-
Adding proper pulldown, because FCP WONT. (also, soft downsize?)
So, I have a “mixed resolution” (29.97, DVCPRO50) timeline (spit on floor) and it has some Varicam DVCPROHD 23.98… When it renders, it applies the now famous 2224 “pulldown” (It’s so famous, it’s IN-famous.) What’s the best realistic way to get a timeline/DVD that doesn’t suck. I’ve heard plugins, etc.. I’d really , really, really not like to export clips manually and reimport them, or else I might find myself taking a flight to cupertino with a sledgehammer… (Or maybe I’ll just throw a rock through the window of the closest Apple store..) 🙂
Also, I can’t understand why the DVCPRO footage looks so soft in the timeline when downscaled.. It’s been my experience in the past that downscaled DVCPRO HD looks crysta?l clear.. better than DV. It’s a crying shame that for the DVD of my project, the DV is whats “shining.” Is there a “better resize” somewhere that I’m missing?
-
13 Replies
-
Is your SD timeline set to lower field first, or none?
Check revision’s Fields Kit to add pulldown. It’s cost effective. Do you have a capture card? You could always down convert the HD to SD tape and recapture.
-
Capture Card, Check. 20k DVCPRO HD deck > my entire rig? Not so much.. 🙂 We rent that when we need to ingest.. it all lives “native” digital.. Will checkout the plug.. Are you using with 6.0.2 and it works? (knock on wood?)
Cory
-
[CoryTV] “Are you using with 6.0.2 and it works? (knock on wood?) “
6.0.2 works for me. Yes. Still on Tiger, not Leopard.
You don’t need the HD deck. All you do is down convert to an SD deck, then recapture from that.
With the plug in, you can do this all in software and revision does a nice job. You will want to use ‘fields kit pulldown’. It can take a while to render, that’s why I was suggesting lay it off.
Jeremy
-
I don’t have digi anything, deckwise, so that’s out.. (well, other than DV….) It handles it okay, even though it’s adding pulldown, and then scaling an interlaced signal? Maybe it will help the softness too, who knows…
Thanks.
Cory
-
The softness you are seeing, I’m sure, has to do with FCP6s wonderful way of handling interlace.
What’s your SD timeline field dominace set to lower or none?
Jeremy
-
AFAIK, FCP only ever applies correct pulldown on playout to tape of 23.98fps media, either over Firewire, or via, say, a Kona card.
I’ve got a plugin that helps do pulldown as a render in my conversion pack, but that takes time to render.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
-
That’s what’s bizarre– timeline is lower field dominant. But the footage is totally progressive– so why would it be soft?? If it had to re-interlace, I could at least understand.. but it should be a snap to first scale down, and then generate appropriate pulldown.. But I guess that’s too much to ask.
Cory
-
A couple of things:
Move your HD clip down a scan line and see if that looks better, then render.
Duplicate the timeline, change the field dom to ‘none’ in your duplicate and see if that looks better, then check the other clips in your timeline as they now might look like crap. You will then have to change all those to none, even though they are lower.
Using revisionfx works to add the pulldown back. Please send a feature request to Apple to add 3:2 pulldown to 24p clips in a 29.97 timeline. The 2224 is not so great.
-
[JeremyG] “Using revisionfx works to add the pulldown back. Please send a feature request to Apple to add 3:2 pulldown to 24p clips in a 29.97 timeline. The 2224 is not so great.”
My understanding is that they’re well aware of the issue, yet have no interest in changing it. Someone here posted some info on it a while back. I believe the way FCP works, 2224 is crucial to getting RT performance.
-
[Sean ONeil] “I believe the way FCP works, 2224 is crucial to getting RT performance. “
Yeah, that was back when you were trying to send dv over firewire on FCP3 and OS9, and single G4 processors. As processors doubled and the OS got faster, FCP was able to add proper 3:2 pulldown over firewire to dv. IT also had a selectable drop down menu to choose between 2224 (if your g4 wasn’t fast enough), 2:3:2:3 or 2:3:3:2 to make a 24pA master that you could capture back @ 24p. And this was FCP3 and firewire.
FCP also has the ability to add 3:2 pulldown to 720p23.98 material via firewire, today and has been able to since FCP 4.5.
Now, with all the horsepower in todays machines (granted, the codecs are much ‘heavier’ than dv or dv100) and hardware integration with companies like AJA and Decklink, this process should be doable. THe KOna cards can add pulldown to 24p material (albeit in hardware) in Uncompressed HD and SD. It would be totally fine by me to have 2224 as a display format for 23.98 material and rt extreme, but when it comes time to render for a final output, FCP should be and can be smart enough to render in 3:2 pulldown.
This can be done.
Sorry, this topic steams me a bit. Sean, if you can find that post, I’d be interested in reading it.
Jeremy
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up