[Michael Sacci]

Are you rendering out the animations in Motion and bring them into FCP or bring in the motion project file and having FCP render it out?

I was using Motion3 for menus and I noticed that unless I render the files I needed to turn on Field Rendering and Frame Blending or less dia lines where stair-stepped.

I was working in SD those.

[Michael Sacci]

If shot and captured correctly there is no conversation to be done, there is only removing the unwanted frames. But if the footage was shot 24p then maybe these other programs would be needed. I think Natress has a free filter that you can drop on a clip and it tells you if the footage is 24p or 24pA.

If you to a straight 29.97 capture you are capturing exactly what is on the tape, field for field, now all you should have to do is remove the extra fields with – TOOLS-Remove Advanced Pulldown (I did a test of footage off a firestore and told it not to remove the pulldown on capture) Footage in the bin shows up as 29.97, then after the Tool is applied it is 23.98. Drop it on a FCP6 timeline and it conforms the timeline to 23.98. All redundant fields removed.

BTW the Cinema Tools converts the footage to 24P and that is not what you want so don’t use it.

[Michael Sacci]

I’m assuming you used the Panasonic SDX900 to shoot the DVCPro50 footage, and you sure that it was set to 24pA and not just 24p?

What versions of software are you using. What capture settings are you using.

And yes this should work when capturing the footage as 10-bit uncompressed.

[Michael Sacci]

To get the best quality here is what I recommend.

From FCP – Export via Compressor (you tie up both programs and it takes longer but better results.)

In Compressor make a new m2v preset.
Field Domin should be on progressive
Frame rate 29.97
Aspect ratio 16:9

USE a CBR instead of VBR at the highest bitrate you can (don’t go over 6.5Mbps)

Encode and use ac3 audio.

[Michael Sacci]

[Vic David] ” The settings used for dogitizing this footage was Blackmagic DV50 anamorphic, 23.98. “

I’m pretty sure this is not fixable, you don’t have 24pA footage in your timeline anymore. The pulldown removable is looking for 29.97 footage, if fact their is a Cinema Tools under tools also.

The only footage that is 23.98 on tape is HDCAM that is recorded that way, everything Panasonic does is “over 60”

This is not to beat you up at this point but anything new or out of the ordinary should be tested through the entire process before 60 hours of tape are captured. There maybe a fix that I don’t know about but recapturing maybe your only option. If you do capture via firewire.

[Michael Sacci]

If they were captured correctly with the pull down in them they would be 29.97. If you have 23.98 clips that have extra frames still in there you may have a problem.

Do you remember what the capture settings were?

[Michael Sacci]

There is a advanced pulldown option right in FCP.

Select a clip go to TOOLS Remove Advanced Pulldown and the clips rate should display as 22.98 in the Browser.

[Michael Sacci]

But if you are exporting and changing the footage to SD in this step, it is problem the worst way to downconvert. The new compressor is good but to get good results it takes for ever to do.

I shoot and edit in DVCProHD but for the time being the client wants masters on DigiBeta, I have a Kona3 card in my Mac Pro and I ended up buy an Io for the downconvert process. The Kona 3 downconverts SDI to the Io which I use to capture with my laptop, the footage looks great, no stairsteping and I capture 10-Bit Uncompress SD.

[Michael Sacci]

Just convert the video to H.264 320×240 (unless you have 16:9 footage) Don’t worry about de-interlacing them. Hand it to them and they have want they want.

[Michael Sacci]

there is a file HD/Library/Application Support/ProApps/Final Cut Studio System ID

this maybe bad, delete it and hopefully it will only ask you one more time. If this is an upgrade you will need the old serial number also.