Importing 24p video

[Steve Roberts]

It was shot 24p (sort of — frame mode), but then pulldown was added in the camera to make it 29.97, lower field first.

You need to remove pulldown in the interpretation dialog, and your resulting rate should be 23.976. This is correct.

You have to do this for every clip shot that way, but to speed things up, you can do it once, then choose file>interpret footage>remember interpretation. Next, import the rest of the files normally, select them in the project window, then select file>interpret footage>apply interpretation. Then drag them into a 23.976 fps comp.

Steve

[John-paul Bonadonna]

Ok – and what about exporting back out – since the material is DV, do I drop my comp into an export comp set to 29.97, lower fields first?

And, does working in the 23.97 help keep my motion graphics looking 24p as well?

jpb

[Steve Roberts]

All filmic material has pulldown added so it can be shown on NTSC TV at 29.97. 24p video cameras add that pulldown in the camera.

So if you’re delivering to DV (29.97), import the footage at 29.97 (don’t remove pulldown), and work in a 29.97 comp. You only want to remove pulldown if you’re doing some work that requires it, say, rotoscoping, or if you want to work on Varicam matrial at 23.98 for example, or go back to film.

People are used to seeing filmic material on TV at 29.97 with pulldown, so it’s cool to leave the footage at 29.97. It looks just as filmic (temporally) as film playing on TV.

As for the motion graphics, you could try rendering to the animation codec at 23.98, then re-importing and rendering to DV at 29.97 with pulldown added so the looks match. That should give you the look you want. Do a test.

At any rate, if you’re delivering DV, your final frame rate has to be 29.97 for NTSC, whether the footage is 24 pulled-down, or native 29.97.

Does that help?
Steve

[Tomadonna]

Hi Steve,

What if I want to make 2 formats out of the movie – one for NTSC DVD, and the other one for PAL DV, in which way should I work in AE then?

[Steve Roberts]

We have just reached the limit of my knowledge.

Actually, we reached that long ago, but I’ve been faking it since then. 🙂

I’d suppose that you should import the stuff twice: once with pulldown at 29.97, and once removing pulldown to 23.98, and place the two sets in two different folders in the project window. Next, work in two comps: NTSC 29.97 and PAL 25.

That’s the best I can do. As far as I know, there’s no simple process that would allow you to do all the work in one format then convert to the other with minimal loss, respecting/removing pulldown and all.

Anybody else?

Steve
(you can also search the COW on “PAL” and “NTSC”.)

[Tomadonna]

I actually meant that I will take the final resulting NTSC file and convert it to these two forms (using procoder for the PAL).
But as far as AE goes – What pulldown should I use i.e. WWSSW? Also, when I do that, I can’t change my clip to progressive again, do you know the reason for that?

Thanks again Steve!

[Jeremy Garchow]

Are you using final cut pro for final output?

[Andrew Kramer]

Okay a little bit of mis-information here but very close.

first off the canon xl2 does not shoot in frame mode it has true progressive scan ccds.
Second off “yes” you do want to interpret all your footage to 23.976 and work at a comp that is 23.976. This is the best option since you want to work and see your full 24 frames per second without the pull-down.

Now once you are satisfied with your work, render out your movie and in the “render settings” change the time sampling to use lower fields first (for NTSC anyway) and I generally use the wwssw cadence to render out.

also if you are using procoder don’t render to dv-avi use a quicktime “photo-jpg” at high quality because it will look a lot better when you encode for dvd.

have fun,

[Tomadonna]

Hi Andrew,

If I choose to export to NTSC Mpeg-DVD directly from AE, What settings should I use for output – 23.976 fps or 29.97 fps? Should I change “field rendering” from off to on in the render settings?

[Andrew Kramer]

Well my friend, it depends how you are authoring your dvd.
many dvd authoring programs will allow native 24p (or 23.976) so if you are using encore. Absolutely use 23.976 and you don’t have to add the pull-down at all. And yes in this method field rendering will not be necessary.

Andrew