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24p and a few general HD questions
Now my production company and I have been use to working with Canon XL-1 and XL-2 cameras but we recently made the switch to full 1080p production via the 5Dmk2 cameras.
Previously we had been fine with 29.97fps NTSC standard def cameras but the Canon 5Dmk2 presents some problems with the pure 30fps.
We’re working on Adobe Premiere editing stations (we’re a start-up and pc workstations were more affordable) and to avoid some of the preview playback hiccups of editing at 30fps, we’ve been using 23.976fps projects and re-rendering in the timeline with no problem. This is great because it’s the Bluray standard anyways.
Now for the actual questions: we may be producing independent films that will be transferred to celluloid so would we end up with a better result if we converted the original 30fps material or the 23.976fps material to 24fps? Our workflow is purely progressive scan now.
Also I had trouble finding documentation, how is Premiere Pro handing the reverse pulldown from 30fps to 23.976fps? The clips are shorter so are they blending or dropping frames? or a combination? Also is the audio stretched/pitch matched? We’ve had the cameras since Thursday so we’ve been scrambling to run all these shooting and editing tests with them before a new production we start in August.
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1 Reply
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I’ve worked with a bit of the Canon footage.
My advice would be to get yourself a real video camera and just shoot the stuff at the framerate you want. The compression on that camera is really really aggressive.
The main issue you will likely have is that the H.264 compression is incredibly clumsy to handle in an edit. It’s ok for effects shots but I suspect I’d shoot myself before I ever completed a project using only Canon 5D footage…ugh.
If you are shooting audio on the Canon (something it really isn’t designed for), you’ll have to process the clips somehow to convert the framerate from 30 to 23.976…(you could convert to 24…you’ll have to use 23.976 eventually anyway though).
BTW, it’s not a “reverse pulldown”…it’s a framerate change. You can only reverse a pulldown if there was a pulldown in the first place. This isn’t 30i clip that was created using a pulldown on 24fps material…it’s 30p footage that you’re going to mash down to 24. There will be blending without a doubt and my recommendation would be to do some tests before you bank on this method.
If you have audio in the video clip, the clip can’t be “interpreted” in PPro to change the framerate as the audio will pitch shift and the motion will slow as well.
You could attempt to take all your footage and put it on a 23.976 timeline and export it back out, the issue is that in PPro CS4, you’ll have to go out through the media encoder, and you don’t want to hit that footage again with H.264 ccompression before you even get a chance to edit it…it will get pretty chewy. If you export uncompressed, you’ll need an array with a handful of terabytes, about seven drives, and at least a fiber-optic link to be able to play the stuff back.
Overall, these SLRs that can do video now seem like a great idea, but they haven’t been developed by someone who understands what is actually necessary for motion picture production through the entire process…
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,
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