• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Interlaced issue, missing pulldown frames?

  Posted by Brandon Kraemer on February 6, 2009 at 11:38 pm

  I have some footage digitized from Digital betacam via a Kona 3. It’s a film to tape transfer of footage shot at 24 fps on film. The tele-cine house added 3:2 pulldown. Our Avid system sees the pulldown when it captures the footage but our FCP system does not.

  Were pretty certain its not a field order issue, everything is set to lower field dominant. But we see it unless we de-interlace the footage. When we do the image softens but removes the frames on SOME of the shots. On others, it distorts the image.

  We have a router too, is this a strange ref/sync issue?

  Any clues are most welcome.

  Brandon Kraemer replied 17 years, 3 months ago 1 Member · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Brandon Kraemer

  February 7, 2009 at 3:34 pm

  Let me clarify my post.

  In FCP we can frame advance through the footage, but we never see two repeated frames like we would expect to see with 3:2 pulldown footage. What we do see is field tearing or mismatched fields on two sequential frames that have unique images to them, but we do not see the zipper effect of mismatched fields on the other frames. De-interlacing removes this unwanted effect on these frames, but still does not reveal two repeated frames the way we would expect 3:2 pulldown footage to have.

  Also, if we de-interlace all the footage on this same roll, on the shots that do not seem to have the zipper effect, de-interlacing distorts the images, like half a zipper, so to speak.

  Sending these clips to shake doesn’t change this, but if we interperate the field order of the clips in shake the bad interlacing disappears. Sending renders back to FCP look normal. If sent on from FCP to Color, interlaced frames re-appear!!! Color renders back to FCP pick up a ghost image where motion is concerned on these two frames, but there is no zipper effect. Color is apparently frame blending these fields into the frames in a different cadence. Color’s renders are not really the problem, just symptomatic of the over all issue which starts with our captured clips.

  We digitize this footage to FCP via a Kona 3 and a Phillips Router from a Sony Digital Betacam deck. All footage is 29.97 fps, lower field dominant. Is this a bad cadence issue, a timing issue in our video path? Anything we file export of this keeps this bad interlacing look on playback. Playback of this on the FCP timeline looks normal, but stepping through frames shows the interlace issue.

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