23.976 vs 23.98

Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

23.976 vs 23.98

Posted by Raju Bhai on January 1, 2017 at 2:57 am

Hi,

I scoured the whole forum and found a lot of questions pertaining to this topic but nothing that addresses precisely the question i am about to put forth:

Ok, all my footage is shot on Canon 5d, i transcoded everything to prores 422 and when i command-I the clips in quicktime or check in “item properties” it shows them all as 23.98. When i dropped the clips into a fresh timeline, the sequence settings conformed to the footage with 23.98 as the fps. However, when i viewed advanced settings it shows the sequence fps as 23.976. Now i am confused, because this seems like a very small difference between 23.976 and 23.98 but seems that a lot of folks on the forum here say even the slightest difference in frame rates is gonna make the edit difficult. So, how do i really know if my footage is 23.98 or 23.976 and the computer and FCP are just rounding up? I need to know.

Also, I have non-canon 5d footage i need to transcode to prores to match this footage that’s going to be included in this timeline and i need to know whether to transcode it to 23.976 or 23.98. Please let me know. this additional footage by the way are mp4’s with various frame sizes (the project sequence settings are already set right for the main footage which is 1980×1080 canon 5d stock).

Raju Bhai replied 9 years, 6 months ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
5 Replies

David Roth weiss
January 1, 2017 at 4:35 am

Those are simply two different ways of communicating the same framerate. Move on… And, have a very happy and productive 2017 ahead.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
Raju Bhai
January 1, 2017 at 6:10 am

OK thanks,

So then it’s ok for 23.976 and 23.98 clips to be used interchangeably and mixed together on the same timeline? I thought 24 fps was pretty much the same as 23.98 but i know people on this forum have said that mixing 24 and 23.98 could cause problems! so you can see why i’m confused here.

I have a knack for spending 50+ hours on an edit only to find that i have to rebuild it all from scratch because of some little mismatch or other.

On that note, for the transcoding that i am doing on Compressor, SHOULD I USE 23.976 or 23.98?
Nick Meyers
January 1, 2017 at 9:57 am

they’re the same thing.
people use 23.98 as its a bit easier to say/write than 23.976

if you shot with either of those frame rates,
then just let the footage go through compressor (or whatever) without modifying the frame rate.

cheers,
nick
Raju Bhai
January 1, 2017 at 7:21 pm

Thanks Nick and David!

glad that is sorted. I just posted some additional questions regarding the edit i’m doing, please see those questions in case you have input on those as well, much appreciated!
Raju Bhai
January 6, 2017 at 1:08 am

Thanks Dave, exactly the detail I was looking for! much appreciated

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