problem w/ removing pulldown with stretched footage

[Darby Edelen]

[Lisa Daly] “I’m removing pulldown on some footage, then stretching it to 200-400%. The problem is that SWWWS turns into SWWWWWWS, which looks very obvious. We can’t find high speed footage, so we’re hoping to find some way to make this work without having to speed it up.”

I’m confused about your process and your goal. If SWWWS is turning into SWWWWWWS then it sounds like you’re not removing the pulldown correctly before stretching it (we are talking temporally here right? making the footage play at 1/2 the speed?). Once you remove the pulldown the footage should be WWWW without any split frames, then you can stretch to your hearts content… unless I’m missing something about your process?

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Steve Roberts]

First, import the footage.
Next, alt-double-click on it.
Next, select file>interpret footage>main.
In that dialog, separate fields and guess pulldown.
In the window showing the footage, step through it using PageDn. If you see any interlacing at all, go back and choose another interpretation.
Repeat stepping and choosing until you see no interlacing.
Now you can stretch the footage.

Note: if the footage is made up of several cuts, the interpretation may be different for each cut. In that case, you’d have to a)cut the footage up in an NLE and import it, then find the pulldown for each cut, or b) duplicate the footage, re-interpret each dupe with its own pulldown appropriate to the desired segment of the footage. Add a comment in the comments column in the Project window to indicate which clip from the dupe has the correct pulldown.

If that didn’t work, tell us more about the footage, where it came from, how it was shot, was it film, is it stock, and so on.