How to combine 25p and 30p footage on same timeline?

Hello Everyone!

Thanks in advance to anyone reading this and to anyone with any advice. I am working on FCP 7.0.3 on a 15" MacBook Pro (mid 2012) on OS 10.8.4.

I have about 400GB of HD footage shot on a Canon EOS5D mark2, which I am about to start to edit. I have recorded audio externally with a zoomH4n at 48khz, 24 bit. (Unfortunately the client wants to me to get this down to 9 minutes by some magic!). But before I start I want to convert everything to AppleProRes422 HQ and get everything in the right format. The film is destined for the internet and will also be projected at an event in Spain.

Half the footage was shot in the USA at 1080p30p and the other half was filmed in Spain at 1080p25p. As the film is mainly for Spain, I want to convert everything to 25p. Usually I convert my footage to AppleProRes422 HQ using the FCP log and transfer tool, but I see no option to change the frame rate? What do I do here? Or do I just have mixed framerates in my 25p timeline?

Also, while I am able to set up the project and sequence preset to 1920x1080-25p-AppleProRes422 (HQ), with 48khz-24bit audio, I am unable to adjust the settings of a "new sequence" to be the same. Any advice on this?

Many thanks!

Kind regards,
Robert

hi robert, big job !

for starters, i'd suggest that ProResHQ could be overkill. you won't win back lost detail from the H264 by going HQ, ProRes4222 should suffice, and save you time and space.

sadly you've got the two worst formats for mixing in FCP - 25 doesn't go into 30 that smoothly.
yes, you can work with 30p material in a 25p timeline, but FCP will just drop every 6th frame, resulting in stuttering motion.
try it yourself and see. maybe your shots are quite static and it won't be too much of a problem?


you can change the framerate when you convert via Compressor, in the Frame Controls pane,
you'd want to set everything to "best". or so i believe, i haven't done it myself.
apparently it takes a long time, too.
maybe try one clip a couple of different ways and see which you prefer.

it would be safest to create "Mezzanine" files - converting to PR, and keeping the frame-rate, then making new 25p files from those.

another approach is to use Cinema Tools to "Conform" the footage to 25fps
this keeps every frame, so the footage plays slightly slower.
it's quite fine for non-sync shots, landscapes, etc.
if you had shots with fluid motion, this would be a much better approach.

to do this, you'd convert to ProRes first, then conform in CT.
the Conform process is almost instantaneous, so that's good, AND you can conform back again if you need to.


possibly Premier is a better tool for this project?


nick

Hi Nick,

Thank you very much for your reply and for your generous help! I very much appreciate this.

WOW, this sounds complicated. I have not written you back earlier as it has taken me some time to try to understand all of this. And I do have several questions.

Sync sound is important in the film, unfortunately. The film will consist mainly of interviews, filmed both with 30p in USA and 25p in Spain. Then there is B-roll (in 25p and 30p)which are city shots of people walking and cars driving on busy streets and also of the protagonists working in their labs. There are also traveling shots (25p and 30p), where I walk with the camera, following the protagonist, although these will be short.

I understand what you say about converting everything to Apple ProRes first. I will do this with all of the footage, also before syncing audio.
Q> Is Media Manager or Log and Transfer preferable? Or are they equally good in doing this?

--
--
Now regarding the conversion process with the 25p and 30p footage. I prefer to have my final film be in 25p as it will be projected in Spain in a theater (and it will also be for youtube). I have lots of footage - 450GB, about 60% is in 30p.


Q>Are you suggesting it is better to go from 30p to 25p, rather than vice versa, as it is better to lose frames than to invent new ones? I am hoping this is what you mean as I would like to stay in 25p.

With all due respect, I saw an article by Ken Stone where, if I understand all of this correctly (which I may not) he says the opposite. But what you say makes more sense to me. Sorry for my confusion. I am not trying to contradict you, but am just trying to understand all of this.
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/converting_frame_rates_compressor.html



Q>If I only use compressor to go from 30p to 25p, will I also get jerky motion as frames have to be dropped?



Q> I found this video
https://vimeo.com/4920433
where Philip Bloom suggests conforming from 30p to 25p with Cinema Tools first. The footage is then slower. He then suggests bringing the footage back to Compressor and to adjust the speed to get the original length. I am assuming that with this method we do not lose frames but I do not know if it looks awkward.




I know I next need to test all of these options.

Many thanks for helping me navigate this complex issue.

Kind regards,
Robert

Robert:
"The film will consist mainly of interviews, filmed both with 30p in USA and 25p in Spain. Then there is B-roll"

i'd suggest looking at your B-Roll Conformed, not converted.
or pick a couple of shots w nice motion and look at them both ways.
the sight slow-down may well be preferable to artefacts you get from converting.

if your B-Roll has double system sync sound that you want to keep, you'll have to sync the shots, link them,
and batch export to make new files,
THEN conform.
thinking....
well, no you don't have to, you could slow your audio down by the appropriate amount then sync it to the conformed clips.

converting the interviews you wouldn't see a lot of motion artefacts as there's not a lot of motion
you'd probably be able to get by with using only the "Better" setting in Compressor, which would be good as they say "Best" takes forever!
(you may even get away with just using the clips in FCP and letting it drop every 6th frame, but that might be taking things to far!
have a look, see what you think)


Robert:
"I understand what you say about converting everything to Apple ProRes first. I will do this with all of the footage, also before syncing audio.
Q> Is Media Manager or Log and Transfer preferable? Or are they equally good in doing this? "

Media manager is not the best tool for this. It's strengths lie elsewhere.
Log & transfer is best as you can get certain metadata from the 5D files, such as timecode and reel numbers
(or at least you have the option of assigning reel#s)


Robert:
"Q>Are you suggesting it is better to go from 30p to 25p, rather than vice versa, ... I saw an article by Ken Stone where, ... he says the opposite.

to be honest, i haven't done this myself, and, no, i wasn't recommending one way over the other.

projecting in a theatre you could stay at 30 if you wanted, i think.
used to be 24 only, but the DCP spec has expanded in the last few years,
but it is a PAL country, so staying at 25 makes sense.
you'd want to check 25 is ok for your theatre, not just 24.


Robert:
"Q>If I only use compressor to go from 30p to 25p, will I also get jerky motion as frames have to be dropped?
... Philip Bloom suggests conforming from 30p to 25p with Cinema Tools first.


that technique sounds like nonsense to me, and vastly overcomplicated for you, with hundreds, if not thousands, of clips to convert.
that step in Cinema Tools is totally redundant, as either way you use the same tool in Compressor (the frame controls) to alter the speed, and squish 30 frames into 25
i'm not sure i'd agree with Ken Stone either, as i have always assumed that the motion estimation would use all the relevant info in the original 30 frames to create the new 25 frames.
but as i say, i haven't done it myself



nick

Robert asks an interesting question: which is the more obnoxious, 30-to-25 conversion that skips every sixth frame of the original, or 25-to-30 conversion that replicates every fifth frame frame of the original? I did an experiment in which Ken Stone was right, 30-to-25 was more obnoxious. Download the clips here. But the experiment was imperfect, since the clock runs at different speeds in the two clips. Also the subtlety of both artefacts suggests that for another shot the other conversion might be the more obnoxious. Also the brain of the viewer might matter. We might be able to sort people into those who suffer skips or replicates worse.

Methods of film speed conversion have been discussed many times in this forum. 30-to-25 using Compressor was discussed in [www.lafcpug.org].

Here it was reported that Compressor's better and best rate conversions are alike, and take like time.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

yes your 25 to 30 looks smoother,
but did you use any motion estimation at all?
it just looks like either dropped frames, or duped frames.

nick

Another solution might be to go to Adobe Premeire. I am not a huge fan of it, but you won't have to transcode to start. I'm not sure how it will handle the two different time codes but you could probably just handle the footage you do use in a separate pass.

The audio synch feature is also a nice little time saver. This is an inevitable move to either adobe or FCPX. Why not make it now, instead of a month from now mid project. You could also try cutting in resolve but the learning curve dwarfs the one moving to adobe. Premier even has a FCP shortcut pre-set, and the best keyboard mapping interface of all the NLE's ever.

When will we have the official wake for FCP7. I think this might be a great party idea.

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Hi Dennis and Nick,

Thank you both very much for your generous help!

Thank you for your experimentation Dennis. That is a very smart way to test it with the clock. I agree with Nick, that the duped 25 to 30p looks smoother than the dropped frames.

Nick, I have some more questions, if I may, with regards to what you wrote.
>Converting to ApplePro Res with Log and Transfer:
Q> When I convert to Apple Pro Res422, do I maintain the original frame rate? Ie. 25p to 25p and 30p to 30p?
Or would I even also be able to convert my footage from 30p to 25p at the same time? In Media manager you can choose the frame rate for your AppleProRes but in log and transfer one can not.

Adobe Premiere?
Nick, you suggested that maybe Adobe Premiere is better? What is your reasoning?

I have looked a bit on the internet on Premiere and it seems like it might be better. I have a macbook pro OS10.8 but would be able to buy a monthly license for Premiere Pro CC 2014, which is compatible with my OS. It seems one does not need to convert the canon 5dMark2 footage to ProRes,which would save me a step. I would have to learn a new system, and I would miss having this forum to get help :-), but maybe it would save me time. I am still not clear though on the most important issue, as to how it handles mixing different frame rates, ie 25p and 30p.

Many thanks!
Kind regards,
Robert

Nick, no motion estimation was used. It was just a comparison of the visibility of skipped versus replicated frames -- two basic kinds of jerkiness.

Doing those clip with Compressor's "Best (High quality motion compensated)" setting looked great either way. When changing 30-to-25 with optical flow, only one frame is kept from every six; four new frames replace the other five. When changing 25-to-30 with optical flow, only one frame is kept from every five, five new frames replace the other four. Either way it's mostly new frames, and when the program can handle the actions nicely, it can do it equally for 30-to-25 and 25-to-30.

Andreas Kiel made wise remarks about optical flow in a 2011 topic: "Speed Change Quality".

Dennis Couzin

Robert:
"the duped 25 to 30p looks smoother than the dropped frames"

those tests are not that instructive, as they're animated graphics with hard edges, etc,
not humans, sitting and talking.
i suggest you do your own tests on a short, 5 second exports of your interviews.


Robert:
"Q> When I convert to Apple Pro Res422, do I maintain the original frame rate? Ie. 25p to 25p and 30p to 30p? "

yes

"Or would I even also be able to convert my footage from 30p to 25p at the same time?"

you CAN do that if you do your conversion via compressor.
2 problems:
- you could lose metadata such as timecode.
- you don't have a "clean" Prores file with no artefacts. that's the "Mezzanine" file i mentioned.

but these may be small considerations for you. especially as you have 400G of h264. that'll make a LOT of ProRes


"In Media manager you can choose the frame rate for your AppleProRes but in log and transfer one can not."

this will give you no motion estimation, worst case conversion.
you'd be better off using the 30p clips in a 25p timeline, you'd get the same results, with clean media


"Nick, you suggested that maybe Adobe Premiere is better? What is your reasoning? "

better motion estimation (so i believe)
ability to work with h264 native (never used PP, so i'd research that a bit first, claims about apps performances can be exaggerated!)
i haven't used it, I've just seem it recommended for other people in your situation.



Dennis:
"Doing those clip with Compressor's "Best (High quality motion compensated)" setting looked great either way. ... it can do it equally for 30-to-25 and 25-to-30."

so either way is good.



nick

Quote
Nick Meyers
so either way is good.

Nick, it's better to say that either way is good or either way is bad. As mentioned in the 2014 topic "Optical Flow transformation always looks smooth, but sometimes looks weird." Unreal, morphy things can appear, sometimes away from the main subjects, that ruin the effect. Your advice to Robert to try the transform on his own shots is right-on.

People complain about the long processing times for optical flow rate changes. Computers happily run overnight. The real problem is optical flow's unexpected artefacts. In the 2011 topic:

Quote
Andreas Kiel
Optical flow can be implemented in the one or other way. In many cases all ways lead to a bad result and you have to start with a kind of visual thinking - means looking at clip and analyze what's moving how. So the first step is to make the optical flow in your head.

On Andreas' advice I acquired Twixtor. Even its non-Pro version offers parameters that Compressor's optical flow lacks, like "Motion Sensitivity" and "Motion Blur Compensation". I confess I never achieved the kind of visual thinking Andreas describes. Artefacts, when they occur, are still unexpected. Some are wonderfully funny.

Nick is right that the animated clock is too artificial to be a good example. My favorite clip for frame rate studies is this one of a phonograph record coming to rest.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany