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Some Basic DV Frame Rate Issues
I’ve been working with 24p HD for a few years now, and now I’ve forgotten some SD basics….
I’ve inherited a project (fcp 6.0.4) that was shot in MiniDV over a few years time. Then it was loaded into FCP by various people over time as well, so I had no interaction with the shooting/loading processes.
The sequence settings of this project are 29.97, and all is well with the sequences. However, some of the clips show those awful interlaced frames that appear way off every 3 and 4 frames when viewed in the viewer, and some dont.
I’m assuming this indicates that some tapes were shot at 24fps Normal, and some were just shot at 29.97. But I don’t remember seeing those awkward interlaced frames in all of my DV footage back when I used to work with it.
I can take one of these tapes that have the interlaced frames and insert it into my DSR-11 deck and see the interlaced frames right there on the tape by stepping through it in the capture window. This I don’t remember – is this how the tapes looked when miniDV is shot at 24fps N? And does this indeed mean that the tapes that do NOT have these interlaced frames were shot at 29.97fps?
When captured, the interlaced frames of these tapes in question remain interlaced when viewed in the Viewer, creating that fuzzy feel every few frames.
My confusion lies here: Can I determine, by looking at the tapes, whether they were shot at 24fps or 29.97, since the tapes are always recorded at 29.97 either way?
And if so, do I have to capture the tapes differently depending on whether they were shot a 24fps or 29.97? And how do I do that, since I only have one Easy Setup for DV NTSC in FCP?
These are some basic issues I’ve not dealt with in years and I’m just rusty here…
Thanks for any help.
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7 Replies
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All (ALL!!) DV is shot at 29.97. That said, there are three (4) ways to do it.
1) Shoot 29.97 progressive or fully interlaced
2) Shoot 24 progressive but add a simple cadence (3:2) before it goes to tape making it 29.97
3) Shoot 24 progressive but add an ADVANCED cadence (2:3:3:2) before it goes to tape making it 29.97.1 – no problem. Shot 29.97 edit 29.97.
2 – sometimes called FILM LOOK. Just like a standard telecine this cadence gives a natural film look to playback. Hard to edit because it jacks with the cadence. You can tell if it was shot with simple cadence by framing thru… 3 progressive to 2 interlaced (combined). IF you wish to remove this cadence use CINEMA TOOLS to REVERSE TELECINE the captured footage.
3 – NOT that pleasing to the eye when played back. Done so you can easily remove the cadence either on capture or later. You will notice this by the 4 progressive to 1 combined frame. Easy to make this 24 fps (23.98) after the fact… just use TOOLS menu REMOVE ADVANCED PULLDOWN.
Hope that makes sense.
Mike
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Thanks for the review.
I do know that all DV is recorded at 29.97, so all of these tapes are 29.97. I do suspect that the tapes with the interlaced frames were shot at 24 (and recorded at 29.97 with 3:2). My issue is that I dont remember seeing such awful interlaced frames in this instance.
The interlacing spans 3 or 4 frames and is extreme at its peak. It leads me to believe something is wrong, and I’m trying to figure out what it is, or if this is normal and I simply forgot how it looked.
And I’m trying to decide if I need to do anything to these clips, or recapture them with a different setting, or just accept it as normal.
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AH!!
Yuk… then yes… might have been recorded with the wrong field first.
Not sure where else you can do this, but if you have SHAKE you can reverse the fields. I honestly don’t know if there is a simple way to do it with FCP or not. Hopefully someone here will help!!
Good luck,
CaptM
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Hmmm.. are you saying it could have been recorded in the camera incorrectly? Or captured incorrectly?
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Yes, captured incorrectly.
Mike
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My confusion continues…
In FCP I can change the field dominance of a clip in its Item Properties. Makes no difference.
I’ve also captured a short segment from one of these tapes with the bad interlacing in several ways, with absolutely zero change in the resulting clip. I tried DV 23.98, DV Advanced Pulldown, DV 29.97 starting at a variety of frames to see if it catches a cadence differently and gets rid of the interlacing…
Nothing changes the resulting clip. Very strange. It’s simply interlaced to the extreme on the tape and I can’t seem to do anything about it.
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Hello Greg/Michael, i seem to have the same issue, so i read the response/question with great interest.
I was recently handed a bunch of mini DVtapes, and captured all of them regularly in FCP (DV NTSC, 29.97)
I have major interlacing lines (2 frames play normally, 2 frames interlace…) and it goes on and on…
The producer doesn’t know in what frame rate this was shot, so i need to figure this out asap… I read the above pull-down response, and need to try that. I’ve never had to deal with this before… and i am feeling way out of water here.
(24p progressive, recapture? pulldown? Yikes…! This is probably a good learning experience).
I love to know if the solution to the above problem was ever found. Please let me know. I really don’t want to re-capture ALL the tapes, it would be a great headache…
Thank you so much!!
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