24P Post Workflow

[David Battistella]

Liz,

Capture all via firewire with a 1200A or 1400A deck in Native 720P HD resolution
Edit with Varicam easy setup

Drop final sequence into a DVCPRO 50 sequence and render for all SD finishes.

It’s about that simple.

David

Peace and Love 🙂

[Shane Ross]

As David said…pretty simple. DVCPRO HD is about the easiest HD format to work with. The ability to capture it via firewire makes it easier.

Choose an Easy Setup that matches your shooting rate…720p24, 720p60…and then TOSS the already existing sequence and make a new one. Sequence 1 has all the old settings. Any new project you create has the settings you chose.

go to my blog and read about my experiences with DVCPRO HD…iffin you want.

http://www.lfhd.net Start at the beginning…this is me learning as I go.

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Liz Smith]

Thanks for the help! I got some other advice from the VaricamCow page, too. So, let me replay the workflow back to make sure I’ve got a good one:

1. Open a project in FCP with easy setup: DVCPRO HD, 720/24P
2. Log and Capture all the footage into FCP.
3. Open a new project in FCP with easy setup, DVCPRO HD, 720/30 (should this be 29.94? and does it need to be interlaced?)
4. Bring in all the capture scratch footage off of the drive into this new project. (I can add other 720/60p footage from the HVX-200 at this point, yes?)
5. Edit the project as 720/30P DVCPRO HD.
6a.Crunch an mpg out for DVD from this HD timeline in FCP.
6b. Print the final product out via firewire to an HD tape – Use the deck and tape to do an SD downconvert.

Does opening a new project and importing the captured footage off the drive really take care of the 3:2 pulldown? I don’t have to do any special rendering? This seems way too simple.

Also, when I change project timelines/settings, am I still protected if the data disappears off the drive – ie, can I still go back and do a batch capture off the original tapes if I have to because of lost clips?

Thanks again!
Liz

[Liz Smith]

Shane-

I noticed you went to Montana State… rock on! This Varicam project is for my MSU graduate thesis/MFA in Science and Natural History FIlmmaking. Bill Neff is my advisor (I think he’s been around the department for a long time so maybe you remember him…)

Anyway, thanks for the help!

Liz

Liz Smith
WorkinSync Productions
workinsync@hotmail.com
240-678-8326

[Shane Ross]

SURE I know Bill. Tell him that you are chatting to me. He might remember me. I am the stepson of a former professor there, Dan Hart. But I’ll wager Bill knows me without that reference.

Try to convince those guys at MSU to bring me in as a guest speaker. I’d love to come back for a visit. Just to ski at Bridger for a day. Stuck in the desert for 12 years now.

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Jeremy Newmark]

Liz,

If your footage was shot at 24p(23.976) then it is much easier to stay in that frame-rate throughout your prost process. If you edit in 30(29.97) then you automatically cut out other options that 24p give you. For example once you have a finished 24p project, you can simply add the 3:2 pull-down on output for 29.97 NTSC playback, or you could speed it up for 25 PAL playback. If you are going to DVD, you simply encode a 24p(23.976) mpeg for DVD. It is written into the DVD specs that all dvd de-coders and players willl add the 3:2 pull-down for NTSC playback or speed up for PAL playback of a 24p dvd (depending on how the mpeg is flagged). While you may never need some of these options, such as PAL playback, there is no reason to cut these options out early in your post path. If you stay in your native origination frame-rate through the end, then you have more options with your final master. You may think now that you would never need those options, but you never know what the future will bring. Just my 2 cents.

best regards,

jeremy

[Liz Smith]

Good advice – I usually have the “be prepared” attitude, cause you don’t know about the future….

However, I have additional footage shot in 720/60p and 720/30p that I need to bring in as well. What about that?

[Shane Ross]

Slap your DP for shooting in those settings. Well, 60p is forgivable for it can be used for slow motion, but 30p? In a 24P project? Slap him. I know, he is a student and stil learning. I once shot and ENTIRE SHORT FILM thru the base of the film and not onto the emultion side. Chalk it up to learing the new Eclair camera, but I was slapped. I had to buy new film and help pay for reshoots.

Just drop those into the 24p timeline and render and they will work fine. But, you have to render, thus the reason to slap him.

Tell Mr. Neff (Santa) that I said hi.

Is Dave Koester still there? Teaching audio?

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Liz Smith]

OK. So I’ve got the easy setup on DVCPROHD 720/24 and I’m capturing 24p footage off a Panasonic HD deck. Capture goes fine. When I play the clips back in the computer, a third of my clips have audio sync problems (roughly 7 frames off.) The other 2/3rds of the clips look and sound great.

I dumped the master clips that had sync problems and re-captured them as a batch. 2 of 8 came back recaptured in sync. The other 6 are still off. Any ideas as to why its doing that?

Also, I have the sequence and project set to DVCPROHD 720/24, but I just noticed that the Device Capture Preset is set to 29.97. Do I need to duplicate this set-up and change the rate to 24? to 23.97? Could that be causing the audio to be off as it captures many clips over an entire tape?

Ahrg.

(Hey Shane, I’ll say hi to Bill. Koester was my sound professor, but he left get his masters in Hong Kong 2 years ago. Oh, and my DP shot everything in 24, but there’s other stock footage I have at NASA I want to include that was shot in 720/60 – our standard here.)

[Shane Ross]

[Liz Smith] “a third of my clips have audio sync problems (roughly 7 frames off.)”

Yep…this happens. Saw this on my last show. We had 6 tapes that were 7 frames off. We attributed this to capturing with our laptops and a PCMCIA firewire card. But it also occurred when capturing to the tower. Nothing to do but adjust the offset in the timeline. You may find that your other clips are off by 1-2 frames…audio hitting first. This happens to all the rest of the clips I have. I adjust the offset in the timeline, slipping the audio two frames later. Look for people saying B or P sounds.

Device capture preset set to 29.97? That’s odd. I choose the 720p24 preset and I get 23.98 as the capture preset.

Dave Koester graduated a year before me. We worked on a few things together. He’s in China eh? Wow.

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net