Dropping 24fps clips onto a 30fps timeline?

[Richard Sanchez]

No, you’re not living in denial. FCP defaults to adding a 2:2:2:4 pulldown when you do that which makes it appear to stutter and not look so good. Nattress makes a pretty good standards conversion filter. However, if you are working with all 23.976 material and need to layback to 29.97, the Kona card will take care of that for you.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Paul Campbell]

Hi, Richard. I’m working with a combination of 23.98 and 29.97, ultimately destined for 29.97. I don’t have the Nattress Converter yet, but I’ve converted 24 to 30 in Compressor before, which isn’t bad…just takes a little while.

Can you point me to a location that will explain the difference between 2:2:2:4 pulldown vs. 3:2 pulldown? I see these get thrown around all the time, and I’m trying to just understand what gets done with the frames during these conversions. What I’ve been able to gather thus far while studying converted clips frame by frame is that every 4th and 5th frame gets duped (mostly duped, anyway…there are some pixels that are slightly different). This of course adds up to the extra 6 frames that make up the 30. I just don’t understand the syntax 2:2:2:4.

Thanks!

[John Pale]

From the FCP Manual (page 630)

2:3:2:3: This pattern is the most processor-intensive method of introducing
pull-down but outputs NTSC video with the least noticeable temporal artifacts. For
this reason, 2:3:2:3 pull-down is generally considered to have the most acceptable
quality of motion. This pull-down pattern is also referred to as 3:2 pull-down.

2:3:3:2: Also known as advanced pull-down. This pattern requires less processing to
output than 2:3:2:3 pull-down because 2:3:3:2 pull-down requires recompression or
regeneration of fewer frames, but the perceived motion quality is lower than when
using 2:3:2:3 pull-down.

2:2:2:4: This pull-down pattern requires less processing, so it is a good choice if you want
to preview video with as many real-time effects as possible. Keep in mind that if you
choose this pull-down pattern, you won’t be able to easily remove the pull-down later.

The following two patterns are available when your sequence has a frame rate of 24 fps
and you choose a 25 fps external video output.

24@25 Pulldown: In this pattern, frames 12 and 24 are pulled down for a duration of
three fields instead of two, creating a subtle stutter each half second. For 25 fps
output, this pattern has the best perceived motion quality.

24@25 Repeat: This pattern simply repeats every 24th frame once to fit 24 fps footage
into 25 fps. This causes a noticeable stutter every second, but requires less processing
than the 24@25 pull-down pattern because no special interlacing is required.

[Darwin Hall]

Forgive me for walking in late to your party. My education on Compressor was neglected by my school, the emphasis was on Final Cut. Can you share your workflow on converting 24fps to 30?