using RAYLIGHT MXFX in AVID MEDIAFILES

[Michael Phillips]

You need to do the pulldown removal before editoral. Your best bet would be to use the cadence align feature of the Snell & Wilcox or a Teranex. If this were tape based, you could go through some hoops, recpature, etc, and get there – but file based should be done up front.

Michael

Michael Phillips

[Zachary Snygg]

Yes, no way to do it after the fact though? Again, the lab in Los Angeles does not wish to use Snell & Wilcox or a Teranex. They have had some issues of digital artifacts when going from 1080i to 1080/23.98p. No way to restructure the Avid workflow by removing the audio and Video MXF files out of AVID MEDIA FILES/MXF/1 and putting the material into a CONTENT folder and using RAYLIGHT MXFX for a pulldown removal? Then re-editing the entire feature with a EDL from the project from 1080i/60?

I know i should have done pulldown removal this before the edit. Will do in the future. Is there no way to resolve this problem with NOT using Teranex etc. Can MXF files from a AVID MEDIAFILES/MXF/1 folder be reinputed in a “pseudo” CONTENT folder for a pulldown removal?

[Zachary Snygg]

Someone on the AVID forum website recommended that i OUTPUT the entire sequence directly onto a p2 card. I would have to do this several times since the cards only hold 32gb. Then take the media from the p2 cards and run it through RAYLIGHT MXFX to remove the pulldown and then i would have the entire feature at 1080/23.98 without any digital artifacts.

I guess it’s worth a try.

Zack

[Bouke Vahl]

Shooting non-advanced was a mistake. Removing AP is as fast as a copy of the file. (Well, not with Raylight, but with one of my applications it is…)
Never shoot NP again if you need 24. Even better to re-insert the pulldown afterwards if you need it.

However, i still believe you can easilly restore your stuff using AE and a few tricks.
-NOTE: this will ONLY work on non-composited clips, and will ONLY work without transitions (as you can never be sure the cadence will stay the same)

First, export all your shots as QT ref. The way to do that is with my macro application. Free version will do just fine.
Create a routine ‘next, mark clip, make subclip, go back to timeline’
etc. (I have one if you need it)
After you’re done making all the subclips, use the Macro app again to rename them to their TC in. (i also have the macro to do so, but you can create your own)
Next, process all clips in AE and render to an Avid codec.
If all is well, just import the rendered clips, sift bin on name and edit all clips from the bin into a timeline. If all is well, it should be done.
(as an alternative, i have an application that will create an EDL and an ALE based on the rendered clips, so if you miss a few clips, you end up with the ones that are their in the right place)

This all sounds more compliated than it is. I process a lot of movies this way (although i’m not removing pulldown, i’m filtering dust in AE, where every shot needs to be identical. The principle is the same though…)

hth

Bouke

http://www.videoToolShed.com
smart tools for video pro’s

[Paul Carlin]

My two cents…

First… When you created the master at 59.94 from 23.976p material, you introduced inconsistent cadence. What this means is that the pulldown sequence changes from one shot to the next. It is impossible to remove this cadence after the fact due to the fact that there is a very good chance that you hit a split frame at the first or last frame of any particular edit. There are two split frames and three whole frames every five frames, so the odds of this happening are very high. Since the split frame contains only one field of the progressive frame, the resulting progressive frame will be an interpolated fuzzy image.

Second… When you made the decision to record standard pulldown, and not advanced, you also hit upon the reason that advanced pulldown was created to begin with. In any camera recording system, a high level of compression is used to record the images. In your case, this was DVCPRO HD at 100MBps. When a motion vector based codec encounters split frames the codec will behave differently that when it encounters a progressive frame. Without getting too technical (too late for that), the resulting pulldown removal process needs to reconstruct one out of every four frames from two separate split frames. This leads to a progressive sequence of three clear frames followed by one slightly fuzzy frame. Advanced pulldown (2:3:3:2) eliminates this problem by encoding four progressive frames and one split frame, which is actually ignored completely.

Third… When you copied all the MXF files into the Avid MediaFiles folder, you broke the folder structure of the original P2 cards and left the XML Metadata behind… and presumably thrown away. The XML metadata tells Raylight what media is on the P2 card… and without this you can only convert the MXFs individually… if at all. You will lose the ability to keep the audio and video together.

The solution…

If at all possible, find the original P2 cards with their native folder structure intact. Use Raylight to make 24p native media from these P2 cards. If you trashed the P2 cards, then first reflect on this and learn from the experience, next try to convert each MXF individually. If that fails, then you are in for a hell of a time. See below.

Next, export an EDL from the 59.94/29.97 project and convert it to a 23.976 EDL using a program like EDLmax, Autodesk Smoke, or even a program that came with Avid DS that I can’t remember. The sad thing is that Avid has absolutely no workflow for this. Even worse, the EDL Manager sucks so bad that getting a 23.976 EDL back into the Avid is a real chore and next to impossible.

If you are successful at getting the EDL converted to 23.976 and into the avid as a legitimate sequence, you should be able to relink to the 23.976p media and output a native 23.976 show. Don’t feel bad if you can’t accomplish this because you are not alone. I will reiterate that Avid has NO workflow and does not provide the proper tool set for this common task of converting a 30i project into a 24p project.

Should this fail. then another option is to export each individual clip from your sequence with 2 head and tail frames added, remove the pulldown and re-conform the sequence at 23.976 manually using a reference guide that your frame rate converted. This was eluded to by previous posters and far to complicated to explain in one sentence.

Last, you can pay lots of money and have someone else deal with it.