98p.”
Seconded.
And, do not forget, some broadcastes DEMAND it, as they want to be able to reverse telecine to make 25 fps masters.Besides, you yourself might want to go to DVD, where 24P allows for longer discs at the same quality.
Of course there always are internet clips also, they will look way better if the source is progressive, and the overal data rate decreases.So yes, the FCP manual is right, it is better to remove pulldown before you edit.
Only exception i can think of is when you insert a few 24 clips into a mainly 30 fps show.But then the pulldown must be normal, if it is advanced, it will look ugly so re-doing it is also in order.
Bouke
https://www.videotoolshed.com/
smart tools for video pros -
Sorry,
I Meant this for the FCP forum. But the overall topic applies to AVID as well. Just to be clear I am getting that most of you think I need to IVTC FIRST. All of my final masters will indeed be released on DVD in the USA and the World. Also on Blu Ray. I do believe that the compression and authoring facilities automatically do IVTC on anything that I (or any of us) deliver that originated on film to save space (as mentioned in the thread), and then the DVD player creates the 2:3(or 3:2 depending on how you want to state it) pulldown for NTSC televisions. This seems so strange and time consuming for me. I mean if I have 30 episodes of this show on DBC, then all of those tapes have to be IVTC’d before I start editing? And since there are no Keycode numbers on these tapes, I’ll have to manually find the A frame etc, do the IVTC, edit, the re-introduce the new 2:3 pulldown, then output to tape? Oy veh, that just seems like a lot of time and work.
I often use archival interviews (shot on Beta SP at 29.97) and mix it with the show (from those telecined Digi-Betas). So what I end up with is a Behind the scenes thing that has mixed formats in them. So would I tell the authoring company “Do not to IVTC” since some is film, and some isn’t. Getting super confused here…Thanks for your input everyone.
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KeyKode is not needed to define a pulldown phase. Pulldown is the relationship between the image cadence and the video 29.976 (59.94 fields) of video. In non drop 30fps, the recommended practice is to have the “A” frame fall on timecodes ending on :x0 and :x5.
But drop frame timecode is not consistent so you can’t just start anywhere in the video signal and assume a correct capture. At best, the first frame of picture at 01;00;00;00 “should” be an “A” frame, but not guaranteed.
You can always do a 23.976 conversion of your edited master if the DVD must be a native 23.976/24 with the player inserting the pulldown to create NTSC. Other than better encoding from 23.976 sources there is not a whole of of additional value with mixed sources.
Michael
Michael Phillips
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