Conforming 30P to 25P

[T. Payton]

Just to confirm, you mean playing back the 30p material slightly slower at 24p?

If this is the case I don’t think it makes any difference whatsoever. Both do the same thing and neither one really takes any time to process. I think I would use the conform in FCP X personally, just so that if I possibly needed any of the original non-retimed audio I would have it.

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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Tony Sarafoski]

Timothy, very interesting….

Another question, I’m noticing after you conform speed in Final Cut Pro X, the clip gets a retimed to 83%, does this mean I should select frame blend in Video Quality, or does this not matter?

I’m just worried that the retiming will add a strobe effect to the footage.

[T. Payton]

Tony,

FCP X is telling you exactly what it is having to do to conform your 30p frames to 25p frames. In this case slowing it down by 83%. No interpretation or frame blending is needed. It is just playing 1 frame at a time at 25p instead of playing 1 frame at a time at 30p.

Or put it this way. For one second of footage at 25p, FCP X plays 25 frames. Therefore if your original clip had 30 frames in that first 1 second, now if it plays 25 frames to get that first second, there are 5 frames left over. So the next second would take 5 frames from the first second and then play another 20 from the next which would now have 10 seconds left for that 2nd second. Ad so on. Therefore the footage appears to be playing slower because all these leftover frames that carryover to subsequent seconds.

I’m sure there are better explanations. But know that nothing is happening to the frames in your footage, they are only being played at a different rate. However, your audio will be slowed down 83%, which is what FCP X is telling you. And frankly that is very clever (bordering on brilliant) and in my mind a better solution than Cinema Tools.

– T.

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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Tony Sarafoski]

Interesting….Ok thanks for that Timothy