shooting in 24pa & capturing in FCP

[Dberton]

If you shot in 24pa, you need to capture at 29.97, since that is what the source footage frame rate is. You should use a preset running at 29.97 fps that removes the advanced pulldown from this source footage, since that will then give you the desired 23.98 framerate in the captured clip. Then simply create a new sequence running at 23.98 fps, drop your clip on it, and you are all set.

[Noah Kadner]

My DVD(link below) goes over this step by step. Here’s the basics:

DVX100 24pA footage should always be captured at 29.97 because that’s what’s on the tape. When a user wants to cut at 23.98 they need to properly remove the 2:3:3:2 pulldown introduced by the DVX100 during filming. The DVX100 flags these extra frames and embeds these flags into the Firewire data stream. FCP can read these flags back during ingest and conform the 29.97 pulldown footage back to the 23.98 captured by the camera. That is what the Remove Advance Pulldown from 2:3:3:2 sources checkbox in the capture settings is for. But in order to do this properly, the FPS setting in FCP must be set at 29.97 to give FCP the full firewire data stream and allow it to properly recognize the flags and remove the Advance pulldown frames.

If you set the capture FPS at 23.98, FCP will randomly delete frames to get from 29.97 to 23.98 but they will not be the correct frames. You’ll wind up with a 23.98 file that looks odd during playback from FCP because the 2:3:3:2 interlaced pulldown frames are still there along with randomly missing progressive frames. This has become the number one issue plaguing FCP users with DVX100 footage who want to cut at 23.98 and has resulted in a lot of confusion. I’ve hoped to lobby Apple on this issue so that they might include a warning pop-up in FCP giving notice that 23.98 FPS capture will result in improperly digitized DVX100 footage but haven’t made any headway and Panasonic hasn’t been able to either- maybe you can help with that.

I know it seems counterintuitive that one would use 29.97 as the capture frame rate in order to ingest 23.98 footage but that’s how it must be done because of the way the format is recorded to tape.

-Noah

Unlock the secrets of the DVX100 and Final Cut Pro!
https://www.callboxlive.com

[Dorit Grunberger]

Many thanks to both of you. It is now very clear to me. I will follow up with my Apple “creative” who is very responsive and I’ll urge him to let the powers that be know about it too. So as far as you know even in the latest FCP version just coimng out, there’s still no warning?
Could you baby-step me through the correct process i.e. : how EXACTLY to set the capture correctly and how to then open a sequence in 23.98? If I get that far successfully, do I then just export through compressor with no further modifications and into DVDSP? I ask this because I just started to experiment with using AC3 instead of AIFF soundtrack conversion/compression and am having issues there too. Ahhh, this is not an easy process… The error I’m getting there is:

Build cancelled
Formatting finished.
Building was not successful. See log.
Formatting finished.
The formatting job was canceled by the user.
Starting DVD Build UNTITLED_DISC…
Compiler Initializing…
Precompiling Project UNTITLED_DISC
Language codes for ‘English’ and ‘English-2’ must differ

Build cancelled
Formatting finished.
Building was not successful. See log.

Many thanks again. I’ve learned more in my 3 weeks of Creative Cow interactions than in the whole past year on my own!

[Dorit Grunberger]

Thanks so much. One follow-up question: If I drop the clip into a sequence that hasn’t been modified to 23.98 (where do I change that preset BTW?), in other words, i just open a sequence with whtever default setting (I’m assuming 29.98?) how will it be different? Can it lead to errors?

[Dberton]

[LifePrints Video] “Thanks so much. One follow-up question: If I drop the clip into a sequence that hasn’t been modified to 23.98 (where do I change that preset BTW?), in other words, i just open a sequence with whtever default setting (I’m assuming 29.98?) how will it be different? Can it lead to errors?”

No. FCP will simply convert it if the framerates do not match. But this is not what you want for 24pa footage that you have captured.

Create a new sequence. Right-click the sequence (before opening it) and select “Settings…”. In the “Sequence Settings” window, change the “Editing Timebase” to 23.98. Then open that sequence and drop your 23.98 clips which you just imported from the DVX onto it — they should play instantly now, without the need to render. From this point, you are now editing true 24p footage in FCP, which you can output to a true 24p DVD.

BTW, you can change the default sequence type in the “Sequence Presets” of the “Audio/Video Settings” for FCP.

db

[Dorit Grunberger]

Got it! Thanks. Now of course, new questions got generated:

If I change the preset to FCP instead of audio/video, what does that do for me?

If I finish editing and am ready to export to compressor – DVDSP, what export sub-settings (assuming 90 minutes best quality NTSC setting) should I use if any?

[Noah Kadner]

Haw- you need my DVD- I spend hours going over this stuff step by step…

Unlock the secrets of the DVX100 and Final Cut Pro!
https://www.callboxlive.com

[Dorit Grunberger]

i’ll put my order in right away 😉