Mixing frame rates: Apple’s culpability in end user confusion

[Barbara Ballow]

Okay, so given that I have been handed 80 hours of footage, half from SD 29.97 tapes and half from
HD 23.98 P2 – even though I was promised that AT LEAST it was all shot at the same frame rate,
where do I start? I am tempted to just walk away from the project. This is especially hard as I am
coming back to FCP after a year cutting a feature-length doc on an AVID.

thanks, Babs

Final Cut Studio 7.0.2
MacBook Pro 10.6.3
3.06 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
8 GB Memory

[Shane Ross]

Babs…

You need to look at this backwards. What will you be delivering? What format? HD or SD? 23.98 or 29.97? Tape for file? Then work backwards from there. If SD at 29.97, then you will need to convert the HD footage to SD to match. If HD at 23.98 or 29.97…then you need to convert the SD footage to HD at 23.98 (you can always output 29.97 from 23.98 with a good capture card).

You will need a capture card if working in HD…one that will upconvert the SD footage to HD, and then you need to use Compressor to get from 29.97 to 23.98. Then when you output, you can output 29.97 or 23.98. Unless you need to deliver a data file, in which case things are different.

This isn’t an easy task, let me tell you. But it is doable. If you want ease in mixing formats, then look at Avid Media Composer 4.0….it does a great job. Otherwise, if you use FCP, you will have to do converting beforehand.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Stuart Page]

I’m currently editing a project mostly shot at 1080 25P, but some was shot at 1080 23.98. I have been syncing all of the cameras using Plural-Eyes to a master audio track recorded on a Zoom H4N, and it’s been going really smoothly. I’m just getting onto the 23.98 footage, and I thought I’d convert it to 25fps using Nattress, but I tried just dropping the clips into the 25fps timeline, and they play beautifully smooth, it’s just that they eventually go out of sync. But I am cutting all over the place from 3x cameras and cutaways, so I found that I was able to sync the 23.98fps footage easily over quite a few seconds without any discernible “out-of-sync” look, and I’m talking MS of people speaking as well. So depending what it is, don’t despair, it might not need to be all in sync perfectly. If you’re really creative in your cutting, It might be better to show whole frames than have footage that’s stuttering around because you’ve dropped fields of frames here and there, or melded frames together with a standards conversion, unless you really have to. What put me off initially was that Nattress (which I do love) was going to take 9 hours to convert my clips. I know this is not a solution, and won’t work for most people, but I just thought I’d say this anyway.