-
BluRay authoring at pure 24 fps?
Hey everyone, I have a somewhat maddening problem that I didn’t think would be so complicated…
We have a pure 24 fps digital animation project – *not* 23.976 – that we need to make BluRay screeners of. When I export the movie from Final Cut Pro (7), I get a 24 fps Quicktime. But Movie Studio Platinum 13 seems incapable of dealing with 24 fps. Even though its BluRay setting says 24p, the preset actually insists on making a 23.976 BluRay and I can’t seem to adjust it. And this makes all of the video frames interlaced together, blurry, and awful.
FCP, meanwhile, refuses to export a 23.976 Quicktime for me. When I give it this custom framerate to export, it just rounds up and gives me 24 fps.
I have also tried to create a BluRay with Toast Titanium, and encounter the same problem. It wants 24 fps to be 23.976 and creates a disc with jittery, strobing frames.
When I export a 29.97 Quicktime and try to go this route instead, I get similarly jittery, strobing frames. The animation simply does not move right outside of 24 fps.
Is it impossible to create a purely 24 fps BluRay? All of these programs promise it, but then want to pretend 23.976 is the same thing…
-
6 Replies
-
[andrew bernard] “Is it impossible to create a purely 24 fps BluRay? All of these programs promise it, but then want to pretend 23.976 is the same thing…”
No, you cannot. I know it’s confusing but let me explain why.
24.00 frames per second only pertains to film. The only time you want to export a project at 24 frames per second is when you want to print it to film. That’s probably why FCP 7 uses that because if you’re cutting “movies” on FCP 7 you need to be able to print to film at some point.
“24p” is a shorthand that video editors often used for 23.976 progressive because saying “twenty four point nine seven six” becomes a real pain after a while so people have shorted it to “24p”. Televisions are really strange devices. Because of the way electricity works in the US, TV uses a 59.94 Hz vertical scanning frequency, and broadcasts at 29.97 fps. When movie makers needed to show their 24.0 fps movies on TV’s they devised a process called Telecine which is how they transfer 24 fps film into 29.97 fps video because at the end of the day, NTSC TV’s can only display at 29.97 fps.
In an effort to play the original 24 fps content on DVD’s they invented reverse telecine (a.k.a. inverse telecine (IVTC) and once again because of the 59.94 Hz vertical scanning frequency the closest they could get was … you guessed it… 23.976 fps.
So to answer your question… No Blu-rays cannot play 24 fps nor can DVD’s. They can only play 23.976 fps commonly (albeit incorrectly) referred to as “24p” so you need to export as 23.976 fps in order to be Blu-ray/DVD compatible. Vegas Pro has no problem dealing with this. Final Cut Pro X has no problem dealing with this (although it’s called 23.98). I’m surprised that FCP 7 has a problem exporting this.
Apple Compressor has no problem creating a 23.976 fps file. Can you sent to Compressor from FCP 7? Maybe that’s a good workflow solution?
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Export it at “30fps”. It’s further away from 24…
-
Hi John,
Thanks for the reply. Yes, we used to shoot 35mm animation and the framerate was never an issue after telecine. But this is a whole other ball of wax, as the digital animation here necessitated a pure 24 fps workflow.
Yes, when I export from FCP7 using 23.976 as a “custom framerate”, it just seems to ignore the command. At least, Quicktime and these authoring programs identify the resulting QT file as 24 fps (though now it seems impossible to know for sure, with each program seeming to have a different idea of what they call 24 fps! Quicktime movie inspector says 24 fps though).
I’ll give Compressor another shot at giving me an actual 23.976 version and report back! I think I’ve tried this already – I’ve been trying all sorts of variations – but now I can’t remember why it didn’t work out..
-
[andrew bernard] “Yes, we used to shoot 35mm animation and the framerate was never an issue after telecine. But this is a whole other ball of wax, as the digital animation here necessitated a pure 24 fps workflow.”
OK so you know about all of this. Sorry for repeating what you already knew. I just wanted to be sure you understood what was going on.
[andrew bernard] “I’ll give Compressor another shot at giving me an actual 23.976 version and report back! I think I’ve tried this already – I’ve been trying all sorts of variations – but now I can’t remember why it didn’t work out..”
Compressor 4 has both 24 and 23.976 listed as available frame rates. I don’t know what version you are using. Here is a screenshot of my Compressor Video tab:
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Yes, Compressor seemed to be my best option: not allowing these authoring programs to overdo, or assume, anything! From the 24 fps QT I used Compressor to create a 23.976 Mpeg4 and fed it to Platinum straight across, and we finally got a great BluRay with accurate motion. Whew!
Thanks for letting me know that 24 fps Blu was a wild goose chase, it put me on the right track.
-
Andrew you are very welcome. I’m glad I could help.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up