[Rene Amador]

Thanks for your help wrapping my mind around this one.

That workflow would’ve been nice.

By the way, 29.97 never factored in, our raw was 23.976 telecine without pulldown. Next time I’ll be more precise about 23.976 vs. 23.98 vs. 24 to my crew.

[Rene Amador]

The solution was to convert all clips to 23.976. I used Quicktime. I still have a few sticky frames at the head of each clip leftover, but overall solved.

What happened was one VFX artist output from AE at 23.98 and should’ve used 23.976 or 24. Very weird. Outputting from FCP at the timelines’s “23.98” has a very different result.

Apparently either there is a major difference in cadence depending on what you’re exporting from or AE just plain can’t do 23.98.

Next time I’ll do my comps in good ol’ Vegas, where cadences run free and unrestrained.

[Rene Amador]

The footage wasn’t recorded at 29.97, as I’ve already stated, it was a 35mm telecine straight to 24P (23.976).

In addition, there are many cameras that can record in a true 24 container, the HVX comes to mind, it has a direct-to-file recording format that has no blending or dummy frames. Proof is that it’s frames can be output into an image sequence that has 24 frames in each second. Additionally, I could’ve output from an animation tool at a perfect 24 fps.

Your information is about three years old, Dave. Why do you keep mentioning video cameras? Why do you keep mentioning what something was “recorded” at? I never said this was raw footage. I never said anything about a video camera.

In any case, I found the solution: convert all the 23.98 pieces to 23.976 and use a 23.976 composition. For whatever reason, no 23.98 piece I put into 3 AE versions on 3 comps works correctly, but the 23.976 pieces do. I thought there was no difference, but apparently there’s a major one in AE. I double checked some pieces I may have worked on in the past that were at 23.98, and I had none, odd. All were 23.976.

Using Quicktime conversion worked fine for me with the exception of one or two sticky frames at the head of all resulting clips (the 23.98 cadence seems to be giving Quicktime a touch of leftover trouble when it converts).

Converting to 24 fps gave worse results. Go figure.

[Rene Amador]

You’re absolutely incorrect, and you haven’t read what I’ve written.

720×486 is a frame resolution with no relationship to cadence or framerate other than often being grouped with 29.97 in a standard format we call NTSC.

Again, the problem only occurs when the clip is in a composition or render. I can watch it fine in AE.

[Rene Amador]

If you need any more information, let me know.

I’ve offlined and onlined about 10 24P projects, buddy. This is the first time I’m working in After Effects with 23.98 footage.

[Rene Amador]

As explained in the previous thread, this only occurs in After Effects when the clip is in a composition or rendering.

I’ve tried many different editing timebases. I dragged and dropped the footage into the bin. I’ve tried it on a PC and Mac.

The footage is 35mm telecine to Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 24P currently working at 720×486. Some of the pieces are PNG codec. I’ve tried converting them to Animation and Uncompressed.

Is there something I’m not getting about bringing 24fps stuff into AE?

[Rene Amador]

Another follow-up:

I tried to use another computer and had the exact same problem. It must be the footage.

Here’s what Quicktime has to say about the clips:
-Format: PNG, 720×486, Millions+
-Movie FPS: 23.98

Here’s my AE sequence specs:
-720×384
-Frame Rate: 24

Some more info:

The sticky frames are never more than 5 frames apart, here’s the exact order I’m getting:
1 2 2 4 4 6 6 8 9 9 11 11 13 13 15 16 16 18 19 19 21 22 23 24 24 26

[Rene Amador]

Follow-up:

Encountered something else very strange. Sometimes when I keyframe a layer’s position (roto’d footage moving across the screen), there seems to be a “hiccup” frame randomly in the interpolated motion. The layer contents will seem to freeze in its motion path for one frame. I thought it could be a motion interpolaton problem, but stepping through the actual position values shows a steady rate (ie, the position value goes steadily 1, 4, 7, 10, 13) but the clip will stay in the same position or just budge slightly in its motion path.

When there is a hiccup frame, the next frame seems to leap in motion, similar to the pattern I show in my previous post, where some frames are simply not being shown:
1 2 3 3 5 6 7 7 9

This seems to suggest my problem is with the render and not with the video cadence interpolation.

[Rene Amador]

I’m having the exact same problem. Frames seem to randomly double when previewing and rendering. When I double click on the clip in the bin and step through, there are no double frames, but every instance of the clip in a composition or render results in some frames being “sticky” (ie – 3 regular frames, then the same frame again, then 7 new frames, then a frame repeated. The result is like this, each frame being a number:

1 2 3 4 4 6 7 8 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 20 22

Please note the omission of frames 5, 9, and 21. Those frames, in preview and render, are simply not there, the previous frame is in its place.

I’ve disabled OpenGL, I’ve changed the secret cache settings, everything I can think of.