Captured 24p Advanced Wrong

Hi, thanks for your help. I am one of the many that are using the DVX-100a and are lost on some of the technical details, even though I have read all of Ken Stone's recent article on it (which was really good, by the way, read it if you are at all interested). But the long and short of it is, I am using FCP 4.5 on a G4, OSX Panther. We shot 24p Advanced with the "in camera 16x9" (not a lens or the "in camera letterbox", but the "squeeze". So basically we shot it as complicated as we could possibly make it, which leads to....

I captured a bunch of footage with the Easy Setup "24p (23.98) advanced pulldown removal", with the idea that I could afterwards click the 16x9 button on the Sequence Settings, and we'd have beautiful 23.98 sequences (FCP 4.5 doesn't give you the Easy Setup Capture option of both 23.98 and anamorphic). To my horror the footage required rendering when we laid it in the 23.98 timeline. To my further horror the footage was claiming to not be 23.98 at all, but rather 29.97, even though we definitely did shoot it in 24p Advanced, and we definitely did capture it as 24p advanced pulldown. As to why it is in 29.97, I have no clue.

All is not lost, because we can still edit in 29.97, without any forseeable problems. And furthermore, I eventually figured out how to create a custom capture setting that is both 23.98 advanced pulldown, and 16x9. When we capture in this setting, we can edit it in a 23.98 16x9 sequence. But we've already spent about a week capturing all of the footage incorrectly, and it would be very time consuming to recapture all of the footage.

I guess this leaves me with two main questions about all of this:

1.) Can I just stay in 29.97, edit all of the existing footage that we've already captured, and say screw it, or am I losing quality and some of the filmic look by doing this. I personally don't see any difference in quality on my monitor, but is there any long-term disadvantage to editing footage shot in 24p advanced with 16x9, in a 29.97 16x9 timeline?

2.) Is there any way to correct the footage that I have already captured? That is, to change it from the current 29.97 to 23.98. I'm aware of the Standards Conversion at Nattress.com, but is that really any faster or easier than just re-capturing all of the footage in the correct capture setting? My best hope is that there is some way to check or uncheck some box in the sequence presets or footage itself, and suddenly have it fit into a 23.98 16x9 timeline without any rendering... though I have tried to my heart's content, and haven't gotten any combinations of that to work.

Thanks for you help,

Ty Carlisle

You need to look at your footage very carefully. You need to go through it frame by frame, with the viewer in FCP set to 100% and view as square pixels off. You'll see a mix of whole frames and split (interlaced) frames. Tell me what pattern you see:

wwssw is 24p normal

wwsww is 24p advanced

And we'll take it from there,

Graeme (who wrote the article you refer to)



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

When I watch the footage that is claiming to be 29.97 in FCP, every fifth frame is Interlaced, (I think, from what I am interpreting, where every fifth frame doesn't move). So that would make it the wwsww pattern or 24p Advanced.

Thanks.

Also, yeah, sorry, I noticed in my email after posting that it looked like I was giving credit to Ken for your article (actually that was just where I found the article)... but hey, at least I plugged your website.

So, have you tried the menu item to remove advanced pulldown on your clip? Also, you could try taking it to cinema tools and seeing if that does it. Sometimes ADV pulldown removal doesn't work right on capture.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Nattress you are a genius. You make it sound so simple. I used the advanced pulldown removal from the tools menu on a small clip.... Boom Bang Ba-Da-Boom, 10 seconds later I had 23.98 media, that we took to our 23.98 16x9 timeline and it laid in without any rendering.

Thank you so much for your quick responses and for the help in general.

Pray tell, why doesn't FCP remove it in the capturing? Is it the limit of me using a G4 that it doesn't have the power? some glitch? or otherwise?

Hey Graeme, just wanted to insert a post in here to get updates on this thread. A friend of mine is two weeks away from an HD shoot and it will be my first time dealing with 24 fps.

Graeme, what do "w" and "s" stand for?

"whole" and "split" perhaps?

nick

Wobbly and suspine?

Whole and Split!

Thanks,

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

thanks for your patience, graeme...
if i'd read your original reply a bit closer i would have seen that.

cheers,
nick