Getting non drop frame warning when trying to re capture media

[Dan Chapman]

My Preset Editor is set to FireWire NTSC, Frame Rate:: 29.97, Default Timecode: Drop Frame.

I’ll try changing that next capture. But now this confuses me, a common state for me lately.

I thought that if you have 24P-or PA, it’s read at 29.97. The timeline should be set to 23.97 NDF.
But the Capture Presets (Audio/Video Settings) should be set to 29.98. That’s why I assume the Device Control Presets would be set to 29.98 as well. Maybe the Device Control Presets should be 29.98 NDF.

I had an extensive correspondence with Noah Kadner and Larry Jordan on this subject.

Here’s a quote from Noah (sorry for the long length):

DVX100 24pA footage should always be captured at 29.97 because that’s what’s on the tape. When a user wants to cut at 23.98 they need to properly remove the 2:3:3:2 pulldown introduced by the DVX100 during filming. The DVX100 flags these extra frames and embeds these flags into the Firewire data stream. FCP can read these flags back during ingest and conform the 29.97 pulldown footage back to the 23.98 captured by the camera. That is what the Remove Advance Pulldown from 2:3:3:2 sources checkbox in the capture settings is for. But in order to do this properly, the FPS setting in FCP must be set at 29.97 to give FCP the full firewire data stream and allow it to properly recognize the flags and remove the Advance pulldown frames.
If you set the capture FPS at 23.98, FCP will randomly delete frames to get from 29.97 to 23.98 but they will not be the correct frames. You’ll wind up with a 23.98 file that looks odd during playback from FCP because the 2:3:3:2 interlaced pulldown frames are still there along with randomly missing progressive frames. This has become the number one issue plaguing FCP users with DVX100 footage who want to cut at 23.98 and has resulted in a lot of confusion. I’ve hoped to lobby Apple on this issue so that they might include a warning pop-up in FCP giving notice that 23.98 FPS capture will result in improperly digitized DVX100 footage but haven’t made any headway and Panasonic hasn’t been able to either- maybe you can help with that.
I know it seems counterintuitive that one would use 29.97 as the capture frame rate in order to ingest 23.98 footage but that’s how it must be done because of the way the format is recorded to tape. And FYI- there are very few tape formats that run at 23.98 natively so it would be not be a proper FPS setting for most “24p” formats. The only ones I know of that actually can record to tape at 23.98 without introducing a pulldown are D5 and Sony HDCAM and HDCAM-SR.
-Noah

Dan

[Greg Lehman]

Hi all,

I encountered the same error message today as I switched projects and sought to capture newly shot footage (SD) in a new project. Googling the error message brought me here, hopefully this post — my first here — is helpful.

My footage was shot on a PD150, DVCAM setting, selecting “Auto” for shooting drop frame or non-drop frame. My video deck is a DSR-11. Similar to the camera, I selected “Auto” as to whether I am working with drop frame or non-drop frame footage. This summer, I upgraded to a MacBook Pro with FCP 6.0. I recently upgraded FCP to 6.0.5.

I have shot a voluminous amount of footage using the “Auto” setting in the PD150, all of which is indicated in all on-screen displays (monitor and FCP) using all colons. (That strikes me as strange, but that is definitely the setting and that is definitely the display! — your opinions welcomed).

When I sought on the MBP with FCP 6 to capture footage shot previously, I encountered the error message regarding drop frame and non-drop frame. I believe I resolved it in a way similar to the method employed today when I sought to capture footage shot using the same camera and computer, same settings, but after creating a new project.

Thankfully the problem is now resolved. Here are the steps I took.

1. First, I tinkered with changing the FCP settings from “drop frame” by unclicking them. Didn’t work, I got the same error message.

2. Second, I undertook the following steps: a) booted the MBP in “safe boot” mode (recommended once a week by Larry Jordan, start the Mac holding down the shift key until the blue screen appears, when fully booted then reboot without holding down any keys);

b) I then repaired permissions on the boot drive (which is where my FCP project files are located) and then trashed my FCP preferences;

c) then, I went into the menu on the DSR-11 and changed my setting from “Auto” to drop frame.

3. Third and last step, I reset all of my FCP preferences and did not change any of the default references from drop frame.

As indicated above, thankfully when I sought a new to capture the footage shot today I did not receive the drop frame/non-drop frame error message.

I hope this post is useful to someone. I am writing it as today’s footage is being captured.

All the best,

Greg (more or less a newbie)