how to recapture reverse telecined clips

Hello,

I'm working on a vfx / graphics edit that is requiring me to work at 24fps w/ non-color corrected footage. The source footage for the project was shot on film and telecined to Digi-Beta. I'm capturing everything from Digi-Beta and then reverse telecine-ing all of my clips in Cinema Tools to 23.98fps. I'm on FCP 5.0.4 on a G5.

In the end, the plan is to get the selects re-color corrected in a supervised session and then to conform the edit to the new color corrected footage.

On a normal 29.97 job this would be no problem, the timecode between the two color corrects would be the same and the recapture and conform would go absolutely smooth.

My question is this: what's the technique for recapturing my footage after it's been reverse telecined to 23.98. The timecode between my offline edit and my new re-telecined footage will be different, of course, and recapturing the normal way would not give the proper frame rate or the proper footage back.

I have some workarounds I can use, and I know that Cinema Tools isn't really built for a capture / recapture workflow, but I was wondering if FCP takes the possibility of this happening into account and if there's some kind of established workflow for recapturing footage that's already been reverse telecined.

I know when FCP captures footage from the Varicam or DVX and removes "advanced pulldown" it keeps the timecode the same with missing timecode frames for the frames that are pulled out. This allows recapturing if for whatever reason you'd need to do that.

But when you reverse telecine 29.97 footage using Cinema Tools, timecode seems to be destroyed.... Any ideas?

Thanks,
Sam

<<<I know that Cinema Tools isn't really built for a capture / recapture workflow>>>

As far as I can tell, it wasn't built for successful reverse telecine, either. Can I assume you mean "removal of 3:2" when you say "reverse telecine". Did it work? I've been trying to get that process to work for days now and so far, no banana.

If you view a portion of the original rapid motion capture either in QuickTime Player or the Canvas with the 100% expansion trick, so you see the 3:2 frames (good, good, good, fuzzy, fuzzy)? Are the fuzzy ones missing after you CineTool them ( to invent a verb)?

Oh, I get the new framerate OK, but I also always get at least one damaged picture out of five in the result. You wouldn't know that if you use the Canvas normally because it hides the damage.

It would be good to know if this happens to you, too. Especially since nobody else seems to have any idea how Cinema Tools works.



Oh, back to your problem, I know how to make it worse. Apparently Final Cut doesn't use drop-frame timecode in 23.976, so even if you do figure out the framerate/time resolution problem, you're still going to be off about a frame per minute. It seems that Everybody Knows This and they allow for it when they play to a tape for delivery. I have no idea how you would compensate for it literally in the middle of a production.

Koz

I was actually able to make this work by using my Blackmagic Capture card. I never knew this, but the card will remove 2:3 pulldown on the fly as you capture while keeping the timecode the same (dropping the interlaced frames) so you can recapture later. Pretty sweet!

Thanks for coming back with the answer, Sam.

In order for Cinema Tools to correctly reverse telecine, the original film transfer must all start zero frame on an "A" frame (hopefully, you'll have visible key numbers on your xfrs)

On your footage, you can check at the beginning of the shot where some houses still hole-punch the first frame (zero frame). The visible key number's frame should have an "A" on it. This is correctly telecined and should reverse telecine fine.

If it doesn't reverse telecine correctly (when you walk through a clip, each frame should have 1 solid letter in sequence of A, B, C, D, A, B....) you can open the original clip by itelf, step to an "A" frame and reverse telecine from there. It should process correctly.

Now in a select roll (several different shots from different cam rolls spliced together as 1 roll) typically, the first shot is punched and set on an "A" frame, but they don't stop for all subsequent shots to reset the "A" frame. Which means, what used to be an "A" frame on the first shot, might be a "B" frame on the next shot because of the way the negative cuts it into the roll. For this reason, you'd have to reverse telecine each clip individually in order to find the correct pulldown to remove. Open clip, select reverse telecine, "Fields" default is "AA" - try each option until cip is correctly reversed.

Otherwise, when transferring the select roll, you can have the house reset the "A" frame for each shot on the roll, but this would cost the same as the original dailies transfer since they're having to stop for each shot instead of 1 run through the entire roll.

The other solution, but not a likely one, is to have the negative cutter cut each shot on the select roll so that the zero frame is consistent throughout the roll. There are 16 frames per foot for 35mm numbered 0-15. Only the zero frame has a visible key number on the negative. So every 16 frames on the 35mm neg, there is a new key number. The neg cutter would have to join shots so that only 16 frames remain in between each key number. This would create a roll that could be xfr through 1 pass and then successfully batch reverse telecined.

"...Apparently Final Cut doesn't use drop-frame timecode in 23.976, so even if you do figure out the framerate/time resolution problem, you're still going to be off about a frame per minute..."

Typically, for a film project, you don't want to use "drop-frame." Drop-frame is for broadcast use and is usually done at the end for the element that will be broadcast.