24p material on a 60i Timeline

[Shane Ross]

24p as in 23.98 or 24p as in film-looked 29.97?

You REALLY should not put a 23.98 clip into a 29.97 sequence. FCP does not add the proper pulldown…it does 2:2:2:4 and not 2:3;3:2. If you wanted smoother graphics, you should have shot 24p over 60i…meaning the footage runs at 29.97 but with the film look.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Scott Sniffen]

Not sure I understand “shoot 24p over 60i”. The footage is 23.98p in HD. Are you talking about camera settings? Not sure my XDCAM355 has that option.

[Shane Ross]

There is a difference between 24p normal and 24pA (Advanced) and 24pN (Native).

Differences between 24p and 24pA

Quoting Graeme Nattress’ article found at Ken Stone’s site:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/24p_in_FCP_nattress.html

“24p Normal
When shooting in 24p Normal, the camera is adding normal standard 3:2 pulldown to the video, which results in 24p footage designed to work with any non-linear editing suite and it will play back and look good directly to any NTSC monitor. You can use 24p Normal footage just like normal video from any DV camera, and everything will work fine, but obviously, the footage will have a film look to it. If you’re just going straight back to NTSC video tape, then using 24p Normal is the simplest, easiest workflow. No special treatment of the footage is needed and you really can just edit as normal.

 
24p Advanced
Before you shoot 24p Advanced, you should fully understand it’s workflow implications. If you watch 24p Advanced footage before you’ve removed it’s pulldown, then it will look a bit jumpy and jerky. This is totally correct, because 24p Advanced is not designed to be viewed as is.
To use 24p Advanced and gain all it’s advantages, you should know that you cannot edit it as is (as this would leave it’s jerky looking pulldown intact), but you must first remove it’s pulldown. Final Cut Pro will do this for you, leaving you with the 24p footage without any of the extra “padding” fields that are added to make it’s frame rate 29.97fps. Now that your footage is 23.98fps, it must be edited on a 23.98fps timeline, and this can cause problems if you, for instance, want to include other footage, B-Roll, or stock footage, that comes from a different source. However, once you have your finished edit at 23.98fps, you can make a 24p DVD, which will allow you to compress your MPEG2 less than if you were making a normal 29.97fps NTSC DVD, and hence attain higher picture quality. Similarly, if you’re making a web movie, you will find it easier to get a higher quality result from 23.98fps media than normal NTSC media. 23.98fps movies are also easier to take out to film that 29.97fps movies.
If you are editing in a 23.98fps timeline, Final Cut Pro will add pulldown on the fly, over Firewire, so that you can see your movie on a normal NTSC monitor. Similarly, it will add pulldown when going back to DV tape. However, this will not work on a non-DV format output, say to Digital Betacam, and slower Macintoshes do not have the power to add 3:2 pulldown in realtime, falling back to lower quality pulldowns which although are not too bad while editing, will not make the final project look as acceptably good on television as a final product.”

What that tells me is that 24P just adds a “look” of 24 fps to the footage that resembles that of telecined film, but that you work with normally at 29.97fps. Or, if you want to, you can add a reverse telecine and work at 23.98. Either way.

BUT, with 24PA, the footage looks jittery when played on the tape. So sure, you can work with it and output it to tape, but that tape is useless to anyone OTHER than someone who can capture it and perform a reverse telecine to work with it. It will not work as a Master tape for any viewable purpose: Broadcast TV, projected video from tape, a master tape for dubbing purposes. So, in effect, it is useless as a tape master, and should be avoided.

If you happen to have a 23.98 sequence and need to output a 29.97 master, any good capture card (https://www.aja.com, https://www.decklink.com) will add the proper pulldown when it outputs.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Eli Mavros]

If your footage was shot at 29.97 with a pulldown that you removed, maybe you shouldn’t remove it and work with the 29.97 video and not at 24p. If, on the other hand, you shot at 24p native, you can take your 24p footage into a program like After Effects and then export it with a 3:2 pulldown added to make it 29.97, if you want. The problem with this method is that you will lose timecode, and thus not be able to go back to your original media in an offline/online scenario. I don’t know why Cinema Tools offers a reverse telecine option, but not a telecine option. Would be great to be able to work at 24p and then at the end ad a 3:2 pulldown to a rendered sequence through CT at the end.

Hope this helps…hope you have After Effects.

Best,
Eli

Eli Mavros

[Scott Sniffen]

Yes, it is shot 24p. In the previous post, 24pA was mentioned. I just don’t think my camera has the capability of shooting 23.98p with a 2-3 pull down and recording to disc 29.97 all in camera.