[John Shisko]

OK, this is a real head-scratcher for me. I am trying to take some 18fps super 8 film and put it on a 24p timeline in PP and/or Avid 6 for editing. I have looked at a lot of solutions online, this seems to be the best as you get clean, discreet frames at 24 fps, but I am not a mathematician and can’t really get my head around the math.
-the footage was scanned frame by frame (no pulldown) at 24fps at a professional transfer house, but was shot at 18 fps, so it plays back fast on a 24 p timeline.
-I want this footage shot at 18 fps to play back in “real” speed on a 24 p timeline as there is no native 18fps timeline in Avid or PP, but have a natural discreet frame progressive feel.
I have tried:
1-interpret the 24fps footage to 18fps, but this adds duplicate frames every third frame; not natural film movement
2-tried frame blending in AE on output (softens the image too much, adds movement artifacts) and
3-many flavours of pulldown (this leaves un-natural field artifacts)

And using the suggestions above and getting closer to a solution but not quite there;
-assuming that the common factor for 18fps>24fps is 72 fps (18×4=72, 24×3=72. Also, understanding that the percentage speed up of 18>24 is 33.333%.) I am not sure how the 99fps in AE suggestions work here. I am going on the assumption that, as the common factor is 72fps, there is not need to go to the maximum 99fps in AE, but I could be wrong here.
I have tried:
-doing a 66.67 (33.3%) timewarp on a 24p timeline
-adding this comp to a 72fps timeline
-then outputting this comp to 24 fps

The result: it has the proper progressive discreet frame movement and speed, but has a number of artifacts and is softer than the original. This may be simply par for the course. Generally, it looks pretty good or at least better than any of the other options.

But the part I can’t figure, and I did a test of this, is why not ONLY do the 66.67 (33.33%) timewarp on a 24p timeline to bring the 24p footage to 18fps. The results seem to be the same, i.e. the proper movement, but with artifacts. (And yes, I did a bit of experimenting with Vector detail to 50 and Extreme filtering turned on; a lot longer render with about the same results) Why go through the other frame rate conversion steps?? i.e. 24>72>24. I think I am missing something here.

I am not an AE expert by any stretch, but am a pro editor, so this AE thing is a bit new to me. I hope some of it makes sense and any thoughts people have would be appreciated. There seems to be a lot of questions on the ‘ole net about how best to get 18>24 and I hope we can figure it.

Also, in the name of simplicity, I have been dealing with true 24fps and not 23.976 fps, but ultimately the calculations should probably be for 23.976 fps I would think.

thanks, John

ps thanks Chris for putting up a sample AE project which I think would have solved all the problems here, but as Megaupload in now shut down, I couldn’t get at the file. If you could upload it again somewhere else, that would be grand.