Offline@29.97drop – to Online@23.98PSF, non-drop.

[Mark Raudonis]

[Godfrey Pye] “‘m from England and haven’t been blighted by this DF-NDF stuff before”

Godfrey,

Timecode has little to do with your situation. Your problem is that you are dealing with 24p material in a 29.97 environment. This is a rather complicated workflow that is not easily summed up in a quick post. There’s “reverse telecine” to be performed, then there’s the whole audio sync issue (pulldown). Oh, and since you mention you’re in England, are you going to be tranfering to PAL? Bottom line, you’re on-line might be a disaster if you don’t get someone who knows what they’re doing to consult with you on this in a hurry. Preferably BEFORE you start the on-line session. I’d suggest contacting the post house and get them involved now.

Mark

[Steve Covello]

Might I also suggest firing the post producer on this as well? Not the wisest workflow situation here.

Why not do the online yourself?

As for audio pulldown, that should not be a problem since 23.98 and 29.97 are the same speed, just simply different frame rates. [If you were working in 29.97 and had to conform to pure 24, why then you would have a problem.] You can do the picture-only conform, then simply copy/paste your original audio tracks onto the 23.98 master sequence.

I would suggest exporting a master DV QT movie to your desktop, renting an HDV deck, acquiring an HDV-compatible drive setup, creating a new project, drag/drop the master DV sequence into it, then media manage it to having a consolidated EDL. If you can, do this with the original media drives NOT mounted since you don’t actually care about the media, only the EDL. I don’t know if CP will let you do this, but I know Avid would, so try it.

Delete ALL of the audio tracks. Change the specs of the consolidated video-only sequence to the format and frame rate you want it to be [cmd + zero]. Then create a new bin, mount the consolidated sequence into the timeline, select all, then drag/drop the selection from the timeline into the new bin. this will create new clips for everything. Delete the useless transition stuff.

then try capturing it in HDV at 23.98, one tape at a time, even though it is a 29.97 sequence. I have been able to do this with HDCam with some success.

It will be damn close for most of the clips, though you might have to do a few manually. Reconnect media for the consolidated sequence. then import the DV QT and place it over the HDV video tracks, scale it, then split the screen. Slip frames to match the DV sequence referring to “A” frames for sync. “A” frames are zero frames on the second, such as 32:02:00. These zero frames will be identical no matter which frame rate you use.

I have seen situations where audio clips will self-truncate when copy/pasted from 29.97 to 23.98. Be aware of it. If you did any scaling/repos on the original DV footage, you will have to redo them. The new HDV sequence will still think it has DV material in it, so you will have to do a mass remove attributes command to scale everything back to 100%.

This may seem like a lot of trouble and somewhat imperfect, but it’s not your fault. The correct workflow would’ve retained the framerate in the offline process by either using a more compressed version of the original footage, or setting you up to work natively in HDV from the beginning.

steve covello

[Godfrey Pye]

Mark,
Thanks for your input.
Just so you know, I’m FROM England but I live in LA, so PAL is not the issue.
I just haven’t come up against such a clumsy ill thought-out work-flow as this one and I’m perplexed as what to do. As I said, the plan is merely to end up on DVD!

The material came to me after it was shot, telecine’d and transferred.
I told the director and producer that they should have shot on HDV and saved themselves thousands.

So I think I’ll throw the situation at the post house they chose in the first place.
I just hate it when people waste their money – they could have paid me more for editing!
Thanks again.
Godfrey

[Godfrey Pye]

Weevie,
Thanks for your elaborate suggestion to get over this post debacle.
In my defense, I was brought in when all the post decisions were already made (badly).

Your complex sounding, yet carefully thought-out solution is interesting – and I do have an HDV deck.
The problem is that the master material is on HDCam.
Surely that’s nothing to do with HDV – or is it?
Sorry to sound so dumb but I haven’t come across HDCam before – are you saying it is a derivation of HDV and it works in an HDV deck? If so, I could do what you have suggested!

Godfrey

[Steve Covello]

ooops. My bad. Meant HDCam. No difference in process, so, as you were…

steve

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

You guys are getting off on all kinds of tangents here. Your problem is of your own creation, and has nothing to do with how this was shot, transferred, or anything else.

The problem is that you captured and edited this as drop frame. Are the DVCam tapes themselves drop frame, or did you just play them in that way? Assuming that they’re non-drop frame (that would be the norm for anything downconverted from 23.98 HDCam originals), you basically need to recapture them as non-drop and manually match your edit. If all you did was put a drop frame flag on them, you shouldn’t have a problem with the actual time codes themselves, just the fact that you ID’d it as drop frame when, in fact, it isn’t. In that case, generate an EDL and change the line that says “FCM: Drop Frame” to Non Drop Frame. The post facility can then convert this to a 24 frame list (or you can, using Cinema Tools). The way to check this is to jog some of the clips through a time code that is an even minute that is not a 10th minute – minutes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 will be fine. As you jog past the minute marker, if the material is truly drop frame, the time code numbers will go from frame 29 to frame 02, skipping 00 and 01. If this is not the case – and every frame number is actually there in the sequence – your counting sequence is non-drop frame, regardless of what you called it. If the numbers are skipped as I just described, you actually have drop frame time code, and you need to go back and get new sources (or just redigitize what you have) that are non-drop frame.

All of the stuff previously mentioned as significant – like “A” frame cadence – is unimportant if the downconversions from the HDCam tapes were done at a professional facility. All professional downconverters work the same way, setting cadence so that all time codes ending in 0 or 5 are “A” frames – provided you use non-drop frame time code. If the tapes you have are actually drop frame, you need to go back to whomever provided them and have new ones made that are non-drop. Editing in standard definition for 24 frame projects is done every day by many, many editors, although a lot of them create a 23.98 project and convert the sources to that format prior to cutting – the best way to handle such a project. But Final Cut doesn’t make this easy (Avid does, BTW), so beginning editors tend to leave it at 29.97 – which if handled properly is fine, even if it’s not ideal.

It is a professional editor’s responsibility to know about things like drop frame and non-drop frame time code. If you’re taking on projects that involve this, you can’t go around complaining that “it should have been shot on HDV.” It was shot on film, it was transferred to 24p video, downconversions were made – a totally common and normal post path so far – and you accepted the job. Any problems that resulted further down the line are your responsibility. I understand your frustration, but that’s the truth.

[Sean Oneil]

Everyone relax.

All you do is convert the EDL. That’s it. Cinema Tools can do it, but let the online facility deal with it. They’ll have to go through each edit point and correct the missing frames that occur during this kind of conversion. But it’s manageable. People do this all the time.

Yes, downconverting it to drop frame instead of NDF was a bonehead move on their part. But the online place should still be able to convert the EDL no problem.

The REAL problem with this workflow is if you were NOT going back to 23.98, and instead mastering 29.97. Editing 24fps footage on a 30fps timeline destroys the 3:2 cadence. Most don’t realize this because it looks fine on their interlaced CRT broadcast monitor. The problems won’t be seen until it’s viewed by the consumer on an LCD/plasma or encoded for the web. Since you’re going back to 24, you’re forced to fix it, which is good.

The offline/SD online/HD 24fps workflow I prefer, is to simply capture the standard-def tapes over SDI and use the 3:2 removal (tapes need to be non-drop though I belive). It maintains the original 29.97 timecode, so it’s non-destructive – but you can change the TC to 23.98 if you wish (using Modify -> Timecode). It allows you to edit in the native framerate, so all of the edit points you make are clean.

Sean

[Godfrey Pye]

Sean,

I thank you for your sage advice. However as I mentioned, the project, which was shot on film, will be on-lined and then go to DVD only. Not to film.

So surely this means that I need to do an online session at 29.97 doesn’t it? Nothing would please me more than giving the problem to the post facility and letting those who made the mess pay to get out of it. But as a professional courtesy I feel I must give the on-line editor all the help I can.

Godfrey

[Godfrey Pye]

Mike,

Yes, the DV tapes are NDF and yes I did transfer them as drop frame.
I am not a beginner, it’s just that I have not encountered this situation before – maybe it’s because I’m from a world that doesn’t need to deal with drop and non-drop, maybe I should just know better – but we all live and hopefully learn eh!

By the way, my preference for an HDV shoot was that in my opinion it would have saved my client lots of money and would have looked just as good. However, this is not a blame game, it’s not the point. I just want to get the job done the best I can for my client.
I thank you for your candor and for your help. It sounds like I need to recapture.

Godfrey.

[Steve Covello]

>The problem is that you captured and edited this as drop frame. Are the DVCam tapes themselves drop frame, or did you just play them in that way?

To the best of my understanding, one does not have a choice as to whether to play a tape in NDF or DF — it plays, and digitizes, as it had been recorded. In my 20 years of experience with tape systems, I have never come across a dial menu option or a switch on a deck that allows this capability [thus, dailies specs]. I am willing to be wrong about this if there is some new ‘thing’ that does this, but then it would make the whole point of address track TC basically a moot point. the only exception to this that I can think of are tapes that had been errantly dubbed with NDF on the address track and DF in the VITC, which are useless unless you manually change the deck settings in FCP. [AAARRRGGG!]

You can convert an already digitized clip from one TC to another, but at the risk of destroying the integrity of the clip to its source tape.

Second, whenever a downconvert is made from HDCam 23.98 to SD 29.97, the TC is generated in realtime from the DC board through the RS-422 [NOT SDI] to the destination deck. The SD 29.97 TC does not actually exist in any recorded form on the HDCam tape.

As for your somewhat punitive rebuke of the editor who posted the question, I believe he was brought in after the fact, so cut him some slack.

I stand by my original recommendations. the finishing on this project is destined to be a “FFF” [frame f#$%^k fest] no matter what he does next.

steve covello