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Emergency: 35mm shoot edited in 29.97, Outputting to 24p film, no flex
Here’s a dilemma that is consistently discussed, yet after many nights of research I still haven’t found the least tedious way of fixing this.
I’m currently posting a film that was originally shot in Super35mm and telecined to 29.97 for use in FCP. It was edited in 29.97, with temp nested effects that will eventually be redone in 2K by a VFX house. The film is now fine cut and is awaiting Digital Intermediate scanning, conforming, grading for eventual output on 35mm anamorphic. As the original dailies transfer lab (and the editor) had assumed the footage was destined for broadcast, they neglected to provide a flex-file or ALE, and therefore I am now faced with the prospect of conforming to 35mm with window burn only.
Naturally, I am faced with the reverse telecine cadence nightmare, since the edit was done without any attention paid to A (or D)-frame cut points, so I’m faced with analyzing 250 separate clips with arbitrary field cadences by hand.
Now, I spent six days last week porting everything to a 23.976 timeline using Cinema Tools Reverse Telecine, converting my EDL, locating and re-attaching my new media, and then updating the edit points to reflect the new +/1 frame edits. I then copied down every single timecode and keykode number from the on-screen burn and created a workable EDL and cut list for the D.I. lab.
This has been refused by the D.I. lab since they are convinced that the visual cadence problems in the cutting copy (i.e. overlapping fields) are indicative of a much larger problem. When I looked at the cutting copy of the 23.98 session it
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3 Replies
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Well, one thing to give a go: 30fps edl from FCP, translate to 24fps EDL with Cinema Tools. Have DI house load at 2K with 5 frame handles. There will be little gaps and problems with the 24edl, but nothing should be more than a frame or two out. Take an extra day to go through the 2K conform and niggle the clips until they sync to sound and feel good.
The big problem is that Timecode on the 29.97 fps tape will never resolve right in 24fps land. The only burn in frames I would trust is at the top of the second (:00).
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[darkly] “1. I can use a hardware pulldown remove, and batch digitize all the DVCAM/DBeta source tapes into the 23.98 timeline. Should theoretically work, but would be extremely time consuming to rebuild from scratch.”
Actually doing this isn’t so bad. I ran into a similar problem. Although film wasn’t involved, the show was shot at 23.98, edited at 29.97, and then later had to be mastered to 23.98Psf HD.
You don’t have to rebuild it. Just batch recapture at 23.98 using hardware pulldown and it will reconnect everything properly. Then just copy and paste everything to a 23.98 sequence. It maintains the original 29.97 source TC from the tape even though the video is 23.98.
There is one issue to be aware of though. Occasionally at the end or beginning of a clip, it will be one frame short. These spots represent bad edits where you made cuts between fields. So use the up and down arrow keys to go through the timeline and trim the clips to fill the gaps.
Also you might want to check out JES Deinterlace. It’s free and it can do a reverse telecine while detecting cadence breaks.
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I am just entirely curious about this. I have only done one negative cutlist with cinema tools, and went through some vaguely similar stuff (albeit with less experience backing me up). I checked every cut in the window burn, cut with handles, conformed the retransferred HD footage, so as a relatively new post person, I have to ask, is there any good reason to EVER use 29.97 if its not being onlined and finished that way?
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