Advanced Pulldown, Cinema Tools, and SDI capture

[Joseph Bradley]

Your best bet is to capture your 24p advanced footage using 29.97 using pulldown removal. Then capture your 24p at 29.97 and take those clips into compressor and let it work it’s magic. Then everything will be set at 23.98 and you can work to your hearts content.

[Graeme Nattress]

Simple answer is don’t capture over SDI. I don’t see what earthly benefit you’ll gain from it. If you’re worried about the chroma, you can do better in post than the SDI can do and avoid recapture hassles, because as soon as you try to go over SDI you’ve lost your flags and you’re going to have a hell of a time mucking around removing pulldown.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Gary Adcock]

[Graeme Nattress] “Simple answer is don’t capture over SDI. I don’t see what earthly benefit you’ll gain from it.”

Graeme and I disagree on the benefits of SDI capture, I do see a difference on my scopes and hardware. IMHO the uncompressed files are always better than a DV file from the same footage, but that difference comes at a price for additional storage and hardware.

[Graeme Nattress] ” as soon as you try to go over SDI you’ve lost your flags and you’re going to have a hell of a time mucking around removing pulldown.”

When capturing from a Panasonic Deck, the RP188 TC flags are correctly indicated for the standard 3.2 pulldown removal over SDI. The Advanced pulldown is a different story however.

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[Ritaksanders]

Why capturing over SDI is the only option for us-

We “offlined” all of our clips using FCP Advanced Pulldown removal DVCPRO clips (whole show at 23.98). Now that we are about to take all of our DV and uprez it to HDCAM, we are recapturing the entire show via SDI because this footage looks better after the uprez. The tests have been done at the post house and SDI DV uprezed is far far better (less jaggy edges, crisper lines, better reds, less chroma bleeding) than FW Advanced Pulldown removal captured DV uprezed. I’ll be honest that I only sort of understand why, but my eyes are not lying to me, SDI + uprez to HDCAM = better.

So, this leads to me my advanced pulldown removal problem. Must capture SDI, must remove pulldown.

[Graeme Nattress] ” as soon as you try to go over SDI you’ve lost your flags and you’re going to have a hell of a time mucking around removing pulldown.”

I’m going to be honest and admit that I don

[Graeme Nattress]

I’d love to agree with you, but that’s not what we saw when actually performing a controlled experiment as outlined:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/chroma_investigation_nattress.html

Once you smooth the chroma the results of FW v SDI are so practically identical as to make no odds, and one was not visibly superior than the other in any way.

However, if you wish to provide a counter example…..

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

Certain frames get “flagged” on capture for later easy removal. That’s why removing adv pulldown is easy!

These flags don’t travel over SDI – and hence you can no longer use adv pulldown removal, and then, bang, there goes your ease of use.

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/chroma_investigation_nattress.html

Explains what happens when you go over SDI. I’m reckoning it’s much easier and quicker to add a quick chroma smoothing filter and re-render in a uncompressed timeline than re-capture everything.

I don’t deny that SDI can produce nice results, but you’ve got to know WHY is does so, and how you can achieve equally as good results via FW and a free plugin that comes with FCP (or even better results with some of my proprietary stuff).

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Ritaksanders]

Graeme-

Thanks for all your input, it is greatly appreciated, and this is all something I will definetly keep in mind for my next project. (and it’s also really good to hear the other side of the SDI v. FW debate because over here all I’ve got is the pro-SDI camp). I agree that your proposed solution seems far easier than what I am now faced with. But SDI capture and subsequent pulldown removal is the path we are committed to for this show (the director likes it, the post-advisor likes it, the post-house likes it) and I need to find solutions for this path. But when this is over I’m definetly going to test your idea of the chroma smoothing filter and rendering in an uncompressed timeline for my own benifit. I’ll let you know how it turns out with our footage.

Thanks
rita

[Graeme Nattress]

Thanks Rita! I just hope your people are also committed to the extra time and money it will take to do it that way. Is there even a advanced pulldown removal tool for uncompressed video – I thought Cinema Tools and FCP would only do it on DV or DV50 codec video??

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP