DV NTSC 48KHz – 23.98 Editing Sequence Preset – Audio Sync…

[Matt Lyon]

[Matt Lyon] “sync a long clip, make a merged clip, and very there is no drift”

sorry that should read: VERIFY there is no drift…

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Boris Riabov]

Great!

1. I’ll get to it; I’ll try to reverse telecine clips again (I had followed the Cinema Tools manual which told me to choose Field 2 according to the A-B-C-D-D 29.97fps letters on my window burn).

2. I guess I should go through all the settings to see which ones give me no interlaced footage – meaning each letter can be properly read A-B-C-D – and the footage is not interlaced.

3. I guess I will do the audio pulldown through Pro-Tools?
I will read-up on the automatic audio pulldown in FCP and I will read the entire Cinema Tools guide. I think I’ve covered about half of it so far!
I spoke to one of the sound guys at my university and he told me Pro-Tools lets you conform the audio when you import it (I imagine I’ll be doing pull-down on all those .wav clips to 24TC?)

4. Should do the audio pull down to my .aiff music score files? I also have .aiff voiceover audio files.

5. When I export an OMF should I tell my sound designer to work in 23.98? 24TC In Pro-Tools? Or does frame rate does not matter at this point?

6. Perfoming Pull Down = Bake In?

I really, really appreciate all your help. It’s great to hear concrete advice after reading up on so many ‘recommendations’ and work-flows.

[Matt Lyon]

sorry, been crunching at work today so I couldn’t write sooner…

1. You may need to play around with the reverse telecine settings in Cinema Tools to find the combo that works, but start with:

Capture mode: Field 1 – Field 2
Fields: Style 1:AA
conform to 23.98 (don’t ever change this)
standard upper/lower: ON (unless nothing else works)

Usually, a telecine session will export an ALE file where every clip starts on a 00 frame, and every 00 frame is an “A” frame.

2. correct. when you read proper A/B/C/D letters, you’re reverse telecine worked

3. The pulldown doesn’t change the timebase of the audio, it just makes the audio play slower (since your video footage has been slowed down from 24.00 to 23.976 fps during the telecine). So the speed change should be 23.976/24.00 (aka 0.999%)

4. You only need to apply the pulldown to sound that was recorded while cameras were rolling.

5. Your sound guy should work at 23.976. It sounds like you are finishing on HD, which will be at 23.976 … so everything will stay in sync. If you finish on film at 24.00, then you need to apply a pullup to the final mix to maintain sync.

6. By “bake in,” I mean to say that the audio tracks are processed and re-exported with the speed change applied so they are permanently altered, as opposed to having FCP do the speed change “on the fly.” (in a sense, the opposite of a “non-destructive” effect)

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Boris Riabov]

Hello Matt,

Thanks for the help!
I’m just having an issue with Pro-Tools; when I open my new session and try to import my stereo .wav files so I can do the SRC pulldown, Pro-Tools converts them to mono files, and converts each file into two in its own folder.
When I import them, FCP still gives me the green bar in the audio 🙁
Is there any way to tell Pro-Tools to keep the .wav files in stereo for re-import back into FCP?

-Boris

[Boris Riabov]

Also,
I see that when I’m cutting my 23.98 picture-lock time line based off my 23.97 timeline, matching up the window burns, and even by what’s in the frame itself, the run time of the 23.98 clips are shorter anywhere from one-five tenths of a second.
I imagine this to be appropriate, due to the reverse telecine, but I just wanted to check if this was any cause for concern.

-Boris

[Matt Lyon]

hmm … I’m not enough of a ProTools guy to be able to explain how to do that of the top of my head, but I’m pretty sure there must be a way.

If you are still getting the green bars, there could be a number of things going on. Make sure ProTools is actually rendering a new file at 48000 hz, rather then just changing the sample rate to 47952, which is one way of applying pulldown, but not really FCP friendly.

[Boris Riabov] “I see that when I’m cutting my 23.98 picture-lock time line based off my 23.97 timeline,”

I assume you mean 29.97 timeline?

as for the clip lengths: are you sure they are actually shorter? remember that the timebase is different. So frame number 12@24fps is equivalent to frame 15@30 fps

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Boris Riabov]

Yes!
Duh!

I’m still figuring out the Pro Tools. I figure I’m just going to sync everything with the audio and just match the timelines by window burns – and either do the XML audio fix after I’m done matching my 23.98 timeline to my 29.97 timeline frame by frame – or simply reconnect the audio to my Pro Tools pulled-down audio, when I figure out how to export them properly as stereo and for FCP to recognized them as 47.952.

-Boris