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Help – choppy video due to doubled frames at 720p60i?
Hi guys,
I have to work on a project that was shot in DVCProHD 720p, 60i on a Varicam camera and on a HVX-200 with an import through Firestore, so actually without capture. The material plays back in its 29.97 Vid Rate and a TCR of 30 with every fourth frame being duplicated. Opening the footage in Shake (before De-interlacing) and on a Quicktime editor, it looks even more bizarre with a field order of something like AB BC CC DD EE or three full frames with two interlaced frames. Does anybody know what is going on here and how can I get rid of it?
Removing doubled frames through the Panasonic Plug-In did not work, since only clips with 59.94 fps are supported. Has anybody ideas? Please help!John
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9 Replies
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Set your sequence settings to match the footage. In the current version of FCP, if the first clip you edit into a sequence does not match the sequence settings, FCP asks you if you would like to change the sequence settings to match the footage. Say YES.
If the footage from the two cameras does not share the same settings, then convert the footage from the camera that will be used less before editing. Do a small test conversion and edit the footage into your sequence to make sure it works.
There are other ways of dealing with mis-matched footage, but I’ve found that the method here saves on headaches during the edit, unless the edit is very short.
To see the settings of your footage, select the clip and then hit Command-9. To see the settings of your sequence select the sequence and then hit Command-Zero.
Good luck.
Best,
Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC -
Thank you for your answer! A good advice – will be remembering this next time. However here the settings do match for a standard 60i, 30 / 29.97 sequence. They both play out fine – except that every fourth frame is duplicated. By looking at them in Shake I can see that a different pulldown must have been introduced on both cameras. While one is obviously a 3:2 pulldown, they other seems to be 2:2 (two interlaced and two whole frames). Since the client already complained about “choppy” frames after having converted the edit from 60i to 50i / 25 fps (on a stand alone converter that is), I was asked to look into this and found the doubled frames. In Shake I can remove the 3:2 pulldown but will end up with a clip in 24p. As for the other clip, I can also use some nods to clip out every fifth frame, but in the end I will always end up with a shorter clip that won’t synch to the audio. Or am I supposed to leave the doubled frames all in there??? I can hardly imagine that… Any ideas?
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Does the camera original footage (before the edit) display the same frame doubling in Shake?
Best,
Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC -
Yes it did. Just to mention that: The regular pulldown came from a Varicam camera, footage was digitized at 60i on a 1200A, while the 2:2 pulldown footage came from a HVX200, recorded on firestore, so the clip came in as QT as it was.
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[John Wate] “I have to work on a project that was shot in DVCProHD 720p, 60i on a Varicam camera and on a HVX-200 with an import through Firestore, so actually without capture”
The Varicam does not shoot interlaced footage, it only shoots progressive. That’s 720p/60.
[John Wate] ” The material plays back in its 29.97 Vid Rate and a TCR of 30 with every fourth frame being duplicated. “
The frame rate is 59.94, not 29.97. The Timecode in FCP will reflect this. You should be editing in a 720p/60 DVCPro HD timeline which will display a time base of 59.94.
[John Wate] “Opening the footage in Shake (before De-interlacing) and on a Quicktime editor, it looks even more bizarre with a field order of something like AB BC CC DD EE or three full frames with two interlaced frames. “
You should NOT be de-interlacing anything. The footage is progressive, natively. If you have created some sort of 720/29.97 interlaced timeline, you need to get out of that and into a proper 720/59.94 progressive timeline.
If you’re seeing duplicate frames, then this means that the camera was set to either 720/24 or 720/30 and you have not run the footage through the Panasonic Frame Rate Converter to extract the 24 or 30 from the 720/60 capture. You capture the footage at 720/60 and then use the FRC to extract the 24 / 30 which removes the duplicate frames.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Just to be clear – are you seeing this problem on original footage from both cameras?
Best,
Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels, LLC -
Yes, thank you – that was a lot of insight. I usually don’t work with this material (as you can tell) When looking up some informations on the frame rate converter, I already suspected that I would have my footage in 59.94 and extract it from there. The problem is that the footage reads 29.97 as I received it and I have no chance to recapture, so … please bare with me… since I can’t “render” the lost information of 59.94 back – what would be the advice for me to do? I know its probably a disaster but… any ideas?
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[John Wate] “The problem is that the footage reads 29.97 as I received it and I have no chance to recapture, so … please bare with me… since I can’t “render” the lost information of 59.94 back – what would be the advice for me to do? I know its probably a disaster but… any ideas?”
If it truly was captured at 720/29.97 I really have no answer for you. That’s completely wrong and you’ll end up with a lot of choppy, stuttery video. The only option is to have the folks with the Varicam re-capture the footage correctly.
As for the HVX-200, that CAN shoot in 1080i/29.97 so I’m not sure if that’s what they did there or came up with some custom 720/29.97 set-up which would completely screw you up when trying to edit.
Short of recapturing / re-importing the original footage correctly, I honestly don’t know what to tell you.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Oh well…not good but thanks for the answer anyway…
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