Advanced Pulldown – Redigitize necessary?

[Shane Ross]

Hmmm…well, it was obviously upconverted, so captured not via firewire, where the advanced pulldown flags are embedded into the signal. So I don’t think FCP will detect them when you try to use the ADVANCED PULLDOWN REMOVAL option inside FCP. And I know for a fact that you cannot capture 29.97 as 23.98 via a capture card…AJA, BMD, Matrox…none of them allow that. If you captured as DV via firewire, and had the ADVANCED PULLDOWN REMOVAL option checked, then it’d come is as 23.98. But it would be DV quality, not HD…like you obviously want it.

If you want to remove the pulldown properly, you’ll have to capture via firewire, and then upconvert via software means. Or, run this through a converter like a terranex when you capture, or transfer to another tape format that does 23.98. POSSIBLY…don’t know for sure. I’ve not done that. I’ve only done software upconvert options…After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro.

I’ll see if someone else has a work around for this, but I’ve tried this a lot in the past. Capture cards convert frame rates when exporting, but not while capturing.

Shane
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[Aryn Leigh]

Gosh, I am a jerk. I made a mistake. The footage IS 720×480, so I do believe it was captured by FW.

So theoretically, I could just use the advanced pulldown removal (post-capture) in FCP to change back to 23.98- and then down the road, isolate those clips and upconvert via Teranex or whatever… correct?

Sorry for the mistake there…

AL

[Shane Ross]

Yes…if captured via firewire, you should be able to remove the pulldown inside FCP…new clips generated. I’ve only captured removing the pulldown on the fly…never after. But I hear it’s doable.

And yes, to upscale at that point you output from one machine to a terranex, and capture the result in another.

Shane
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[Aryn Leigh]

That’s great.

I assume it’s all just metadata that FCP is reading, and that it would do the exact same math either way. So– the original clips would not be altered then, right?

Also… In a hypothetical case where the footage would need re-digitizing, (say if it was offlined) would there be potential problems in finding the exact “A” frame? Could it significantly screw up timing in edited sequences?

Thanks!

-AL

[Shane Ross]

[Aryn Leigh] “Also… In a hypothetical case where the footage would need re-digitizing, (say if it was offlined) would there be potential problems in finding the exact “A” frame? Could it significantly screw up timing in edited sequences?”

First off, if you capture DV via firewire, that’s full quality…can’t get any more quality from the tape. So it’s already online. You can capture offline RT…not sure if you can via firewire, but that is the offline codec. And if you captured from tape, recapturing should be fine….timecodes are solid. BUT…if you shot advanced pulldown…29.97 on tape and removed pulldown after capture..I would NOT recommend any sort of offline/online workflow for this. It’ll be a can of worms. DV takes up very little space as it stands. The lightest full res codec. So just stay full res with it.

Shane
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[Aryn Leigh]

Hi there-

Sorry to re-vist this. We are removing the advanced pulldown in FCP and finding that some of the clips are going offline. When I try to re-import them, Final Cut gives me the popup ” File Error: Unknown File”.

I’m worried that this Pulldown technique is corrupting some of the files, which are no longer readable in our project.

Where might this problem stem from? I found a similar thread but with no resolution:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2125871?tstart=0

Could some of these files be corrupted before import into FCP?

Thanks again, for your help!

-AL