24p and 3D/compositing

[dillont]

Howdy,

Guess I'll strike out on a question...

I've got extensive experience in 3D animation and special effects. I also have the software/skills to be able to match moving BG plates with 3D elements, and composite 3D into live footage (a la Jurrassic Park and MIB).

The question is - what to do with footage captured on the DVX100 (should it be captured 24p, or 24pA)?

Once captured, I will most likely want to have the raw 24fps format to insert into the 3D program for timing, and the same 24fps to do the composite work on.

So which is better? 24p? Or 24pA? I'll need to remove the 3:2 pulldown from the 29.97 footage so its a pure 24fps sequence right? Export to image sequence or AVI format?

I've got some experimenting I'd like to do with my friend

Dillon

[Barry_S]

24pA is the optimal format for compositing because frames can be extracted without decompression or recompression--maximizing image quality. As long as you have software that can remove the 2:3:3:2 pulldown, there is very little reason to use 24p. And yes, export as an incompressed avi or as an image sequence for compositing.

[THiNSPiRiT]

Yeah, shoot with 24pa. The frames should match up exactly to your 3D footage as long as you specify it as 24 fps in the program as well...

[Young-H._Lee]

Hey man, check out some of Rich Lee's composting work, they are excellent - check out "be like you music video" post in screen grabs section

[Beat Takeshi]

remove the pulldown and get your 24 frames and export TGA or TIFF files for import in your 3D program. I use lightwave and there is the option of displaying a still frame or using the sequence when you scrub. I find being able to freeze the one frame speeds up the computer when tweaking the animation because it doesnt have to refresh the background image. You cant do this with an AVI as far as i know and AVIs load fully killing your ram.

[Shaw]

I'm curious...

Is there any FREE software that can remove a 2:3:3:2 pulldown? I would prefer not to spend any more money on the software side. I currently use PP1.0