upconverting to 720p30 with MXO2 for FCP…

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks again very much for taking the time to explain all of this too me and also posting the clips.

I am a bit troubled about upconverting 480i29.97 to 720p59.94 since this would give me twice the number of frames making the duplicates redundant. 720p29.97 seems to be the sweet spot for me since my old interviews were all shot on DV at 29.97 and i would not be adding any extra frames. Just curious if you’ve used the MXO2 to upconvert to 720p29.97 or 1080p29.97? I’m not sure if Matrox doesn’t actually mean 720p30 and 1080p30 when they use those terms.

I just did a burn test with Adobe Encore with my upconverted 720p29.97 footage and everything looked good. My FCP sequence had upconverted 720p29.97 footage mixed with some GH1 footage shot at 1080p24 and did a great job of handling these different formats in the same timeline. The sequence codec setting was set to pro res 720p29.97

[Nicholas Natteau]

Correction to my last posting: Matrox’s 1080p29.97 is in fact 1080i59.94 but their 720p29.97 really is 720p30.

[Jeremy Garchow]

I forgot to mention that the Kona does not allow an upconvert to 29.97, only 59.94 for 720p. I actually can’t see how the MXO2 allows it either as the SMPTE spec for 720p is 59.94. If you reread that post about the Varicam, it might make more sense. So I had to go 59.94. That’s the way 720p works. That’s why I suggest you edit in a 59.94 timeline.

Those extra frames are pulldown and completely normal. Just like 3:2 pulldown in interlaced material. Those pulldown frames are completely normal. The only difference between the interlaced down an progressive pulldown is that the progressive pulldown in whole frames, not fields. But since 720p runs at twice the number for frames per second than 1080i, this difference is imperceptible. If you lay this off to tape, rest assured your 720p master will be at 59.94 and pulldown would get added automatically by fcp and the Matrox. So what you are doing is preemptively adding pulldown. Either way, the results are exaclty the same.

I would not edit @720p29.97 as your 720p24 material will have a 2224 pulldown added to it. That will look stuttery. Stick with 59.94. If we were in the same room, it would be
much easier to show you. The pulldown you see in a 59.94 timeline are normal and supposed to be there.

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Jeremy,

Thank you again for patiently explain all of this to me.

The reason I was hoping that I could edit with 720p29.97 is that my original film was shot 480i29.97 and in order to future proof my film, I wanted to take my old 480i timelines and replace their 480i content with their identical up converted 720p footage. But because 59.94 is twice the frame rate of 29.97, I would essentially have to re-edit all the sequences from scratch. As everything would have to be pushed forward. For example 1 second cross dissolve in a 29.97 fps timeline turns into a half second cross dissolve in a 59.94 fps timeline.

If I could up convert to 720p29.97, I would simply be performing “replace edits” (replacing all my 480i29.97 clips with their 720p29.97 substitutes without any clips shifting around in the timeline.

Just to be sure then, 720p29.97 is still not an up convert strategy you would recommend?

[Jeremy Garchow]

You could media manage your timeline to 720p59.94 (use the create offline option) and you wouldn’t have to do all those replace edits. You would just have to recapture.

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Jeremy,

Do you mean start with a blank 720p59.94 timeline and then just paste in the 480i29.97 clips from the previous 480i29.97 timeline? Can you clarify? Thank you in advance.

[Jeremy Garchow]

No, I mean use the media manager to create an offline project, the recapture your 525i material to 720p59.94.

Check this out for reference, it’s a bit dated, but the main concepts are there:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_onlining_jordan.html

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Jeremy,

Regarding the article you pointed me to, I tried that approach but my problem is that my upconverted footage has a different frame rate (720p59.94) to the original 480i29.97.

The article refers to offlining NTSC footage and recapturing at a higher resolution but not at a different frame rate. That is my major problem: ending up with a timeline where everything has to be moved around because all the upconverted clips have a frame rate double that of the original clips.

FCP Pro Video told me to offline all my clips and recapture at 720p59.94 but NOT use the media manager to do this due to the frame rate change. Do you still feel that Media Manager is the way to go?

Have you used the Media Manager when you had to offline and recapture at twice the frame rate?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Nicholas Natteau] “Have you used the Media Manager when you had to offline and recapture at twice the frame rate? “

Yes, offline @ 29.97 and online @ 59.94. Have you tried it yet? You can see it’s going to work. 720p59.94 tc still uses 29.97 tc. The thing is, that frame rate is still the same frequency, that is 60Hz.

Jeremy

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Jeremy,

Yes, I tried it: I offlined my 480i29.97 clips and recaptured them at 720p59.94 but not through the Media Manager.

I simply went into my Browser window and group selected my 480i clips, selected “Make Offline” and then clicked “Batch Capture” with “Kona LHi Apple Pro Res 720p59.94”. So I now I have them all recaptured at 720p59.94

The problem is when it comes to the timeline. If I drop them into a blank timeline, then the blank timeline conforms to the clips, and aquires an fps of 59.94. But if I start replacing all my 480i29.97 clips from my 480i29.97 timeline with their 720p59.94 upconverted identicals, that’s when everything shows up in the wrong place.

I’m starting to think that there’s no quick solution to this. That I probably need to have both timelines open simultaneously: my 480i29.97 original sequence and my new 720p.59.94 sequence and then simply drop all my 720p clips in the same order in the new timeline as their original 480i versions were in the 480i timeline.