[Jeff Greenberg]

Mario,

It is a thorny issue – and you’re dealing with what sounds like a faux film look/want, alongside footage that wasn’t optimally shot – and you’re trying to massage everything together.

29.97 and 59.94 are very much both interlaced and blend just fine – they’re essentially the same thing for our sake.

Putting them either in a 24p timeline will cause Premiere Pro to discard the necessary frames/fields to get it to playback. Some frames may appear odd as some field pairs are put together as a progressive frame. A better way to handle the footage is to do a format conversion – using something like Twixtor in AE that will reconstruct frames a bit cleaner than Premiere Pro will.

But this has nothing to do with the output headaches your source material has.

Output:
TV/DVD are interlaced. Everything in playback will have fields.
When handling a 24p timeline, pulldown is added, (google 2:3 pulldown) – there will be some odd field artifacts.
Your material will have artifacts from the 30i>24p…and then more/different artifacts when played back because of the 24p>30i conversion.

Internet is always progressive (There is such as thing as 30p, 24p and 60p (although 60p is usually 720)) When handling interlaced material, you’ll have to deinterlace, preferably at the last step; for this it’s either a blending of field pairs or the elimination of one. With true 24p material, it’s progressive, so no damage; but your sources may have artifacts from the 30i>24p conversion.

———
Generally, it’s suggested that you shoot/work with all the same frame rate. If you can also work with the same codec/frame size, better yet. This has zero to do with Premiere Pro; it’s the general rule with all editorial work. Not what you can do, but what you should do.

If I’m aiming for the ‘film look’ – I’m shooting everything at 24 (including my SD material!), with adjustable lens cameras (with short DOF) that I can adjust the color correction in Post.
For TV/Dvd output, I’ll pick workflows that allow my deliverable to have pulldown added (DVD) or permit 24p output (HD/BluRay)
For the web, I’ll just compress, because all web is progressive.

Thorny isn’t it?

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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[Jeff Greenberg]

Yeah, in thinking it through, I’m a little wrong on the prior post.

I think you’ll need two timelines: I’d cut the HD one, scaling up the SD clips (you’ll have to do those manually, else they’ll be ‘pillar’ boxed.)
When finished, I’d suggest copy/pasting the entire timeline into an SD timeline, and then choosing the “scale to sequence”) with all the clips selected. All the HD clips will be scaled down (and letterboxed) while the SD clips will return to their normal size.

Both SD DVDs and BluRay can handle 24 material correctly for playback – Older DVD players handle the playback too – but if you’re worried, why not just build the SD timeline @ 29.97? I’m pretty sure the 23.98 is part of the original spec – meaning it should be compatible.

[Jim Wiseman] ” I am noticing that it comes in at a small size on a 1920×1080 timeline but I have heard there is a way to scale it up, ideally to the letterbox 1080 height for the SD DVD,”

Yup, Premiere Pro handles everything (by default) as a mapping of 1:1 pixels – you can scale it up manually (which is what you want for the SD in the HD sequence). There’s a cool “Scale to sequence size” choice, but it’ll pillar box.

Disclaimer: don’t trust me or anyone else here; test this yourself with 30 sec-1 min of footage and be sure.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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[Jeff Greenberg]

Any other culprits when it’s playing (drive speed or memory?)

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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[Jeff Greenberg]

Do the HD edit on a 1080p timeline. Finish.

Then:

Make an 4:3 MPEG 2 using Adobe Media Encoder
Make a Blu-Ray MPEG2 or h.264 using Adobe Media Encoder.

The only other thoughts here are a question on how you’ll grab the XD cam footage. Grab it in FCP and transcode it to ProRes. Or just handle it in Premiere Pro via the Media Browser.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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[Jeff Greenberg]

I’m not sure I can answer the question, but what are the files and where did you get them? If their headers are broken, can you contact the person for the raw files (rather than, say WMV which is a distribution format?)

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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[Jeff Greenberg]

PIck a h.264 setting and adjust the data rate to about 2,500k (2.5 megabits) It should look ‘okay’ (not great) and be under the 10 meg barrier.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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[Jeff Greenberg]

Yeah, sorta. You’ll have to use the 3 way color corrector (or better yet curves) to adjust the blue (and green) channels to look more like the 2nd parade (in that it should have data at the top and the bottom)

Then I might come back with a 2nd 3 way CC to act as a secondary and add some saturation to just the face.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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[Jeff Greenberg]

It looks like whomever shot it ‘added’ black bars to a 4:3 picture – giving the illusion that it’s widescreen, but the media is all 4:3. There is no way to ‘remove it’ without blowing it all up.

I’d just edit the piece, nest the timeline into a SD widescreen timeline and then blow up the nested timeline. And yes, you’ll be making the clips soft in the blowup. Alternatively, you can blow up one clip and then copy/paste the blowup to the rest.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

You’re going to pick up the phone, call him and have him transcode everything to ProRes, then download the prores decoder for windows and you’ll be good to go.

What happened is that he’s working with an HDV Camera (about 30:1 compression, MPEG-2 format, long GOP.) Final Cut has captured the data of the MPEG-2 transport stream then placed it inside of QuickTime.

The problem is, the MPEG2 codec requires licensing that comes with FCP – and is only available (in this form) on a macintosh.

If he transcodes everything to prores you’ll be fine – if you download the prores decoder.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

That’s a field refresh issue.

Try a 50% speed, with blending (60-65 are bad numbers.) Alternatively, use Twixtor in AE.

Last (and worst choice) is try a deinterlace.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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