[Adam Smith]

[JFN] “1 –
So I see that when I drop my 59.94 clips into a 29.97 sequence, it drops every odd frame and will play pretty decent.
Is this the way I want to work? Is this a reasonable work flow or is it necessary to buy separate 3rd part hardware to downconvert?”

I’m not sure how your clips think they’re 59.94 if you shot 30p? What is telling you to ingest at 59.94?

All DVCProHD codecs are recorded at 60p but only the frames/fields required to support the shooting format are used… so I suppose ultimately the recorded data is 59.94 but you’d never see it as such, unless using the FireStore makes some sort of difference versus shooting on P2.

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Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte

[Adam Smith]

If you shot in 30p then you don’t need any pulldown as the full 30 frames were recorded and no frames were duplicated/generated to pad the recording up to 30.
Frame rate should be 29.97.

As for your inability to ingest 24p with pulldown checked – in what flavor was it shot?

24P is for shooting a film-like look but maintaining a standard 29.97 signal for ease of use with NTSC gear. Should you force pulldown, FCP will have to guesstimate which frames are the duplicates or fabricated frames.

24PA is also recorded over a 29.97 signal, but it’s written with the intent to have pulldown applied on ingest (the camera flags the exact frames for your edit system to remove), resulting in better end results than you’d get with 24p + pulldown.

24PN – not recorded in a NTSC compatible format like the first two, in this native format the camera actually writes ONLY the 24 frames per second required. No pulldown required, it’s 24fps period. BTW – this format would not be compatible with firewire output to your firestore.

So really, in 2 of the 3 available 24-progressive formats you wouldn’t want/need to apply pulldown.

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Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte

[Adam Smith]

I don’t have any 200’s to compare, but these guys do:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/193/867091

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Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte

[Adam Smith]

Check the HDV forum – I’ve only captured from HDV once but I did have some spots where it seemed to arbitrarily stop/start capturing in the middle of shots.

You can also duplicate the deck control template and set the preroll low (I used 1 second) to insure you’ve got footage as soon as possible after a break or camera stop, but there’s lots more footage on the HDV forum.

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Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte

[Adam Smith]

Could you have had more than one copy of the soundtrack active in the timeline when you output the movie for youtube?

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Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte

[Adam Smith]

[Dave LaRonde] “When you’re watching the playback in real time, are you REALLY going to crab about the combing when the first field of the next frame appears? Heck, if you are, then why don’t you ALREADY crab about the combing on normal interlaced scan, where it can take place 60 times a second rather than 30 times a second? Why haven’t you crabbed for decades about the combing that you see in a movie on TV, which has contained 3:2 pulldown to get it to 30 frames a second since the first day they started showing movies on TV? Think about it.”

The ultimate answer is that I crab because I’m evaluating a new camera and a new shooting format and attempting to work out the pros, cons and workflow issues I may encounter along the way.

Because of the nature of NTSC I couldn’t imagine any way around this combing but I posted here to try and learn more. At this point I suppose it’s going to be a judgement call per-project as to whether I shoot 30p or not.

And yes I crab about the combing in realtime on an NTSC monitor because what I have is very visible on most horizontal motion. It’s not as bad as having fields reversed, but it’s not good. Having beautiful footage except for the jaggie-edged nurse walking by is distracting. I’d also be happy to learn if I’ve done something wrong, possibly while transferring footage… guess I better go check the field dominance of DVCPRO50 vs BetaSP.

BTW, why would anyone crab about combing on standard NTSC video playback? If you’re sampling motion 60 times per second then there’s not going to be any visible combing, as the motion is updated every field and at best you have what appears to be a soft edge. Movies with pulldown are of course the exception, but then I don’t have to answer to clients about those.

-Adam

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Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte

[Adam Smith]

[Tom Brooks] “But 30P on BetaSP? I don’t see how that works–for the reason you state. It’s that point where a field from frame 1 and a field from frame 2 are displayed interlaced. Those fields are from different points in time and will make the comb artifact.”

Yeah.. I don’t see any way around that, and while I’m not sure if it’s a deal-breaker for me it’s certainly going to limit my using 30p for broadcast material, and I was really hoping my days of dealing with interlaced footage were almost over!

Unfortunately we sorta have to shoot for lowest common denominator for delivery as we have no idea where the spots will be aired and what equipment those stations will have.

I’m still hoping somebody will come up with an amazing solution although I dunno what that’d be… until then I guess I’m doing some more footage tests.

-Adam

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Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte

[Adam Smith]

Rediscovered the old 30p thread and read through it again, and as well I’m looking at the 30p workflow suggested by Tom Brooks in this thread https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/955876 – and while I may have a few more answers I’m still trying to work out some specifics…

I shot a ton of 30p DVCPro50 and then transferred via component from my camera direct to betacam, and that footage clearly had interlace issues. I can understand that pulling the footage into FCP and setting the sequence to no preferred interlace will correct for this, but I’m still not sure how I’ll output to NTSC video without the same combing issues.

-Adam

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Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte

[Adam Smith]

[Don Greening] “Your shooter gave you poor information, at least as far as editing with FCP is concerned. Whether the footage is progressive or interlaced you still use the same DV NTSC 48K codec. When I edit 30p I just edit as normal and don’t worry about checking for field dominance because there IS no one field that is dominant over the other. It’s just one complete picture for each frame of video. “

This is one aspect of working with 30p footage over a 60i signal that I’m not sure of… if you don’t tell FCP to compensate I don’t see how you could avoid interlace combing between frames? Frame 1 would look great, but as Field1 of Frame2 shows up, any horizontal motion would look combed (twice as much as normal) and then Field2 of Frame2 would arrive and things are pretty again.

Or are you talking about true 30P material and if so, do you still ingest via NTSC DV presets?

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Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte

[Adam Smith]

None of your combing/display issues are related to drive speed, and in your workflow posted above, it sounds like you’re still working with interlaced footage…

Can you confirm that you’ve either:

A) shot and captured progressive video
or
B) shot and captured interlaced video, and then de-interlaced all clips and rendered

There are no settings you can adjust to make interlaced video into progressive without some sort of de-interlacing. Setting the sequence field preference to None does not make the footage progressive scan, it merely tells FCP how to correctly display your progressive footage.

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Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte