[Richard Downing]

I saw the low-light Varicam noise 1st hand a couple of years ago during grading of a feature destined for film output. After a lot of creative work in Da Vinci, the resulting noise in shadows was not at all nice, so much so that we resorted to a noise reduction unit to cure it (at some cost to sharpness). If you have access to a Niagra or DVNR then it might be worth a try if the noise is causing concern.

It’s doubtful that the up-conversion is increasing the noise.

[Richard Downing]

You’re quite right about the pulldown. I expect to see some cutting inaccuracies. Thanks for your help anyway.

[Richard Downing]

Thanks for the quick response. Firstly, the telecine was indeed done at 24fps which, I agree, is both unusual and undesirable. Unfortunately we couldn’t head that one off at the pass. Also, there won’t be a neg cut – we are going to get the whole lot (here in SE Asia, neg cuts for online are very rare). Each lab roll has been has been transferred to Betacam with the timecode zeroed (with hour offsets per roll) at the “punch” at the head of the roll. The intention is to do the same for online telecine and transfer the selects with timecode generated by the telecine (using Aaton Keylink) – sort of a TV commercial approach but a lot bigger. Regarding the keylink, we are just using it to generate the timecode – keycode was not used at all for the offline transfer or anywhere in the process. The issue, of course, is that the offline tapes have 25fps timecode while the online tapes will have 24fps code. In both cases the telecine will have been running at 24fps so overall durations will be the same. Basically, then, the 24fps EDL that I need should look the same as the 25fps EDL as far as hours, minutes and seconds go. The conversion process needs to just re-map the “frames” values from a base of 25 to 24. I should add at this point that I have not actually seen the film or the 1-lite tapes which are presently in another country but am relying on several phone discussions with the director and editor earlier in the process.