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FCP6 Does NOT Add Pulldown When Mixing Formats
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Gary & Jeremy,
Hate to say I told you so, but it looks like Apple agrees with me. I tested it out and I was wrong in my assumption. Final Cut 6 does indeed downconvert HD clips to 480 lines – regardless if the sequence is 486 or 480 (which this errant user believes to be the proper way).
I took a 1080i ProRes clip and threw it on two different sequences. One was a ProRes NTSC 486 sequence. The other was DV50 which of course is 480. Both had anamorphic checked.
In both instances, the clip was scaled exactly to exactly the same dimensions. “44.44%” under scale, and “18.52%” under distort. On the ProRes timeline, the height of the clip appears to be 6 lines shorter than the full frame.
I copied and pasted clips from one sequence to the other to double check. They are identical in scale.
Also, if the source is 1080p, it centers it. But if it’s 1080i, it offsets it by one line (like it should because 1080i has upper field dominance). That got me wondering why another poster here said it doesn’t do this when transcoding between 480 and 486. That poster was wrong. It does do the offeset. However, he was right about the fact that it scales it. Place a 486 clip on a 480 sequence and it scales it to 98.77% (and looks like crap of course). This is obviously a mistake on their part so hopefully they’ll fix it.
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[CharlieX] ” these sounds like the exact same issues I deal with daily in FCP5. Field ordering problems, pulldown issues, scaling issues between formats. “
You’re right. But the difference is that FCP5 never claimed to support mixed formats. The rule of thumb was “Buyer Beware”. But now FCP6 tells a different story, yet the results are the same. In fact it seems the only thing they did was unlock the RT Extreme restrictions for mixed formats. Other than that, it behaves exactly the same as version 5 (except the addition of a 486/480 scaling bug we’ve been talking about).
To be fair, I think they did know what they were doing for the most part. Despite my assumptions, it does scale things properly. And there is a setting to pick what kind of pulldown you want in the “System Settings” and the default pulldown method is 2:3:2:3 like it should be. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually do anything – at least not on my Dual G5. So these problems appear to be bugs, rather than poor design intention.
Guy, yes I sent my feedback. I hope others do as well.
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[Sean ONeil] “Put a 23.98 clip into a 29.97 NTSC sequence. It doesn’t add 3:2 pulldown when outputting SDI. Instead it adds a duplicate frame every 4 frames or so. Just like how it worked in Final Cut 5”
All the way back in FCP 4.5, you had a choice of adding pulldown in 2:3, 2:3:3:3, or 2:2:2:4 depending on your cpu speed. In FCP 5.1.4, it’s in System Pref, Playback Control. They’ve even added 24@25fps options.
I don’t have FCP 6 yet, so I can’t say how it behaves. But did you find this option there or are you saying that the pulldown selection is not operating properly?
CHL
Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Video Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Trainer
http://www.chiholee.com -
[Guy] “This is only for firewire output of a 23.98 timeline”
I agree with you as it’s exactly what I said in the quote.
Obviously, FCP is rendering stuff with a 2:2:2:4 pulldown. It needs to be smart enough to render 3:2 for 24p sources in a 30 or 60 frame environment.
Jeremy
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[Chi-Ho Lee] “you had a choice of adding pulldown in 2:3, 2:3:3:3, or 2:2:2:4 depending on your cpu speed”
Yeah, but that’s for playout and a sequence that is all 24p. Why Sean is saying is that when he drops a 24p clips in a 30 fos timeline, the media gets rendered with a 2224 pulldown instead of 3:2. Therein lies the problem.
Jeremy
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[JeremyG] “Yeah, but that’s for playout and a sequence that is all 24p. Why Sean is saying is that when he drops a 24p clips in a 30 fos timeline, the media gets rendered with a 2224 pulldown instead of 3:2. Therein lies the problem.”
Ok, I would have thought that this setting would control ALL pulldown patterns in ALL sequences that would require pulldown. It would seem logical to me, but obviously that’s not the case.
CHL
Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Video Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Trainer
http://www.chiholee.com -
Yes I tried that setting. In fact its 2:3:2:3 by default.
Unfortunately it has no effect on the situation.
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[Sean ONeil] “Hate to say I told you so, but it looks like Apple agrees with me.”
I am confused, is this not the same Apple that cannot get pulldown correct, yet you trust them to handle scaling in a manner correctly.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
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