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Working with 24p normal footage on a 29.97 timeline
I know this might seem like a silly question, but it’s been messing with my mind for a while. When I capture 24p normal material in Final Cut Pro, it displays as 2:2:2:4. Every fourth frame is repeated – but how does this match up with what’s actually being cut? I have a difficult time believing that the video I’m watching and the frames I am cutting are the same as displayed by Final Cut…
When viewing the 24p normal material in Quicktime, every fourth and fifth frame have combing – this is more in line with what I expect to see from the 3:2 pulldown…
Is there something I’m missing here..? Why does Final Cut repeat every fourth frame when that is clearly not accurately reflecting the actual frames/fields of the video? What’s happening if I make a cut between repeated frames..?
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6 Replies
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What is happening is that I’ll wager my kid’s shoe money that your canvas and viewer aren’t set to 100%. By not having it set to 100 FCP will interpolate the lines and not show them all — thereby to you looking like repeated progressive frames.
Kind of look like this?
https://homepage.mac.com/captmench/Odd.png
QT will play back the interlaced frames if in the preferences you have the little hidden box checked next to playback at high quality.
Good luck,
CaptM
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That may be the case for 24p normal footage, which I don’t have in front of me right now (but will try enlarging when I get home)… what I’m working with right now is actually telecine footage – which uses the same 3:2 pulldown pattern, right? What I’m getting in Final Cut Pro are back-to-back identical frames… you can see slight luma/chroma changes between the frames, but the composition remains the same (so they look like analog copies of the same frame – the footage has been pulled from BetaSP).
Am I confusing the issue by expecting telecine footage from a BetaSP tape to look the same as 24p normal footage shot on DV?
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No no… that’s exactly what this is. I’ve been using FCP for nearly 7 years now and just last week was the first time I came across this issue.
When I was sent the footage, I was CONVINCED it was 2:3:3:2 because I saw the double frame. But of course Cinema Tools wouldn’t give me the option to rev telecine it out of Advanced pulldown… because it WASN’T.
Wasn’t until I got it into FCP and actually started with my fallback (Speed change to 125 turn frame blending OFF… (removes 5th frame only) and then export and conform to 24 in CT) that I saw my first interlaced frames.
Freaked me out!
But indeed that’s what you’ve got too. I brought it into Shake to do the pulldown removal because I could look at each frame and just mash buttons until the interlacing went away — THEN I knew I had the right removal settings.
Good luck,
CaptM
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“QT will play back the interlaced frames if in the preferences you have the little hidden box checked next to playback at high quality”
yes – this is exactly what i need to see in final cut..! we’re fortunate enough to be working with some very talented effects folks, but they are unfamiliar with working on 24p normal footage since it’s sort of an amateur format… they’d like to be able to see the actual frames that will be rendered rather than the duplicates final cut pro is showing..!
is there an equivalent setting to quicktime’s ‘high quality’ in final cut pro that will show the true interlaced frames..? nothing i’ve done under playback control has gotten any results…
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Check your RT settings upper left of the timeline… make sure Dynamic is off and everything else is HIGH.
Also — You MUST have your canvas and viewer window set to 100%… I know it eats property on your monitor… hey – you watching on an external minitor too?
CaptM
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yup… i’m an idiot. i wasn’t viewing at 100%.
quirky for sure… thanks captainmench!
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