[John Pale]

If you follow Vimeo’s spec to the letter, you will rarely have a problem.

The preset Apple uses (which is also in Compressor) differs from what Vimeo recommends a great deal.

[John Pale]

1080i/59.94 (sometimes rounded off to 60) is 29.97 frames per second.

It’s 59.94 fields per second.

[John Pale]

Don’t use the FCPX preset. Make sure you follow the specs posted on Vimeo’s website exactly.

[John Pale]

This is already done (sort of) in MC 5.x.

Select your project aspect ratio as 16×9.
Make sure you have the Reformat column visible in your bins.
Select Pillarbox in the reformat column. Stuff that is 16×9 gets left alone. Stuff that is 4:3 gets pillar boxed.

[John Pale]

You do it in Media Composer. Just use the Consolidate/Transcode command.

[John Pale]

The Avid DNX codec is very similar to Pro Res. You should have very little degradation unless you go down many generations.

It’s actually better to do the transcoding on an Avid system, opening the ProRes files using AMA in Avid, rather than creating QuickTime files. This method creates Avid MXF media in one step, bypassing creating Avid DNX Quicktimes, which the Avid would still have to convert.

If your colorist doesn’t want to do it on his Avid, you can download the fully functional 30 day trial of Avid and do it yourself.

[John Pale]

I don’t own this camera, but according to the specs, it cannot shoot at 50fps. It shoots 25 fps, so I don’t know what else you expect from it. As I said before, 50i is 25fps.

From Sony

Recording format
1080/60i, 1080/50i, 480/60i (NTSC), 576/50i (PAL)
Play out/Down conversion format
1080/60i, 1080/50i, 480/60i (NTSC), 576/50i (PAL), 480/60p, 576/50p,

[John Pale]

found the manual online…

https://ws.sel.sony.com/PIPWebServices/RetrievePublicAsset/StepID/SEL-asset-195398/original/DVWM2000_2000P.pdf

the deck should indicate on the front panel if you are playing a PAL tape (625, 50i)

I think the deck plays both NTSC and PAL, but I just skimmed the manual..if it does, you will have to capture using a PAL preset.

[John Pale]

Its just a theory…

I am not that familiar with how that model deck behaves. On a BVW-75 or PVW-2800 it would be obvious that you had a PAL tape. I know some DV decks will play a PAL tape, and all will appear well until you try to capture it.

Can you step through frame by frame and see what the timecode does?

[John Pale]

I checked the specs on that camera.

It shoots 50i, which is actually 25fps.

50i is 50 interlaced fields per second.

The 7D shoots progressive. So there are no fields…its 25 fps straight up.