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Would I see incorrectly captured 24p footage in Xpress Pro?
I need help.
I came into a project quite late. Most everything was finished. The last quarter of the film needed to be cut. Everything had been captured on a PC a version of Xpress pro earlier that 5.7.2 (not sure which). It was shot predominantly on a Canon XL2 in 16:9, 24p with regular pulldown. Some of it was shot on Panasonic DVX100s. In speaking to the shooter, he said he wasn’t always sure whether the DVXs shot advanced or regular. First red flag. The thing is, the footage appears fine in the Avid I’m working on, which is on a Mac running Xpress Pro 5.7.2. But anytime I export a Quicktime file, whether reference or self-contained, I get jagged edges of varying degrees, sometimes on 1 in 5 frames, sometimes on 3 out of 4 frames, sometimes on none. This is all quite disheartening because the director is one of the nicest guys in the business and I would hate to have to tell him that there was a major glitch. My question is, wouldn’t I see these jagged frames in the AVID if they actually existed? Am I exporting incorrectly (I’ve tried many variations)? I don’t think the shooter/initial editor set the pulldown phase in the film/24p settings on his avid to the A frame, but when I look at some of the footage in the bins, the pullin column always says A, and from what I’ve read, you don’t need to set this for footage shot on DV. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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4 Replies
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I hate to say that you most likely have issues with the captured footage. If you see jaggies on any kind of export, that is not good. Are you playing back green/green mode out to a NTSC monitor? It will be very clear there if you do.
Questions:
Although all Pullin columns say “A”, do all the START timecodes end on :x0 and :x5?
Display the Cadence column in the bin – does it show both ADVA and NORM or all of one or the other?
It’s a bummer that shooting was not carefully done and labelled with type of pulldown used. Also a bummer that the capture process did not check after each capture.
A recapture will be needed for final output..
Michael
anything 24fps
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MichaelP-
You are exactly the person I was hoping would respond, and simultaneously the person I was afraid to hear from. thanks for your response.
This project is full of bummers. More than just the above mentioned issues.
To answer your questions:“Although all Pullin columns say “A”, do all the START timecodes end on :x0 and :x5?”
Unfortunately, rarely. There is one bin I saw where all clips consistently have start timecodes ending with :x0, have NORM in the Cadence column, but unfortunately, may have been shot with Advanced pulldown, because as far as I can tell it was a C-Camera, so it wouldn’t have been the DP so there’s no telling. But most other bins have scattered timecode ending numbers. From what I’ve read on the forum, during log & capture, one should set their in point for a clip at a :x0 or :x5 frame. Is this correct? (Sidenote: The pullin letter changes for subclips. Is this normal or also a concern?)
“Display the Cadence column in the bin – does it show both ADVA and NORM or all of one or the other? ”
As far as I can tell, everything is NORM. I think he set it once for Regular Pulldown and left it that way.
I also posted on the Avid forum and was glad to hear it will only involve a recapture of the final sequence. The bad part about that is that there is so much compositing and effects that were done in the first part of the film, that I dread the fact that much of this may have to be eye-matched due to lack of planning, as the director never wanted to go back to the original tapes to do a conform. I know there are instances where portions of the film were output and worked on in After Effects and it would not surprise me if there was total disregard for timecode and tape information. This could end up being an expensive mistake. If you have any advice beyond the obvious ‘plan this stuff from the beginning’ or ‘don’t take on rescue projects’ sort of stuff, I’m all ears.
Thanks again for your response.
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Fixing the cadence issues is just a recapture. Once you are ready, delete the media, unlink the clips, then highlight all. Go to Clip Menu and select Modify Pulldown Phase. Set it to “A”. This will correct all the cadences for the timecodes as logged. Recapture. As far as ADVANCED or NORMAL, you will have to verify clips as you go. Start with NORMAL first.
As far as the completed composites, not much that can be done to automate that. I am surprised the jaggies weren’t noticed during the VFX process… Those will need to be judged on a per shot basis.
Michael
anything 24fps
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yeah, i’m surprised nothing was caught earlier either. I’m not familiar with After Effects, so I don’t know if they would have seen jaggies or not. Maybe they got lucky and all the composites were done using footage that happened to have start timecodes ending in :x0 or :x5 and were in fact regular pulldown.
anyway, question answered. thanks for your help.
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