Cinema tools for PAL users workflow?

[Steven Gonzales]

You need to know how the telecine was done, how you will be dealing with sound (was it synced in telecine, or do you have to sync it?), what timebase you will edit with, and how you are going to finish before you start working — your experience will be more pleasant. Also, I’m assuming that the original camera speed was 24 fps.

I haven’t worked with PAL, but I believe there are two ways that the telecine can be done. One is to transfer the 24 fps of film to the 25 fps of video on a one to one frame basis, which speeds up the action slightly (called 24@25 method). The other is by adding two extra fields in each second, which is called 24&1 method.

So first, you should find out how the telecine was done. If it was done the 24@25 method, you can either choose to work speeded up by 4%, or you can conform the 25 fps videos you capture to 24 fps quicktimes using Cinema Tools conform feature (which essentially changes the time base in the quicktime file, leaving the frames the same.) This reverts the footage back to 24 fps, and so syncing with sound can be done with no adjustment.

If the telecine was done with the 24&1 method, you have an extra field every 12th frame, but sound will sync because the time period is the same as the original. Then you would work in 25 frames.

This all matter because Cinema Tools is a database, and the way the database is set up depends on your telecine. The first options you have when creating the database are to set the database timebases.

After that, the steps basically are: Flex file (which has the timecode to keycode relationship) is brought in to the Cinema Tools database. Check carefully to make sure everything look correct (no duplicate take names, etc). Then export this information as a Final Cut Pro batch list.

Bring the Final Cut Pro batch list in to Final Cut Pro and batch capture the source clips. Then process them (conform) in Cinema Tools if that is your choice.

When you have the clips you will finally use in final cut (either the original capture, or the altered conformed clips), then you go into Cinema Tools, and connect (link) each record in the database with each of those quicktimes that you are going to edit with.

Then you edit. When it is time for a cutlist, you export a cutlist from Final Cut. This process will ask you “which Cinema Tools database”? You point to the database. Now Final Cut tells Cinema Tools “here’s the quicktime, and here’s the frames that were used” and Cinema Tools says “hey, I know about that quicktime, because one of my database records is linked to it. Those frames that were used should be assigned these keycodes, based on what frame numbers they are, and what keycodes I have in my data records for that range of frames.”

There are a few other little things, but that’s the broad overview.

[Jhaughey]

Thanks Steven,

that’s exactly the kind of explanation I needed. The telecine hasn’t been done yet.
We would ideally like to have the project edited at 25fps, in case there aren’t any 24fps capable ext’ monitors available… so I guess we should insist on getting it transferred using the 24&1 method right?
As for sound… sound will have to be synched later, and I’d rather not have to go down the whole speeding things up by 4.1% for every clip business, but I guess any of the methods you mentioned will allow me to work with the footage at the speed it was intended to be played at?
thanks again.

Joe

[Sebas]

i have just finished editing a feature film in pal. in my case i chose to have the transfer done on a one to one frame basis. here’s my workflow.

1. i had the transfer made to mini dv tapes in pal on a one to one frame basis. the facility sent me the tapes plus the flx files. i also told them to put the tape’s timecode and the keycode and reel name and number on screen.

2. i imported the flx files to create a database in cinematools 3.0.3

3. i created a batch list (file/export/batch capture)

4. imported the batch list to fcp 5.0.3 and captured using easy setup=dv pal (remember to capture video only).

5. open each clip and check that the on-screen timecode matches the marked in and out points. quit fcp.

6. open cinematools (no database needed at this step) and conform the captured clips to 24 fps (file/batch conform)

7. open fcp. create a new project and drag the conformed clips in there. save.

8. open cinematools. in your database connect the conformed clips to the records (database/connect clips). this is a batch proccess. quit.

9. i used the easy-setup called “24 fps from dv pal” to create new sequences. in that way i could work with a 24 fps timeline (1 film frame=1 frame in the computer monitor). whenever i needed to monitor in a video monitor i just plugged it via my firewire deck. fcp “creates” the duplicate field every 12 frames on the fly when in play, but when in pause or scrubbing each film frame equals one video frame. this is useful for sync and also to pick the right shot as some camera movements don’t look so good with the pulldown applied. if you had the transfer done with pulldown you may remove it later but i wouldn’t go that way cos more things could go wrong.

10. as for the sound sync, i had read that peole often make subclips or even re-export the clips to make it simpler once the audio is synced. i didn’t do this. what i did was create a sequence for each film sequence. dumped there the film, sliced it in each clap. then put each sound clip in sync. finally i did a command-L to link each synced sound clip to the corresponding video clip. at the end of each sequence i did a couple of pre-edits with duplicates via copy-paste. then i copied that to the “master” sequence for fine tuning.

11. you probably want the “show duplicate frames” option enabled for your sequences; check what the appropiate handles are for your project.

12. when you’re done you will export the cut list, pull list, etc directly from fcp. this list is a text file which you can check afterwards in any text editor. check that there are no “unknown” reels and such. when you submit the lists to the negative cutter always send them a video tape or qt movie as well.

also keep in mind that feature films must be cut in 20 minutes or less reels. at some point you’ll have to decide where this reel changes will take place bearing in mind that the cut from one reel to the next might no be perfect in the movie theater (no music across the reel break). in my case the result was 6 cut lists. when preparin the cut list fcp will prompt you to make some decisions. talk these with the negattive cutter (for instance in my case he told me to choose “lab roll” rather than “camera roll” though the flx had both).

lead-in/starter. check with the negative cutter and with whoever will be doing the audio post so as to have the same criteria for beeps, tails, etc. how many beeps, how many seconds, etc.

notes:

-my machine is an early g5 (dual 2.0). fcp version 5.0.3, system 10.3.9 and quicktime 7.0.1. the material was in the dv-pal codec. the disk is a lacie big drive w. firewire 800. the sound takes were pcm 48 Khz in .wav, some mono and some stereo. earlier versions of fcp didn’t like the .wav container but i had no trouble with 5.0.3 .
final cut never had trouble keeping up with the “live” pulldown for outputting to video even with some live color correction and dissolves and 10 audio tracks going on i could make vhs copies of the 2 hour thing and never dropped a frame.

good luck!
sebas.

[Steven Gonzales]

It’s great to know that viewing 24 PAL can be done on a 25 PAL display.

The reason some people suggest exporting the sync clips is because earlier versions of Final Cut would lose sync between video and audio when they were from separate sources. I was doing a feature in FCP 3, and the audio would slip several frames behind the video while viewing a long sequence, until I paused and recontinued, and then they would play in sync again.

I believe your method would also work if you sync within a sequence, link the audio and video, and then drag that linked clip back to the browser creating a “merge clip”, and using that as an edit source.

However, I worked with such “sync sequences” for my editing source in the first FCP to Film project in 1999, and this method worked fine. I recall that to retain the separate audio timecode, I had to recut all the audio into the final reels, but I believe that is because I actually cut the sync sequences into the reels, instead of copy and paste as you describe. Luckily, things have improved much since then.

Thanks for the clear explanation of PAL workflow.

[Jhaughey]

thanks very much…. great explanations

[Sebas]

yes. cut and paste is the way to go. also remember to unlink everything before generating cut lists or omfs.