[Sean Oneil]

Those are still 400GB and that’s a good amount of storage. No reason to let it go to waste. Purchase external enclosures for them – either FW or USB 2.0. You can get them from newegg for like $30 each.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

Mike, thanks for the clear explaination. Appreciate it. It makes perfect sense now, so now unfortunately I agree that it probably won’t work.

I understand now. With Varicam and pulldown removal capture, FCP is still being fed 60i/p in both scenarios. It’s not the same as being fed a true 24psf (48i) like it would be in my scenario. My misunderstanding led me to believe that FCP is able to ingest a video signal from one framerate whilst reading timecode of another framerate (like what the Davinci can do according to your earlier post). Thanks for clearing it up.

So if this is film-based material, the solution is to just have the Teranex output 60i and then have FCP remove the pulldown. Of course I had video-based footage being converted to 24p as well, and that of course wouldn’t work unless I had an additional device adding pulldown to it making it 60i.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

Mike, I totally agree that 60i would have been a better choice. However, the video-based footage that was converted to 23.98 really does look great. 90% of the footage was shot at 23.98, so I chose to make the master 23.98.

[Mike Most] “In thinking about this some more, I believe what you’re really trying to do is convert 60i material, with its 60i time code, to 24 frame material, with 23.98 time code… This is not going to happen through a Teranex or any other converter because they don’t convert time code. T”

I don’t beleive that needs to happen. You see, FCP does not need to convert the TC. It can handle having 60i TC tacked onto 24fps material. I don’t mean pulldown. I mean true 23.98 footage can have 60i TC. FCP does this by skipping frame numbers. So when you jog throuh it, the frame count will go 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13… 25, 26, 28, 29, 30. It skips a number every so often so that it ends up being 24 fps even though the TC format is that of SMPTE 29.97 TC.

So in other words, no TC conversion is actually needed, so a batch re-capture through a Teranex might work even if the framerate is being converted.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[gary adcock] “I only got some of it wrong, I have a Mini unit from Terranex and it does not handle 1080 23.98 material- I have been told by them only the full size unit has the ability to handle 1080 23.98 content.

I agree with Mike Most’s comments- your stand a better chance for success following his guide line. FCP will not have an issue if the TC is identical but remember that you will have to convert your 29.97 edl to a 23.98 timeline ( in Cinema Tools)”

I see the confusion. So the Mini works differently. The place I went to has the full size Xantus which did it fine. But that’s good to know since I’ve been considering puchasing the Mini.

The job’s already over. I just made a clip reel which they converted and then I eye matched them back in. I’m just hoping to figure out a good solution for next time. FCP can put 29.97 TC onto 23.98 video, so I still think what I wanted to do could work.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[JeremyG] “The timecode is based on 29.97, not 23.98. When using the Bm or AJA cards to capture they simply skip frames in the 29.97 cadence.”

Yes I know, exactly! So why wouldn’t the same thing apply in this case? TC and deck control is 29.97, but the actual video being fed into the computer is 23.98. Again, as far as FCP is concerned, how is this any different?

[Mike Most] “There is no way to masquerade 60i material as 24p if it didn’t originate that way,”
It’s not masqerading. It’s actually being converted to 24p before it reaches the SDI capture card.

[Mike Most] “No, it isn’t. What you described only works in 720p, because the source is “24 in 60,” that is, it isn’t a 24 frame video format. 720p/24 doesn’t exist as a video format, only 720p/60 does. So when you pull in from a 1200 deck, you can remove the pulldown on ingest, and create new time code that is a 23.98 base rate”

It doesn’t create new 24p timecode. It maintains the 29.97 timecode. Try it out. Jog through a clip and look at the source TC. It’s still 29.97. It just skips frame counts (as Jeremy stated). That’s why I feel there’s a remote possibility that what I wanted to do might work. And if it doesn’t, someone should come out with a little black box you plug the 9-pin into which could allow this to work.

But you are right. Mastering the project at 1080 60i would have made this a lot easier.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

Wait a minute. I just realized something. Kona and Blackmagic cards allow you to capture 23.98 from an NTSC 29.97 source. It’s their remove 3:2 pulldown feature.

How is what I want to do any different? Isn’t it essentially the same exact concept?

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[Mike Most] ”
The time code comes in via the 9 pin cable. The time code must be in the format you’re capturing in, so if you’re capturing as 23.98, the time code must be 23.98. There is no way to control a capture using the wrong frame rate.”

That’s what I keep hearing, yet it’s not true (at least not always). What you described actually does work with a Panasonic AJ-HD1200A using 9-pin serial control. Video output is 23.98, but the offline clips are 29.97. Deck control and the TC from the deck is also 29.97. And it batch captures just fine and captures it as 23.98 clips w/ 29.97 TC. I’ve done it numerous times and I rely on it as part of my offline to online Varicam workflow. It works fine.

So FCP 5.1 is capable of transcoding TC in this situation. It has the ability to assign TC of any framerate to video of any framerate. You can quickly check yourself using the “Modify -> Timecode” option. You can assign different timebase TC formats to any clip you like. And it translates it accurately. For example take an NTSC clip with 29.97 TC, drop or non-drop. Assign it 23.98 TC. It will work and it will translate it accordingly. The actual framerate of the video never changes. Just the source TC numbers. The numbers will skip or duplicate in order to make up the difference of the actual frame count of the video within one second. So FCP does have the inherent capability to translate between different TC framerates.

Whehter or not it will work on a batch capture from a digibeta through a Teranex converting the framerate may or may not work. But I want to find out from someone who has tried it. Not from someone basing it on what they believe to be common sense.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

Thanks Bob. Sorry, I’m a different Sean :).

[Bob Flood] “Then, either auto assemble your clip reel (provided the post house has 2 digibetas and an edit controller) OR dub all the shots manually BUT make sure you carry over the timecode from the original source tapes ie:
if you can auto assemble the clip reel, dub the tc to track 4 of the clip reel, if your going to manually dub each shot onto a clip reel, just jam the tc over. When you run the clip reel through the upconverter, make sure to carry over the tc to your d5 or hdcam, either from track 4 or the tc track. Now change your reel names on all your previous sd clips in FCP to the one reel, and recapture.”

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to layoff TC to an audio track from FCP. I know there’s a device that you can buy that converts TC from RS422 into audio. So with it, yes that step would work. The only other problem I see in that is the delay which the Teranex introduces. I’m not sure there’s a way to work around that. If I were allowed to operate in their machine room, I could figure out a way to do a delay to the D5 deck or something. But that ain’t happening, and trying to explain this to an op without him wanting to murder you would be tough.

[Bob Flood] “there is another way to do this as well. it involves making an “archive” video tape from fcp. you need a program called XMLtoTXT by spherico, In essence you make a sequence of the SD clips and lay off to tape but by crunching the XML data FCP thinks the layoff tape is your source tapes. Larry Jordan has been able to do this so as to archive footage for a project and still be able to return all the source tapes to client. go to his website for the exact how to.”

That sounds very interesting. Definately going to research that. Thanks! Still have a hunch that there’s a simpler solution though.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[gary adcock] “Sorry bit they are both correct – terranex will not do this –you need a UKON or Alchemist to do an up-rez at the same time as a frame rate conversion.

Sean think about it- it is interlace to Progressive also. it is not just a frame conversion it is also a de-interlace.

and you really really do not want to do this much in software it will be terribly soft if you do not use hardware for this problem.”

Gary, I really appreciate the reply. But I think you misunderstood my post by a thousand percent.

First off you’re wrong about the Teranex’s capabilities. It does do the conversion just fine. The Teranex (which is hardware based) can indeed convert framerate and resolution at the same time. Even with mixed cadence film that is totally whacked. It can even convert video based NTSC to 23.98 1080p on the fly. I know this because I just had it done yesterday at one of the facilities I was complaining about. And it looks great.

But that wasn’t my question. What I was asking is if this can be done during the batch re-capture process in FCP – not just as a tape to tape operation. I know you CAN do it if you set the proper offset in the device control. But supposedly FCP doesn’t allow it if there is a framerate change taking place. I want to know if this has been confirmed by someone firsthand, because I feel that there actually is a way to do it based on my experience with DVCProHD footage.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

One clarification. I couldn’t just online the whole project to Digibeta and then have them convert it. The reason is because only some of the footage needed an upconversion. The rest of it was shot on HD, so laying back the whole thing to D-beta wasn’t an option.

Sean