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Converting timebase from 30i to 60p
I have three 20-minute long sequences to convert from NTSC to 720p/60. Scaling the frame size is my lesser concern so far, it’s about modifying the time base.
1. The obvious approach is to simply copy everything into a new 720/60p sequence. I wish I just had to deal with gaps between frames. As confirmed elsewhere, going 30i to 60p in FCP destroys the sequence. It becomes a completely random assortment of in and out points, playing back the result would be funny if it wasn’t sad.
2. I tried to utilize Automatic Duck to do the conversion in some round-trip fashion, or to get into Avid, but the sequences crash the duck every time. I opened a ticket with them to try and figure out what’s going on.
3. As for EDLs, as an initial test, I exported an EDL and imported back into 480/30i to see if the workflow even works. I get mismatching start TC and reel on every clip, and also have to locate each clip manually (‘search’ does nil). If I’ll have to relink the ~940 clips manually, re-cutting everything doesn’t sound so insane anymore.
I’m a bit lost, given how every approach I had in mind failed at the get-go. Any ideas? Are there any smart EDL or XML processing tools out there that might help?
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5 Replies
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Hi Drew,
The tool to do that is “ReVision FieldsLit”.
That will make a full frame from each field.
rafael -
Hi Rafael,
Thanks for the response, but a smart deinterlacer is about the last thing I need. My problem has to do with metadata – sequences / EDLs / XMLs – not video files.
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Hi Drew,
Sorry, but I really don’t know what you want to achieve.
You said: [Drew Lahat] “I have three 20-minute long sequences to convert from NTSC to 720p/60”What do you expect to do with AutomaticDuck, EDLs or XMLs?
If you bring i30 footage to a p60 sequence, will always look like crap.
There are only two things you can do with the i30 stuff
– Deinterlacing the i30 and getting p30 (of course this is not what you want)
– Converting the i30 to p60. If properly done, nobody will notice the footage was originally i30.
Sorry, but in 10 years working with FC I haven’t heard of any other solution than FieldsKit.
Cheers,
rafael -
An important bit of information I omitted: most of the footage in the sequences isn’t 30i native at all. Almost half is 720p/60, and a third is telecined 24p.
I expect to end with a 60fps sequence where for starters, the sequence in & out points will correlate. An in point at 1:00:30:23 would become 1:00:30:46. Leave H:M:S alone, double the frames. Pretty simple.
The footage should also maintain its ins & outs and be interpolated the same way FCP would treat it if I manually edit a non-60 shot into a 60 sequence. Needless to say native 60p footage should fit in a 60p sequence.
I see what you’re saying about 30i looking like crap in 60p – haven’t had a chance to test it myself in depth yet, but given FCP’s poor track record in pulldown (the “2:2:2:4” pulldown), I can see it screwing it up. Ideally FCP would deinterlace on the fly or with a plugin (map every field to a frame – simple 2:2 pulldown), without requiring a deinterlacing software.
I’m aware that getting everything right will require much tweaking, I’m trying to avoid having to overcut everything from scratch.
P.S. As for FieldKit alternatives, Compressor and Episode Pro should also be able to add or remove interlacing properly. TMTS has a Smart Deinterlacer plug-in for FCP, and on the PC side, AviSynth has some very powerful features for fields handling and deinterlacing.
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Hi Drew,
But we find a fundamental problem: FC can’t properly manage footage with different time-bases on the same sequence.
No pronlem to mix codecs, resolutions or field-orders, but when talking about mixing time-bases is simply a NO-NO. The only way in FC to make a decent job in this case is converting the footage to a common time-base.[Drew Lahat] “P.S. As for FieldKit alternatives, Compressor and Episode Pro should also be able to add or remove interlacing properly. TMTS has a Smart Deinterlacer plug-in for FCP, and on the PC side, AviSynth has some very powerful features for fields handling and deinterlacing.”
Those applications can de-interlace, but they are not able to build a full frame from a single field as ReVision does.
Is possible that AviSynth may do it. I know is a great application but I don’t know it in deep.
rafael
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