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Best workflow converting my 29.97 project back to 23.98P
Long story short, I have a DV project that was shot on DVX100A using the 24P Advanced format. Without going into why, we captured the source into FCP using the NTSC 29.97 presets and have edited the project (it’s a 15-minute narrative). I since learned that I *could* have gone pure 24P all the way through the workflow to DVD (which is the only target output medium).
In a related post in the Apple forums, Tom Wolsky and Captain Mench gave me some good advice that I *should* be able to just use the “Remove Advanced Pulldown” function in FCP5 to remove the extra frames from the source clips, the result being 23.98 clips in their place. I have not put this advice to work, yet. I have some questions about workflow here…
What do I need to do in what order? Do I really apply the “Remove Advanced Pulldown” function (in the Tools menu) to each individual clip? If yes, is there a way to do this in bulk to all clips? Or, is there a way I can apply the “Remove Advanced Pulldown” function to the edited sequence???
And, what do I do next once I have the clips converted back to 23.98? Do I need to create a new sequence with 23.98 sequence settings? Or, can I just change the sequence settings in the already-edited 29.97 sequence? What I’m getting at here is, I don’t really want to have to re-edit this thing! 🙂
Any help here is greatly appreciated. This is my first 24P project and I’m really Charlie Browning my head against the wall for capturing in 29.97.
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3 Replies
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Just pushing this back to the top in hopes that someone reads this and can provide some advice before I start experimenting in about an hour.
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Adding to this post doesn’t bump it to the top. This forum doesn’t work that way.
Because you already edited this sequence with this footage, you cannot perfrom a reverse telecine and make the cut then work. In fact, as I understand it, if you shot 24PA, the only way you can capture that correctly is to capture with the Remove Advance Pulldown option selected…I believe that the Reverse Telecine option has a different cadence and won’t work with 24PA footage. I could be wrong.
But anyway, the issue is that you cannot reverse the clips with the current timeline and have it work. Here’s what I suggest.
Export an EDL. Convert the EDL from 30fps to 24fps with Cinema Tools. Re-import that EDL into FCP. Recapture the now 24 fps sequence THIS TIME removing the pulldown as you capture.
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Yep, not the first time I’ve forgotten you can’t bump posts in The Cow. Mooooooooo.
Anyway, thanks for your help Shane. That’s pretty much what I was resigned to but got some advice in the Apple forum that has proven fruitful. I’m pasting in the results below.
Cheers,
-MichaelZeb, Hanumang,
Great news! (so far) Here’s what I did…after drinking several Fat Tires (great local microbrew made here in Boulder, CO) and half a brick of Habenero Jack cheese, I…
– made a copy of the current 23.97 project as a back-up.
– working in one of the copies, I attempted to Remove Advanced Pulldown (RAP) on one of the clips by selecting it in the Browser and then applying the RAP function from the Tools menu. This worked fine as you both suspect it would. Inspecting it’s properties, by control-clicking it in the Browser showed it was now 23.98.
– I tried doing the same by selecting a clip in the Timeline, but it would not allow the RAP function to be applied, as you suspected it wouldn’t.
– I then multi-selected all of the source clips in the Browser and tried the RAP function and it worked! It converted all files within one action.
– One interesting note, the clips in the Timeline DID NOT, at this point, show that they needed to now be rendered, which you suspected they would/might. Control-clicking a clip in the Timeline and inspecting its properties still showed it’s frame rate to be 29.97! Hmmm. But read on…could be a bug I found.
– I then created a new Sequence and control-clicked to get to it’s Settings and changed them to be a 23.98 timebase and Progressive Scan Mode (which was only available by going to the Advanced tab in the Settings pane).
– I then dropped one of the 23.98 clips in the Browser into this new 23.98p Sequence and then control-clicked the clip in the Timeline to inspect properties and it was, indeed, now reading 23.98, as you’d expect. But this would mean re-editing the whole sequence, so…
– I then tried copying one of the clips in the old 29.97 Sequence (note the clip’s properties in the Timeline still read 29.97) into the new 23.98 Sequence. Oddly, the paste worked fine but now the red Render Bar appeared for the ENTIRE length of the clip. I thought, “this is good; maybe I just need to paste everything over and then re-render”. But, when I control-clicked this clip in the timeline and inspected the properties it STILL read 29.97. Well, I tried the render anyway, thinking it might read 23.98 afterwards. No luck. It rendered fine but still read 29.97 in properties. So, I’m thinking at this point that I’m going to have to re-edit the whole thing.
– But then I got lucky. In addition to my completed Sequence (in 29.97), the original project also had a short outtake sequence (also 29.97, obviously) that I was using to show the audio guys the headaches of air conditioning noise. I opened this sequence by happenstance and lo-and-behold, it was ALL RED across the render bar!!! Ah ha. I quickly closed my original full-length, completed 29.97 sequence, which you remember had been open the whole time while I was using the RAP function, and opened it back up. Yep, upon re-opening, it too was now ALL RED! Of cousre, the clips in the Timelime were still showing 29.97 as frame rate, but they were all needing to be rendered now.
– I then select-all copied all the tracks in the 29.97 sequence and pasted them into the new 23.98 sequence and…voila! The red render bars were gone and control-clicking the clips in the Timeline now showed 23.98. It worked. Of course, I did lose some keyframing in the audio tracks, but no big deal. I can rework that.Thanks so much for your help!
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