Re: footage in different sizes and 30, 25 and 24 fps, doubts in the sequence settings

Hi there,

I have different fps footage (30, 24 and 25 fps, most of it in 25) Also diffetrent size, 1920 x 1080 and most of it AVCHD converted to prores 1280 x 720.

I thought to do the final export in two sizes: 720 for internet and 1080 for projections.

So for now I put this sequence settings for best quality results but I have severe doubts and want to make sure I´m not going to have problems afterwards:

1280 x 720 HDTV 720 (16:9)
Square
None
25
Pro Res 422 codec

I know I'll be losing the full hd quality but is that better than blowing the 720? How about the fps? How can affect the clips that won't match? Could you give me a clue?

Thanks so much for your appreciated very useful help!

Alicia


FCP 6.06
MACOS X 10.5.8
Proc. 2.8 GHZ INTEL CORE 2 DUO
4GB 800M DDR 2 SDRAM
Quicktime 7.7

your biggest problem is the varying frame rates.
FCP has no real way to deal with them, and the footage will look very jerky.

you might be better off using another NLE


nick

alioshka: was 1920x1080 original converted to 1280 x 720? In that case I'd go back to the 1920x1080 AVCHD and convert to 1920x1080 ProRes.

Nick warned about [classic] FCP's poor handling of varying frame rates. You can use Compressor to pre-transform your various materials to 25p before bringing them to FCP6.

Compressor nicely transforms 24p material to 25p with its "make source frames play at 25 fps" setting. This works like a conform on the picture but it also down-pitches the sound for you.

You didn't say if your 30 fps material is 30p or 60i.

If it's 30p, try converting it to 25p using Compressor's "Rate Conversion: Best (High quality motion compensated)" setting. This Optical Flow transformation always looks smooth, but sometimes looks weird.

Converting 30p to 25p using "Rate Conversion: Fast (Nearest frame)" is sure to look jerky. (This is because every 6th frame of the original is omitted, so the action jumps by 1/15 second after four 1/30 second steps.)

If it's 60i things are different. If you deinterlace it to 30p you have the two previous choices. But if you double deinterlace it to 60p, those two Rate Conversion methods give better results. In particular double deinterlace to 60p followed by conversion to 25p using Compressor's "Rate Conversion: Fast (Nearest frame)" avoids bad jerkiness. (This is because it cycles skip one, skip one, skip two, skip one, skip two, etc. through the 60p. Time steps are 1/30 second for each skip one and 1/20 second for each skip two.)

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

converting the frame rates means moving inextricably away from your camera original.
you would not be able to conform back to the originals if that is important for you.

the Prores files would become your new masters, and you'd need a back-up strategy that reflected that.


nick

> converting the frame rates means moving inextricably away from your camera original.

Indeed. You need to think this through. Because if conforming frame rates is your decision (usually a good idea), you may want to think about doing the conversion at a post house, which usually results in better quality. You are, for all intents and purposes, creating new masters, and you may not necessarily be the best person/setup to do that.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks to all of you.

I always keep the original master in the case... I going to try compressor then, I´ll report to you after.

the thing to remember is that once you make a new ProRes conversion with a different time-base, the original AVCHD master will not be that useful to you.

so your initial ProRes copies from the AVCHD need to be of a mastering quality before you change the frame-rate.
at least good enough for what you need to deliver.


all the best,
nick

AVCHD -- 27 Mbps H.264, 8-bit, 4:2:0 -- is not such hot stuff to be difficult to transform losslessly.
I use ClipWrap to transform 1920x1080 25p AVCHD to ProRes HQ, and to transform 1920x1080 50p AVCHD to ProRes SQ. ('ProRes SQ' is strypes' sensible way of designating non-Proxy, non-LT, non-HQ, ProRes 422.)
I save two copies of the original AVCHD, which are pleasantly small, but have not yet had to go back to them. I save two or three copies of the ProRes, as if it were original.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany