two conform questions

Question 1: Suppose you have a .mov file which you wish to conform to 60 fps. Cinema Tools doesn't offer this frame rate option. How can you do it?

Question 2: Suppose you've conformed a 60 fps .mov file to some other frame rate using Cinema Tools. How can you undo this?

Thanks.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

>Question 1: Suppose you have a .mov file which you wish to conform to 60 fps. Cinema Tools doesn't offer this frame rate option. How can you do it?

You can't do it with Cinema Tools. You'd have to convert with Compressor. But that won't do a frame for frame conversion...it will keep the speed the same, so frame will repeat. Why do you want to do this? It will make your footage speed up...well, if it was possible, and it isn't AFAIK.

>Question 2: Suppose you've conformed a 60 fps .mov file to some other frame rate using Cinema Tools. How can you undo this?

You can't. You need to duplicate files before you conform. If you didn't, you need to reimport the file.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
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Compressor has a "make footage play at *target frame rate*" option. I'm not at my desk so I can't remember the exact wording. Not sure if it will do 60fps, though. You will lose a generation in doing so, and I'm wondering why you would too, since you can just as easily speed up your shot in FCP (a 200% speed ramp)



www.strypesinpost.com

Shane, what I want is a conform not a convert. I want the frames to remain as is and just the speed instruction to change.

All Cinema Tools does when it conforms is to make a one word change to the original footer and attach a new footer. What exciting info can it pack into the new footer: new fps, new length, what else? It's hacking time.

[Note added: comparing the footers for a 24 fps conform and a 30 fps conform of the same clip finds many hairy differences.]

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

strypes thanks, maybe that does it.
In Standard Video Compression Settings / Motion / Frame Rate / 60. (Custom frame rates are accepted here.)
Then in Retiming Control / Set Duration to / so source frames play @ 60 fps.
Working in 8-bit uncompressed there should be no recompression.

Here's what I was doing, trying to do a stutterless PAL->NTSC conversion using Motion. It failed. Wherever there's a straight cut Motion installs a couple of wildly creative frames. So this technique has no chance on already cut material. Also Motion gets overly creative in the middles of shots.
I probably needed to rechristen 59.94 instead of 60, but it's unnecessary now.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

2½ years later I discover that Jon Chappell's "QT Edit" can conform any frame rate to any frame rate, avoiding the silly limitations in "Cinema Tools".

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Dennis, which tool in the Quick Edit toolbox can do that? This is the only info I could find on it on his site:

QT Edit
Edits QuickTime movies. You can add and remove media, edit timecode information, modify chapters, change metadata and more. All changes are displayed in a real-time preview window. Media files can also be batch edited.

I would like to use the best tool to conform 720/60p footage to 720/30p; one of my cameras has the latter as a selectable option, and it would be great to be able to conform the 60p footage to the other camera's 30p.

Os is this a case where Conform would work? (I mean use the 30p footage to set the Sequence settings and use Conform on the 60p footage.) TIA, KL

"Conform" has a particular technical meaning here. When conformed, the video file's header is altered so the video plays at the new rate. The video file's contents are not changed. Thus video shot 60p conformed to 30 fps becomes 30p video which looks and sounds half-speed and runs twice as long.

Apple's "Cinema Tools" has a stingy conform function. Firstly it refuses to conform video that has interframe compression, at least it just now refused my H.264. Secondly it is limited to conforming to just five frame rates: 23.98; 24; 25; 29.97; 30. The program's designers probably intended free choice of frame rates, because it says this:

Quote
Cinema Tools
Important: Conforming modifies the actual source media file. ... you cannot use the Undo command to restore the file to its original frame rate; however, you can use the Conform feature a second time to return the file to its original frame rate if necessary.

Sorry, after conforming 60p to 30p you can't use Cinema Tools to conform it back to 60p, because 60 is not among its five choices. QT Edit has a generous conform function that removes both mentioned limitations of Cinema Tools.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Dennis,

Thanks for that info. re. Cinema Tools.

Re. QT Edit: I looked at Jon Chappell's QT Edit, but from the description, could not see that it could do what you said it could. It's a trivial price, but did I understand you correctly—QT Edit can do what CT promises (but can't deliver?). Sorry to ask the question again, but I am hyper-literal!

Thanks, sincerely, KL

> QT Edit can do what CT promises (but can't deliver?).

It's not that Cinema Tools doesn't deliver what it promises. Its promised functions have always been pretty modest. It's an old piece of software, probably never intended for the myriad of frame rates available to tapeless media. Cinema Tools was more a tool for the broadcast/film/video age, using only those standards.


www.derekmok.com

See the big sign over Cinema Tools:

IF YOUR FRAME RATE ISN'T ONE OF {23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30} GO AWAY!

What looks like a promise (in the program and in the User Manual), "you can use the Conform feature a second time to return the file to its original frame rate if necessary", is only a promise to those who heed the big sign.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

KL: Yes, QT Edit can conform from any frame rate to any frame rate.
QT Edit provides a selection list with the same five {23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30} rates as Cinema Tools, but you can alternatively type in any frame rate (to two decimal places) you please.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Excellent, Dennis and Derek; thank you.

Assuming a 720p/30 timeline (GH3 footage), what's the easiest/fastest technique to bring B roll 720p/60 footage from a camera that does not have the 30fps as a selectable option? I have used time change in the past, and that approach does have the advantage of letting me use the original as a 1/2X slo-mo, but if the intention is simply to change the frame rate to 30fps and allow this footage to be cut with the original 720p/30, what's the simplest way?

Thanks again, kl

You have drifted off the topic of conforming to a question about transforming time scales. You want to modify a camera's 60p footage to simulate what it would have taken had it been running at 30p. This is roughly achieved by discarding every other frame of the 60p. It's not an exact simulation because of the shutter angle mismatch, but it will almost always do.

It isn't cool to edit the GH3's H.264 footage in FCP7. We always transcode to ProRes first. The 50Mb/s H.264 should get HQ flavored ProRes.

If your editing is extremely simple you might get by with keeping the H.264. Since you've created a 30p timeline in H.264 you can simply drop your 60p footage into it. FCP7 will make 30p of it by, as-it-were, discarding every other frame. It will need rendering, since the 60p, whatever its codec, must be recompressed to make it 30p H.264.

On the other hand, if you had 30p ProRes and 60p ProRes this same operation would not require recompression since FCP7 will simply discard every other frame from the 60p.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Sorry for the appearance of drifting, Dennis; if I am using the language loosely, it is not deliberate vagueness, it's a lack of understanding the proper terms. I appreciate your help sincerely.

I always transcoded the Sony NEX footage I have been shooting until now, but as a result of cranking up our web based business, I wanted to avoid the transcoding time needed, and hence the other thread (about whether there was an alternative software that could edit this footage directly without requiring transcoding). In the meantime, a decently priced GH3 came into my workflow, as well as a Nikon V1 (the GH3 can do the 720p/30; the Nikon the 60). The video from the little Nikon is amazingly attractive, so I want to combine the footages from both (and the Nikon cannot do 30fps) and this is where the 'conforming' question came from.

Transcoding the 720p/30 and 720p/60 footages should take less time than the Sony's 1080p/24, I am hoping; and the Sonys do not have 720p. We have found that for our end output, there is no advantage to shooting 1080p.

So, to sum up, the question I asked today about transforming time scales is answered by your suggestion of transcoding both to ProRes, setting up the timeline based on the GH3 footage and dropping the Nikon's onto that. It may be that in time I will get another Panasonic that also shoots 720p/30. Thanks, KL