How do I avoid the 4:1 pulldown

[Shane Ross]

Use Compressor and this workflow. You will be converting to an interlaced format. That’s the only way to make 23.98 to 29.97 look smooth and decent. Unless you use After Effects, but I’m not sure how to do that:

23.98 to 29.97 via Compressor:

1. Drop clips you want to convert into Compressor

2. In Compressor, select your video then right click and choose NEW TARGET WITH SETTING > APPLE > FORMATS > QUICKTIME > APPLE PRORES 422 (HQ). Or pick whatever codec you like to work with.

3. Click on that newly created compression setting to open it in the Inspector window. Click the Encoder tab. Click the Video: (Settings…) button. Make the frame rate 29.97. Check the interlaced box. Set it’s drop down menu to Bottom field first. Click OK.

4. Click the Frame Controls tab. Set Frame Controls to On. Set Output Fields to Bottom first. Leave Deinterlace on Fast. Leave Adaptive Details checked. Leave Rate Conversion set to Fast. Leave the Set Duration to: on 100% and make sure it’s radio button is selected and NOT the “so source frames play at 29.97 fps” button.

5. Make changes to the Filters or Geometry sections as needed. Those settings listed above are the ones critical to getting the proper 3:2 pulldown added.

6. Submit the compression, then bring the resulting video back into Final Cut Pro. Place it in a 29.97 timeline and make sure you watch it on an NTSC monitor to verify that it looks good. If you step through it frame-by-frame you should see the familiar pattern of 2 split/interlaced frames followed by 3 whole frames. This is a very important step. I tried many solutions that looked OK playing back on the computer monitor, but looked terrible on the NTSC monitor.

Shane
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[Kevin Blum]

Thanks! I’ve seen that before as well. What’s the workaround if that happens? (where It looks bad when played on NTSC monitor) Do you just run the raw file through compressor again?

[Shane Ross]

yes, and try tweaking the settings a little.

I really need to learn how to do this in AE.

Shane
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[Kevin Blum]

I guess there’s a plugin for After Effects called twixtor that will do any conversion seamlessly. Unfortunately it’s $600.

[Jerry Wise]

i just converted 238gb/127 files using Shanes method. it worked great. i think there is a Droplet out there in the Cow archives that you can use.

[Kevin Blum]

Will Shane’s method work for 59.94 as well. I was just told by the lead editor that he wants the final quicktime output to be 59.94. Aren’t they the same? Should I just convert the footage to 29.97, edit in 29.97 and then export using quicktime conversion and change the frame rate to 59.94? Will that affect the final run time at all?

[Kevin Blum]

I just tried that method and didn’t seem to work. When I scroll through the clip it still seems to have the 4:1 pulldown.

[Shane Ross]

If you make the new clip progressive, it will do that. The clip needs to be interlaced for proper pulldown.

Shane
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[Kevin Blum]

Strange, it worked correctly on one clip but not the other. I’ll try running it again. Thanks for all your help.

[Kevin Blum]

I guess what was throwing me off was, when I view the clips in quicktime player they have the proper pulldown, but when I view them in FCP they play back at 4:1. My final output looks looks fine though.