30fps to 29.97 Conform for Old 5D footage

[Jeremy Garchow]

[David Michael] “Let me know your thoughts”

I haven’t looked at anything yet, but I honestly think the best way to do this is to resync everything @ 30.0. This means reimporting your audio “correctly” and syncing with your current locked 30.0 timeline.

From there, you can then do your conform.

Since your video was recorded at 30.0, I would keep everything there until you are done. That article is more for your audio being initally tagged at the wrong frame rate, and not for a true conform (change of speed).

Jeremy

[David Michael]

Thanks for your thoughts. So that you have all the info that is burdening me, I currently have a rough assembly of the film – so I’m not locked by any means.

Since there is a lot more minute work to be done, I’m starting to resign myself to the idea that this project is going to need to be redone correctly with he current project as a guide. It was given to me in this state and so I’ve been trying to make it work the best I can, but with these media managing errors and sync issues, suddenly it’s seeming like way more trouble than I anticipated.

Here are my second level thoughts, that I haven’t yet shared for simplicity’s sake.

The reshoot footage – which has not been cut yet – was shot on a more current 5D. So it has a frame rate of 29.97 not 30. It too has these timecode mismatch issues.

I think what I probably need to do is either conform that footage to 30 or the other footage to 29.97. Though I’m not sure which one. I’m sorry for bringing you into my nightmare here, but if you have any thoughts they will be appreciated.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[David Michael] “The reshoot footage – which has not been cut yet – was shot on a more current 5D”

The hits just keep on coming, don’t they?

Well, you are going tp have to track all this information. The good news is that all of your 29.97 footage/audio won’t need to be conformed. So, import that footage and audio “correctly” using the proper easy setup right from the start.

Add that footage to your 30.0 timeline and edit. Yes, there might be some weirdness going on, but it’s an offline, yeah?

When it comes time to conform, you won’t need to include that footage in the retime, just your 30.0 footage and the subsequent audio.

[David Michael]

Oh yeah, no shortage of unpleasant surprises over here.

And yes this is an offline, so I guess the best thing to do, like you said, is edit with mixed rates, reconnect when locked and media manage out the reconnected files for a conform.

Thanks for taking this journey with me, now it’s time to properly import the audio and get this sync done before Monday so I can actually cut something!

[Brad Bromelmeier]

I ran into this issue on a feature film I did the sound mix on. When the Canon’s record at 30 fps (really 29.97) they are using the NTSC drop-frame television standard. This means that external audio recorded will play back in real time while the footage will drop 2 frames every minute. The longer your clip the more out of sync it will get. I basically had to go in and cut, then manually move the dialog into place every few words. It was a major pain. The moral of the story is to make sure to record the Canon DSLR’s at 24 fps and your external audio at 48K/16 bit. I did just that on a current short I’m working on and everything syncs up perfectly!

Bradbro Productions

[Jeremy Garchow]

Sorry, Brad but that’s not quite right.

One of the original versions of the Canon firmware recorded the material at an actual 30.0, not 29.97.

Drop frame would not effect sync. Only the way you import the files effects sync

As I mentioned before, audio does not have an fps. So as long as the audio is imported correctly in to Fcp, and you haven’t changed the speed of the video from when it was originally recorded, your audio will always be in sync, no matter the frame/tc rate, as the timing of one second of audio never changes.

But if you go from 30.0 fps video to 29.97 fps video, you are actually changing the timing of the video from the point of recording, and you will have sync issues. DF/NDF has nothing to do with this.

In your case, it seems that the audio or perhaps the video was mishandled as you shouldn’t have had to cut audio out to keep a/v sync.

Jeremy

[David Michael]

Interestingly enough I was able to fix this problem yesterday. I had my assistant over and set him on a course of action. Create new sequence settings, pull footage back scene by scene, and start pluraleyesing the properly imported footage.

At first we were using the original project – but the audio was still importing with the same screwed up settings. So I did a quick XML edit and pulled the files back in using that – alas the green bar was still present.

We tried redoing the settings and restarting FCP to no avail.

So I had him try starting from scratch in a new project. We opened a new project along side the old project and still were getting the green bar.

The solution was to restart FCP and create a new project without opening the old one. Then start pulling in the audio files and check them for green lines. We then opened the old project to use as a guide and, lo and behold, that project was suddenly fixed. So we copied everything from that project into the new one (for safety’s sake) and now everything is in sync. Strikes me as bizarre, but I’m not complaining.

Thanks for your assistance with this, I thought this was going to be a weeks long process of syncing that have an easy fix.

[David Michael]

Brad, thanks for your response, but this 5D did not record 29.97 fps, it recorded true 30p. And the problem certainly was that the audio was being assigned 24fps/ntsc timebase when it required 30fps/no-ntsc. You are right that Canon has since fixed the frame issues with their newer firmware, which is great. After struggling with all this, I recommend checking a test XML after importing audio files just to make sure they are pulling in with the proper settings.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Glad you got it sorted, David. In the future, it is not only enough to choose the correct settings before importing, but you have to choose the correct easy setup with the correct timebase that matched your original VIDEO recording by hitting control-q. Then save FCP. Then quit FCP. Then reopen the project. It is at this point you must import the audio.

So in your case, you would have made a 30.0 easy setup. Made sure it was chosen in the easy setup dialogue. Then save and quit. Then reopen. THEN import the audio.

Using a new project is best because if there’s improperly imported audio leftover in the original project, it might not work correctly.

Glad you are up and running!

Jeremy