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cinema tools runs wild
I’m a new poster. I’m assisting on a job with FCP 5.0 and Cinema Tools 3.0. My editor, who is much more comfortable in Avid, is concerned with the way the cinema tools Film Lists add and subtract frames from her cuts, seemingly at random. I believe this is to remove ghost frames, and keep the sound in sync, but she wants to make sure that every frame is cut to her specifications. How can we make the Film List match the cuts she wants on the timeline?
PS we did not do a reverse telecine so we are working in 29.97 NDF timecode.
Thanks!
Carrie
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2 Replies
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If you are editing a film at 29.97, then you are creating a “matchback” type of cutlist, and each cut will potentially be plus or minus one frame.
That’s because during telecine 24 frames of film are made into 30 frames of video (which run slightly slowed down at 29.97 per second). 2 out of 5 frames of video contain fields (interlaced lines of video) from different film frames.
If you cut using one of those frames at the beginning or end of the shot, something has to calculate which film frame you meant to use. This is the seemingly random frame changes I believe you are referring to.
This is the reason why many people choose to reverse telecine and edit at 24 frames per second or 23.98 frames (in order to view on an external NTSC monitor more easily).
As far as sound sync, if you used dual system sound and did not slow the sound down somehow by 1/10th of 1 percent (.1) (to match the amount of slow down caused by the telecine of film to video) you may have some sync issues. Check some long takes and see if they drift.
It seems that what you are worried about is an inherent part of the workflow you have chosen. These issues are the same on Avid or Final Cut, if you cut for a film finish and use the 29.97 video timebase.
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I’m having what sounds like the same problem with a 10 bit uncompressed clip captured from a DigiBeta deck. Trying to remove the pulldown with FCP 5.0.2’s CinemaTools takes a 2hr clip and turns it into a 1.5hr clip!
Things look OK for the first ~5min but then it starts removing too many frames, resulting in this jumpy, sped-up look. Looks like I shot it at 18fps!
When I try the same thing on FCP 4.5 HD’s CinemaTools it DOES NOT change the length of the clip.
I have an additional problem in that the pulldown (which starts off looking like AABBBCCDDD) ends up looking like AABBCDDD – note that the C frame is still interlaced. This is true for both FCP 4 and 5 versions of CinemaTools. Yow!
Anyone have any insights on this?
Joe Shapiro
Freelance Editor
Seattle WA
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