DVX 24pA footage in AVI format

[John C Lyons]

I shot footage on the DVX100A in 24pA widescreen. I initially imported this footage into Premiere as raw AVI but now want to use it in a new Final Cut Pro X with a new project. Any tips?

It's showing up as 720x480 (squeezed into a 4x3 ratio) in the Event Library which is obviously not what I want.

Thanks!

[John C Lyons]

I just hooked up my DVX, did a tape import within Final Cut Pro X of a minute of some of the same footage, and it recognizes it as anamorphic and 23.986 frames. There's got to be a way around re-importing 45 hours of footage just so the FCPX plays nice.

[David Jimerson]

I shot footage on the DVX100A in 24pA widescreen. I initially imported this footage into Premiere as raw AVI but now want to use it in a new Final Cut Pro X with a new project. Any tips?

If FCPX acts like FCP did, this won't work, because you need to remove pulldown during capture. Premiere removes pulldown on the timeline, not at capture.

Perhaps there's a way to remove pulldown through a Log and Transfer import process in FCP, but FCPX, simplified as it is, may not have that capability.



It's showing up as 720x480 (squeezed into a 4x3 ratio) in the Event Library which is obviously not what I want.


Why isn't it what you want? That's what the DVX records. You just need to adjust the pixel aspect ratio if FCPX doesn't do that automatically (which it really should).

[John C Lyons]

Hi Dave,
Yeah, it's obviously in the correct "from the camera" format, but as you said, the pixel aspect ratio isn't being adjusted automatically, which is the problem. Even if I make a 720x480 anamorphic timeline and pull the AVI's into it, they are still in the wrong ratio.

I see from older threads around about previous versions of Final Cut that sometimes people would take the AVI's and convert them into QuickTime format with the pulldown removed, THEN import into FCP, but I don't want to risk any loss of quality with the conversion.

[David Jimerson]

Well, if you can make that conversion with FCPX (though I don't know if you can), you wouldn't really have to worry about quality loss, because it should be simply re-wrapping and dropping redundant frames, not recompressing.

Compressor or Cinema Tools may be able to do it.

[John C Lyons]

Yeah, I downloaded Compressor 4 as well. So I'm looking into that. You've made me feel less worrisome, so thanks! I have used Premiere on a pc for all my projects thusfar and just decided to hop into the Apple world with their new direction with FCP X so I am working through this transition. I have about 400-500GBs of AVI files with my new feature film project. I was flipping out a bit last night to find that I couldn't just drop those 24p Premiere imported AVI's into Final Cut and dive right in last night.

[David Jimerson]

You might be able to do it with Premiere or Adobe Media Encoder. Don't have it in front of me to check for sure, but you might able to export clips from a 24p sequence directly into Quicktime DV 23.98 files.

[ullanta]

Even if I make a 720x480 anamorphic timeline and pull the AVI's into it, they are still in the wrong ratio. Right... at least FCP7 would adjust the new footage to fit the timeline aspect ratio - that is, in your case, to be in a 4:3 window in the widescreen timeline. Better to try dropping the footage into a 4:3 timeline (storyline? whatever!), THEN modify the timeline to be 16:9 once the footage is in it. At least, that's what would work pre-X...

[John C Lyons]

REALLY appreciate the help and ideas, guys. ullanta: i just tried your idea and it didnt work. it adds black bars to the left and right of my 4x3 source media image to fill out the 16x9 frame and thats about it. stays squeezed. damn.

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

REALLY appreciate the help and ideas, guys. ullanta: i just tried your idea and it didnt work. it adds black bars to the left and right of my 4x3 source media image to fill out the 16x9 frame and thats about it. stays squeezed. damn.

If you say 'all works well' in Premiere, then try a small clip, export from Premiere to a MOV clip, with pulldown removal, aspect ratio correct, and see if that MOV imports correctly into FCP X...

You indicated that FCP X did the right thing for off the tape log&transfer/capture (or whatever appropriate for FCP X...), so apparently somewhere in the processing there is some idea about pixel aspectratio and 3:2 pulldown, and resulting correct frame rates...

If that's successful... well, that may be easier to perform for your archive than recapturing from tape... ferrite flecks and all...

[John C Lyons]

yeah it's kind of getting ridiculous. i opened one of the AVIs in a QuickTime player, it plays back in the correct aspect ratio and the properties on the clip are:
DV/DVCPRO - NTSC, 720 x 480 (853 x 480) 29.97

i open it in Compressor 4 too (which is a good pal of FCPX) and it plays back the file in the correct ratio too. Compressor lists it as
Encoded bounds: 720x480
Display bounds: 853x480
Pixel Aspect Ratio: NTSC CCIR 601/DV (16:9)
Native field dominance: Bottom First
Frame Rate: 29.97

seems pretty obvious the only Apple app I have with the issue is the editor. ugh.

[John C Lyons]

well...

in case someone else ever comes across this problem. what i ended up doing, that worked, was taking an AVI clip into Compressor 4. I created a new "setting" which to my eye appears to be identical to my uncompressed AVI. in fact the file sizes are the exact same between the AVI and the new MOV. here's what the summary for the custom setting i created comes up as:

Name: FC
Description: DVX 24pA AVIs to MOV in FCPX 23.98P timeline
File Extension: mov
Estimated size: 11.05 GB/hour of source
Audio Encoder
16-bit Integer (Little Endian), Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz
Video Encoder
Width: 720
Height: 480
Pixel aspect ratio: NTSC CCIR 601/DV (16:9)
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: 23.976
Frame Controls On:
Retiming: (Fast) Nearest Frame
Resize Filter: Linear Filter
Deinterlace Filter: Reverse Telecine
Adaptive Details: Off
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Progressive
Codec Type: DV/DVCPRO - NTSC
Multi-pass: Off, frame reorder: Off
Scan Mode: Interlaced
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Pixel depth: 24
Spatial quality: 100
Min. Spatial quality: 0
Temporal quality: 0
Min. temporal quality: 0

Compatible with Mac

--------------------------

anyone see any red flags here? I have the option to export as progressive or interlaced scan mode. I'm assuming I want to do Progressive. plays back good in a 23.976 timeline in Final Cut Pro X.

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

anyone see any red flags here? I have the option to export as progressive or interlaced scan mode. I'm assuming I want to do Progressive. plays back good in a 23.976 timeline in Final Cut Pro X.

Not familiar with Compressor et al. but I thought the whole 3:2 pull down was based on interlaced, so if one did 'progressive', one would end up with frames that are 'composites' of two different fields. The usual test for whether pull down was removed was to step through frame by frame and see if there's any duplicate frames, or 'hair/fringing' related to interlace not being handled properly.

I'm also assuming that FCP X 'does the right thing' for inverse telecining of 29.97 media placed in a 23.976 time line...

I hope Apple gives 'free' updates to FCP X 2... for current FCP X beta users...

[John C Lyons]

ill try and make damn sure of this before i go ahead and convert all 400+GBs of AVIs. thanks j1clark

[John C Lyons]

ok ,so i went through and stepped through 20 or so seconds of one of my clips/files to make sure there were no duplicates or other issues. luckily the footage i choose to do the test from had a train passing by in the background so there's no mistake of it: no duplicate frames. i think we're good here. BIG THANKS EVERYONE!