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Conforming 50p footage to 25p without Cinema Tools?
Hi there,
I have been searching through this forum and on the internet but am finding it surprisingly hard to find any information on how to conform my 50p footage to play back at 25 frames in my FCP project.
I have shot some footage at 50p 1280×720 and want it to play back at half speed in my FCP project. The only tutorials I have found use Cinema Tools but I can’t seem to locate that on my computer so am pretty sure I don’t have it.
Could someone please advise me on how to conform my 50p footage so that it plays back smoothly at half speed in FCP.
Thank you!
Dan
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10 Replies
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Ah, I just installed FCP 7. Is FCP suite the same as FCP studio? I don’t have enough room on my computer to install the whole FCP Studio. Do you know which section of the package contains Cinema Tools? From what I can see there is Audio Content, DVD Studio Pro content and Motion Content.
Also, is there any other way to conform this footage without using Cinema Tools?
I can’t believe how hard this is to achieve!
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YOu can’t conform without Cinema Tools…not with FCP 7 or earlier. It’s on the install disk…just do a custom install of only Cinema Tools.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
It’s incredibly difficult to drive a nail in with some linemen’s pliers, but with a hammer it’s much easier. Cinema Tools is what you need for this job. In Cinema Tools it’s a very fast process that doesn’t impact the image quality in any way. Every other option (Final Cut speed, Motion retiming, Compressor frame controls) will all add render time and result in a quality hit.
Just put your discs in, and at the appropriate screen check what you need. It’s in the Installation Type area. You’d be hard pressed to miss it. Cinema Tools is about 50mb.
If you don’t have space on your system drive it would probably be a good endeavor to free up some space. Macs like at least 10% of their boot drive free, less than this results in frequent beachballs.
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Compressor can conform. It’s not as fast as Cinema tools; actually you’ll really dislike the amount of time it will take. But it’s possible:
In the video settings tab, select the codec (ProRes) and change the frame rate to 25.
In the Frame Controls tab at the bottom select Rate Conversion/Best.
Click the very bottom button that says, “so source frames play at 25”
Output at 100% of source and yer good to go. -
I’m looking to do the same thing. What is the difference between using Cinema Tools and Compressor? Is it not the case that there is no loss of quality due to the fact that 25 is an exact multiple of 50?
I am working with footage from a Canon SLR (600D), so it needs to be transcoded from h.264 to Prores using Compressor anyway.
Should I conform the clips to 25fps using Cinema Tools first or should I just convert the frame rate as part of the transcode?
Thanks
Franco
London based Avid/ FCP offline editor.
FCP Online. -
Cinema Tools rewrites the file header to change the frame rate. You don’t want to do that to the original camera file but you could do it to a copy.
Compressor creates a new file so yes you could do the speed change when you transcode.
My preference is to use Log & Transfer so I would do that to transcode and then cinema tools to change the frame rate (on a copy of the transcoded file just in case)
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I have shot a documentary on 1280 x 720, 50P and 25P footage, with graphics on 25P and various pictures. Sad bit is, I have edited the whole thing and now the exported product isn’t as smooth as its supposed to be. What am I doing wrong? The final render is giving me glitches.
Help!
I have a deadline to meet.
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Hi
Just some questions I hoping to get an answer for – I’m shooting with a Panasonic GH3. What is better quality, 1920×1080, 25P, 72mbps, ALL-INTRA or 1280×720, 50p, 72mbps, ALL-INTRA if the footage is to be edited at 25p speed? To go along with that, when the 50P is put on a timeline to be played at 25P does it actually just drop every other frame, or does it somehow play every frame twice and therefore look actually better than if I shot at 25P – and does it help with suppressing the motion issues inherrent with panning and a rolling shutter? Love it if I could get an answer to what are for me, burning questions please. -
Thanks, Dave, appreciate the reply. It is the dropping of every other frame that I wanted confirmed.
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Hello,
had same issue, what i did was to convert the files with mpeg streamclip to apple pro rez 422, then did the batch conform with cinema tools again and it worked like coldplay’s magic.cheers.
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