Conform 60fps tp 24 fps for FCP7

I'm new to this forum and have a couple of questions someone might be able to help me with. For this post I'll stick with the most pressing and ask the other question later.

I've been using Final Cut for several years but mostly stuck to very basic, simple editting. As I upgrade to cameras with increasing capabilities, I also delve into new (to me) aspects of FCP. I'm now on Mac OS 10.6.8 and Final Cut Pro 7.0, and shooting with a Sony NEX-5N in an underwater housing, and an NEX-VG 20 for surface work. Both have 60fps capability (AVCHD2).

Most of my video work is underwater, and 60 fps is great for slowing and smoothing the movement of fish but creates a problem for importing the video. When I shoot at 60fps and try to use "log and transfer" to import the video into a project, FCP does not recognize my memory card. If I shoot at 24 or 30 fps there is no problem. The online help I have found lead me to Media Converter (Rewrap AVCHD for Quicktime) which gets me useable video that I can import. Another online search showed me to open the imported clip in Cinema Tools where I should be able to conform it to 24 fps (40% slow motion) or 30 fps (50% slow motion), however, the Conform button is not functional (not highlighted, won't work). I have, as a test, opened 24 and 30 fps video in Cinema Tools and the Conform button was active. What I've been doing to get around this is use the Modify Speed function on FCP, but am running into some terribly long render times.

Does anyone have any ideas that could smooth this process out?

>The online help I have found lead me to Media Converter (Rewrap AVCHD for
>Quicktime)

That's spamware. They pay off SEO rankings on Google. I'd use Clipwrap instead, as it comes from a more credible developer.

[www.divergentmedia.com]

>open the imported clip in Cinema Tools where I should be able to conform it
>to 24 fps (40% slow motion) or 30 fps (50% slow motion), however, the
>Conform button is not functional

Cinema Tools only work on non temporally compressed formats. You need to convert it to ProRes, then run it in Cinema Tools. Other tools such as Premiere Pro does it without any form of conversion within the editing software, so does FCP X as I gather.



www.strypesinpost.com

FCP 7.0.3 is getting old. It predates AVCHD 2.0. FCP 7.0.3 only accepts AVCHD 1.0 which excluded 50p and 60p.
Fortunately there are easy workarounds in this case. strypes mentioned ClipWrap. Another is VoltaicHD with some possible advantages. A free plugin from Panasonic might also be worth a try. (It works for AVCHD 1.0 that is improperly 50p or 60p.) I wouldn't reject "Media Converter" out of hand. It needs only to convert the .mts to .mov without re-encoding the H.264 (which will be evident from its run time) and without glitches. There's a world of open source video aficionados/hackers from whom we can learn a bit.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

This was a great help. I tried ClipWrap (AVCHD2 to Apple ProRes LT). It was simple and quick. I still could not get it to open in Cinema Tools and have the conform button active (must be missing something there), but I could modify the speed in FCP without needing to render and that is what I was looking for. Thanks for the help.

Transcode to ProRes. You can do that via clipwrap.



www.strypesinpost.com

We have a conform function in QT Edit. It's less fussy than Cinema Tools so it can work in situations where Cinema Tools can't.

[www.digitalrebellion.com]

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Quote
Jon Chappell wrote
We have a conform function in QT Edit.

Can you elaborate? I have FCP 7, ClipWrap, MPEGStreamclip. Mac OS 10.8.2

I am shooting with a Panasonic GH2; my goal is the best slo-mo I can get. Shooting 720p/60.

I could not see an app "QT Edit" on your site.

A question to all: If I shoot 720p/60, use ClipWrap to convert to ProRes 422, bring into my project, use Cinema Tools to conform to 24p, that will give me 40% speed and if I make my project 30p, that will give 50%?

I wonder if the 30p conform might not give the best visual detail, even if the motion is slightly faster? I am shooting humans jumping, running barefoot, etc.; my work is instructional videos, so visual clarity (being able to see muscle working, etc.) is my top priority.

And what are the options if I want slower than 40%?

TIA, KL

----------------------------------
SD oldie; HD newbie.

[www.KitLaughlin.com]

> I could not see an app "QT Edit" on your site.

Check his link again. QT Edit is part of the Pro Media Tools suite.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks Derek,

Missed it the first time, it seems.

Do you have any views on what I am trying to do generally?

Quote
Kit L
I wonder if the 30p conform might not give the best visual detail, even if the motion is slightly faster

The parameter affecting visual detail of fast moving objects is the shutter angle used for the taking. 60p video cameras standardly use 1/60 sec shutter. This is called a 360° shutter in cinematographic terms. With this shutter angle, for moving subjects, the blur in one frame meets the blur in the next frame, etc. Of course 360° shutter is impossible in normal cinema cameras, but even the 180° shutter, which produces half-length blurs, is sometimes discouraged for shooting fast action in cinema. By choosing a shutter angle smaller than 180°, the frames are sharper, and some of that sharpness is appreciated in the perception of the moving image.* However if the shutter angle is too much smaller, the playback of fast action looks unsmooth. It's tricky balancing these perceptual aspects. They depend on the frame rate of the display, the speed of the action, the contrast, etc.

The shutter angle used for the taking, regardless of the frame rate used for the taking, is evident in every frame, regardless of the frame rate used for the display.

When Kit L conforms his 60p, 360° shutter material to 24p it is exactly equivalent to having shot action that was 40% as fast using a 24p, 360° shutter camera. If this 40% action isn't very fast, then it probably should have been shot with 180° shutter. If the 40% action is very fast, then it probably should have been shot with less than 180° shutter. When Kit L conforms his 60p, 360° shutter material to 30p it becomes 50% action instead of 40% action and also the display is faster. So the shutter angles for the shooting can become a little higher. Yes, the 360° shutter is not quite as big a mistake after the 30p conform as after the 24p conform, but it's a mistake in both cases. Some experimenting will discover what shutter angle (speed) should be used for the 60p taking in each case.

30p display is a smidge smoother than 24p display, but generally there are distribution constraints determining whether to produce 30p or 24p. Whoever worries about visual appearance had better know how his work will be displayed.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

* Note added 18 April 2014: for images shot at 60 fps and then displayed at 60 fps I've seen no evidence that shooting with smaller shutter angle improves perceived sharpness. For realism of extremely fast motions it is best to shoot even faster than 60 fps with 360° shutter angle and then to display at the same frame rate.

Dennis, thank you for this detailed answer.

Let me pose the deeper question another way: if you were shooting human-speed movement (let's use the example of shooting the action of walking, from above, in bare feet, and on rough ground; I want to show how the feet mould to the roughnesses), what settings would you recommend you start with? I am using a GH2 for the first time; it is unhacked presently.

The options (for 720p) are 24, 30, and 60fps.

You wrote:

Quote

Yes, the 360° shutter is not quite as big a mistake after the 30p conform as after the 24p conform, but it's a mistake in both cases.

I will research this in the meantime, but if you can offer some starting settings (re shutter speed), I will be very grateful, or please point me somewhere where this beginner's material is explained. Thanks sincerely, KL

Kit L: I've never seen an authoritative study of the visual effects of shutter angle. If you find one let me know. Movie animators discovered long ago that for fast movements, perfectly sharp pictures, which correspond to 0° shutter angle, produce unsmooth movies. So they added blurs behind the moving things. You might study frames in animations to see how long the blurs are (as a fraction of the frame-to-frame movement). Non-0° shutter angles add blurs both ahead of and behind the moving things. Is this less visually efficient than the animator's trick? It's the tool we have.

Even prosumer camcorders let you set shutter angle. (For progressive video, the shutter time multiplied by the frames per second multiplied by 360° equals the shutter angle.) I don't know what your GH2, with or without the hack, lets you set. The Red Camera website has a brief tutorial on shutter angle.

You want to show how bare feet mould to the roughness of the ground. This moulding occurs in less than 1/10 sec. If shot at 24 fps, the mere 2 frames won't capture much. If shot at 60 fps, the 6 frames could capture some good bone & muscle action. If you think the interesting actions are more complex than can be revealed in 6 frames then you need to shoot faster than 60 fps. It is a separate question how much time you need on the screen for appreciation of the bone & muscle action. If you shoot 60p and conform to 24p, your 6 frames of action whiz by in 1/4 second. Is your audience observent enough to catch it?

Incidentally your footstep example doesn't involve fast screen motion. It involves many subtle changes occurring in a short time. So the shutter angle is not important.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

dcouzin: perfect. I will experiment and get back here with something tangible. Sincere thanks, KL

Dennis, a little update.

The hacked GH2 allows true 720p/60 (59.94?), and Cinema Tools allows direct conforming to 24 or 30fps. I have been doing research on the recommended shutter speeds for best motion rendition with 720p/60, and these vary from 1/300 to 1/1000—and re-entering these kinds of figures in your formula above

Quote
For progressive video, the shutter time multiplied by the frames per second multiplied by 360° equals the shutter angle.

gives very interesting angles.

I am wondering if these recommendations re. shutter angles assume footage to be viewed at 24fps. I will be experimenting with these shorter shutter times (both to control the very bright outdoor light we have here in summer) and to make individual frames sharp—I am thinking that instead of conforming, I will shoot in 720p/60 and put this footage in a timeline of the same fps—and use the retiming tools in FCS to get the slow-down I want (and hope that persistence of vision at 60fps will do the trick of making the final video look smooth).

If you are sure your video will be presented at 60 fps then smoothness of motion is almost guaranteed. "Persistence of vision" is hardly operative at 60 fps, and the shutter angle used for shooting is hardly relevant*. But now you do have the problem of making the action look slow. Both Compressor and Motion have "optical flow" slow motion algorithms. An earlier strand discussed these. See also a strand in the FCPX forum. Beware that if you want to demonstrate what the body really does, including complex motions and deformations, optical flow "makes things up" with sometimes absurd results. I would trust the eye watching footage shot at 60 fps and displayed at 24 fps, via "persistence of vision", to be less perverse than optical flow algorithms extending the same footage 2.5× for 60 fps display.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

*Note added 18 April 2014: For extremely fast motions there should be a realism advantage to using the video shutter angle of 360°.

Dennis wrote:

Quote
I would trust the eye watching footage shot at 60 fps and displayed at 24 fps, via "persistence of vision", to be less perverse than optical flow algorithms extending the same footage 2.5× for 60 fps display.

Dennis, thanks sincerely: all of this is tremendously helpful. I did notice a significant softening of the images following retiming 60 fps to 24; now I understand why.

As I am the producer and director of these programs, time spent at this point before we shoot any of the 'real' footage is gold. I see that you are all working on higher level programs than mine (which are only simple instructional videos) but the information is 100% relevant.

So, last question: assuming shooting in 720p/60, what is the most sensible workflow, if I want pieces to camera (so sync voice; wide angles of the action being discussed, with some live sound and some voice over done after editing, and then slowing some of this latter footage)? Is it best to edit in 60 fps, select certain clips to be viewed as slo-mo, conform these in Cinema Tools to 24 fps and bring back into the time line as Independent clips? I can't see a clear workflow presently!

As a relevant aside, I have noticed that Cinema Tools cannot conform AVCHD footage that has been converted to Apple Pro Res 422 via ClipWrap's output format choice, but the same footage sent from FCS to Compressor and selecting the same codec (Apple Pro Res 422) is able to be conformed by Cinema Tools—does Compressor add additional I frames or some other magic that allow conformation?

Last, I am enormously grateful for your replies; if there's a primer I should read somewhere on combining frame rates, please just point me there.

Outside of strict broadcast TV, display of video is a can of worms. You need to be able to work on your video using your monitoring system and then release the video in a form that plays not so differently for other people. Otherwise all these fine questions of smoothness of motion are silly.

You can shoot and edit at 60p. FCP and typical monitors present honest 60p. Then you can slow down the footage you want slowed down by various algorithms within FCS. I warned about "optical flow" but it should be tried. It might work perfectly. View the result and decide. You might also try doing the simplest speed change in FCP7. For example, set rate to 40% deselecting all the fancy options. FCP7 then duplicates one frame, triplicates the next, duplicates the next, triplicates the next, etc. This way you see 24 different frames in a second, but with a little rumble. This seems inferior to conforming the 60p footage to 24p and dropped it into a 24p timeline, where all 24 frames are alike, BUT how does your monitoring system, and the next guy's monitoring system, play 24p? They probably fudge and play one frame for 2/60 sec and the next frame for 3/60 sec, the next for 2/60 sec, the next for 3/60 sec, etc. That's the same rumble as by the FCP7 crude speed change. View the 60p FCP7 result and decide if it's OK.

Your workflow depends on whether you use Compressor's or Motion's algorithms or remain within FCP7. Use a low loss codec like ProRes HQ when making multiple generations. Getting the appearance you want should have priority over workflow.

720p/60 is a standard Blu-ray resolution, so with Blu-ray there's a fair chance other people will see something like what you've edited. But there's no 60p for DVD.

To your aside: in my experience Cinema Tools can conform AVCHD footage that has been converted to Apple Pro Res 422 via ClipWrap. Conforming is a trivial matter of changing a few bits in the file header/trailer.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Dennis, thank you. Understand everything you have written here, and the way forward is clear for me,

OTOH, I will have to go back and see what happened with the ClipWrap 422 footage; on the particular ingest I may have forgotten to select the correct output format. Thanks for all your help; over and out from me.

Clip wrap has given me some beautiful footage for final cut pro 7 . My footage was .mts from AVCHD and clip wrap made it apple pro res. FCP took it in no problem, no crashes, nothing. the only thing to watch out for is don't accidently let Clip Wrap just "rewrap" the footage with a .mov suffix on it. That footage looks bad and causes FCP to crash and it's not uncompressed. I don't know anything about Cinema Tools. What is it?

I have always read that that real movie film cameras shoot at 1/48 sec (which correspondes to a 180 degree shutter at 24 fps.) and sometimes for effect (to sharpen things up like in Saving Private Ryan's action sequences) they double that to 1/96. Is that not true anymore?