-
Adobe Premiere Pro 4 and up mixed frame rates
So I’ve seen and received a whole lot of conflicting information about mixed frame rates in APP. I seem to always wind up dealing with footage of varying frame rates, and my current project is no exception. I’m editing on two machines, one Mac running 5.5 and one PC running 4. The footage is 60p from a Canon 7D, 24p from a Canon 5d MKii, and 60p from a GoPro.
What is the best workflow if I desire a 24p final export with a mix of regular speed and slow mo footage? Here is how I’m dealing with it, along with the issues I’ve encountered:
I’m creating a 24p 720p DSLR video sequence. For regular speed footage, regardless of frame rate, I’m simply dropping it into the timeline, downscaling higher res footage to 720p size. For the slo-mo stuff I’m interpreting footage from 60p to 24p.
Prior to export, the slow mo footage looks great. The DSLR 60p footage looks okay only after unchecking frame blending on the sequence clips. The GoPro footage is pretty much the same.
Should I turn frame blending on in export, or use any other export options to help mesh all these varying frame rates? When I export at 24p with frame blending unchecked in the sequence and in the export settings, the 60p stuff left at regular speed looks decent, no ghosting, but it does have a flickering far more pronounced than what you get with footage that was actually shot at 24p.
Basically, I’m wondering how best to deal with 60p footage at regular speed in a sequence you intend to export at 24p? I want this because I prefer the look of 24p over 30 or 60p, and most of the footage will actually end up in 24p slo-mo (via interpreting from 60p) anyway.
Some message board conversations I’ve read here and elsewhere say you can just drop 60p footage into a 24p timeline and it will automatically drop frames/confrom just fine to be export at 24p. Is that true? One post I read suggested it would work fine as long as frame blending is on. That doesn’t look good to me. There is a lot of ghosting.
I’m trying to find a really precise answer to a problem that has a lot of variables. Can anyone dig through all these complications and provide some insight?
-
2 Replies
-
The nice thing is Premiere gives you options. This is probably why you’re getting “conflicting” statements. I think an ideal workflow for you is as follows:
1. Use a 24p timeline, since this is your output then setting your timeline to this means your footage will conform to this.
2. Import your 24p footage as normal.
3. Import your 60p footage. Now for the fun part, for each 60p clip in your media bin/library, hit copy/paste so you have two instances of it, interpret the second instance as 24p and this gives you 250% slow-mo
4. Drag the 60p footage onto the timeline. 60p interpreted as 60p will be real time, and Premiere conforms the frame rate to maintain duration. I would suggest NOT using frame blending as it’s fairly rudimentary and only looks good when speeding up footage, not slowing it.
A better way of conforming would be to pre-process new 24fps clips in something like After Effects using their Timewarp plugin (based off of the Foundry’s Kronos so it’s better than nothing) or a third party effect like Twixtor.
When people say they like the 24fps look, you’re really talking about not only the frame rate, but also the motion blur. 60fps, even though it drops frames in a very even amount will never look like 24fps footage unless the motion blur is interpolated, thus my suggestion to use Timewarp or Twixtor.
-
Thanks for the great explanation, Angelo,
You said:
“60fps, even though it drops frames in a very even amount will never look like 24fps footage unless the motion blur is interpolated”
How noticeable do you think it is to just drop frames from 60p to 24p in PPro? I definitely notice that it isn’t 24p, but it doesn’t look terribly bad, especially with frame blending off and after export. Do you think simply dropping frames looks okay or do you think it is noticeably bad?
Thanks,
mark
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up