Editing in 24 fps (i know, 23.98)

O

Otistet

Member
So, i've been shooting with the DVX for a couple years and i always edit my 24p footage in a 29.97 timeline.

But i see all these posters who are editing on a 23.98 timeline.

Can anyone explain why? I assume that the only reason to edit on a 23.98 timeline is if you are planning on eventually getting onto film.
 
You MUST -- MUST MUST MUST!!! did I say MUST? edit in a sequence that matches the frame rate of the material.

PERIOD!

24p on the DVX IS 29.97.

24pA on the DVX IS 29.97 until you remove the advanced pulldown cadence and then you can edit in 23.98.

24p CAN be edited on a 23.98 sequence IF you use Cinema Tools to remove the standard "non-advanced" pulldown cadence.

Yes?

Pheew. Hope this helps.

CaptM
 
Otistet said:
So, i've been shooting with the DVX for a couple years and i always edit my 24p footage in a 29.97 timeline.

But i see all these posters who are editing on a 23.98 timeline.

Can anyone explain why? I assume that the only reason to edit on a 23.98 timeline is if you are planning on eventually getting onto film.
Click to expand...

Many many many people have deluded themselves into thinking that editing on a 23.98 timeline will make their project look like film. Heck, if you shoot 24p and edit 29.97 you have the film look. If you are going back out to tape there is absolutely NO REASON to be editing 23.98.

Unless you will be outputting to HD at 23.98, or to film. Or they might be going direct to DVD. 23.98 also saves hard drive space. But not enough to justify editing 23.98 if you are going back out to a 29.97 medium.
 
going to DVD with 23.98 allows you to use less compression for better image quality...no reason to waste bits on the pulldown frames when the DVD player will insert them automatically.
 
Shane you have shown up in three of the forums I've been researching today, each time with cogent advice, which is quite comforting amidst my confusion.

I have a similar question that I posted on Creative Cow, (one responded to by Shane thankyouverymuch) but am still trying to sort out the pros and cons of editing at 23.98 or 29.97, taking into account that if I am definitely exporting to 29.97 then I should edit on that timeline. Here's the rub: I'm not sure as yet whether I will be going direct to DVD - is that standard these days as opposed to mastering on Digibeta as I did with my last film? Digibeta is 29.97, yes?

The idea of "better image quality" is the clincher for me - with the great majority of my footage (80 hours) on standard 24p and only 4 hours shot at 24p advanced, I'm still here wondering if I should import my footage into a 29.97 timeline or a 29.98 timeline. Seems there are proponents for each choice, no big surprise, but I am afraid of making the *wrong* choice. Leaning toward 29.97, hopefully not tipping over in the process.
 
CaptainMench said:
24p on the DVX IS 29.97.

24pA on the DVX IS 29.97 until you remove the advanced pulldown cadence and then you can edit in 23.98.
Click to expand...

The two are the same except the fields which were added in order to bring them up to 29.97 are arranged differently according to their pulldown schemes.

24p standard is every bit as much real 24p as 24p advanced. Some NLEs can remove standard pulldown and give you the original 24p frames just as easily as they can remove the advanced pulldown.

Just wanting to be clear.
 
Shane Ross said:
Many many many people have deluded themselves into thinking that editing on a 23.98 timeline will make their project look like film. Heck, if you shoot 24p and edit 29.97 you have the film look. If you are going back out to tape there is absolutely NO REASON to be editing 23.98.

Unless you will be outputting to HD at 23.98, or to film. Or they might be going direct to DVD. 23.98 also saves hard drive space. But not enough to justify editing 23.98 if you are going back out to a 29.97 medium.
Click to expand...
Not so. Not at all.

There are fundamental differences between a 29.98 timeline and a 23.98 timeline.

Anything you add to the timeline -- animations like transitions, or moving text, or page peels, or any movement of the footage (like a split screen moved around the frame for whatever reason) will be rendered as 29.98 when you use that timeline. While the underlying footage will still appear to move at a 23.98 cadence, all of that added material will not, and you'll end up with graphics or whatever else with a motion cadence which does not match the underlying footage.

So, you can and often will end up with, say, footage which looks filmic and text or animation which looks video-ish, all in the same project. It doesn't look good.

Also, look at lengths of transitions. A half-second transition on a 29.98 timeline is 30 fields long, 30 steps. But the underlying footage has a timebase consisting of 12 time samples over that period of time. Fades, dissolves, etc., can look choppy and unnatural when you try to chop 12 time samples into 30.

You should edit on a timeline which matches the timebase of your footage. If you shot 24p, you should edit IN 24p.

And in fact, I'm going to turn it around on you -- unless you're exporting to tape, there's no reason ever to export 24p material in 29.97. And considering all of your other options, there's rarely ever a reason to export to tape. So, get out of it as early as you can.
 
Excuse me if this is too basic or I am missing something obvious, but I am confused when you say
"If you shot in 24p, you should edit in 24p" and leads me to ask:

I thought standard 24p footage (and 24padv for that matter) is recorded at 29.97 - I know about the extra frames and all of that - and that I have to "change" it (ie remove the 3:2 pulldown, extra frames) to bring it into a 23.98 timeline. I am still trying to find out does this improve the LOOK of the footage? I have 80 hours on standard 24p.

Likewise, it is my understanding that the small amount of footage shot at 24p advance has a different, 2:3:3:2 cadence, and I can either import it as is to a 23.98 timeline OR remove the advanced pulldown and bring it into a 29.97 timeline.

If I shot BOTH 24p adv (4 hours) and 24p (80 hours), it seems that both are "shot at 24p" and both are also 29.97. I keep thinking I'm getting out of this confusion and then I am just deeper into it.

please help. i'll send you cookies.
 
No, removing the pulldown takes the 29.97 material and converts it back to 23.98.

Both 24p standard and 24p advanced are shot at 23.976 fps and recorded at 29.97. The only difference between the two is that when extra fields are added to bring the frame rate up to 29.97 (this is adding pulldown), they're arranged differently.

FCP will remove the advanced arrangement at capture, but it will not remove the standard arrangement. But you can use Cinema Tools to remove the standard arrangement.

Either way, you can have pure 23.98p files for editing on a 23.98 timeline.

Now, you should always shoot advanced because it's easier to remove the pulldown from it. But if you have 23.98 material, you should edit it on a 23.98 timeline, even if you have to through the extra Cinema Tools step to get you there.

I prefer double chocolate with peanut butter chips . . .
 
Okay, it's all becoming clearer, despite some lingering differences in info, perhaps impossible to avoid. Grazie.

The bottom line question for me is, by converting those 80 hours shot on standard 24p through CT to 23.98 (removing the standard arrangement) and editing in a 23.98 timeline, will the END RESULT be an improved image quality?

I know that it will save me about 20% of drive space, and that depending on what the end user of the documentary requests I can export either to 24p DVD, miniDV, Digibeta, or whatever new technologies come up by the time I finish my film...and yes I am aware of the debates about whether there is any point in exporting a 23.98 project as a 29.97 output, or going to a post house and having them convert it...

It seems that I will indeed get the "film look" on either the 29.97 or 23.98 timelines, but you are implying that it will LOOK BETTER if I edit in the 23.98 timeline. Less extra fields to mess with, etc. Perhaps I am reading into it - but this seems to be the most important thing, will it be better for the film/easier for FCP that I'm using for me to edit in that 23.98 timeline. If so, I'll do it.

chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin?
 
The general motion cadence of the underlying video will be the same either way, but why work in an interlaced format when you can work in true progressive? (Yes, progressive is better.)

I outlined reasons above why you want to match your timeline with the timebase of the footage. Editing 24p in a 24p timeline (yes, 23.98) will yield better results.

AND, you will still have all the same options for exporting to 29.97 DigiBeta if you need to, whereas if you edit in 29.97, you will eliminate all of your 24p export options. Why do that?
 
Ok,

So I appreciate the responses to my original question. Based on the suggestions I ran a test this morning. Here are the details:

I shot with a DVX-100A set on 24pa (just to make the pulldown removal easy)
I shot some motion and some high contrast stuff
Then, I imported the clip into FCP both using Advanced pulldown removal, and again without removing the pulldown. After that, I created three sequences, two set to 23.98 and one at 29.97. I placed my footage, pulldown remove in the 23.98 and not remived in the 29.97. Using compressor, I exported the footage to .m2v. One of the 23.98's was exported at 29.97, one at 23.98 (which i assumed would be horrible) and then the pulldown removed one at 29.97. after the exports, i burned a dvd in dvdsp and watched them all one right after the other. no discernable difference. in know you will say that i was just not astute enough to see it, but i donlt think so.

now what?
 
If you watch a 24p DVD on a standard TV, you won't see any difference between it and a 29.97 DVD. The DVD player adds a 2:3 pulldown to the 24p material and converts in on the fly to 29.97 as it plays it on the standard TV.

You WILL see a difference, however, when played on a progressive source like an HDTV with a progressive-scan player. The 24p DVD will have discrete frames and you will never see interlace artifacting. When you play the 29.97 DVD on a progressive display with a progressive-scan player, you WILL see interlace artifacting, and it will be annoying.

Every Hollywood movie is put to disk as 24p. If you edit in 29.97, you will not have the option of making a 24p DVD.

Why would you assume that 23.98 material, on a 23.98 timeline, exported as a 23.98 file, would be "horrible"?
 
With all the amazing information that came through this and a few other threads in the past few days, I am all ready to bring in my footage (both 24p and 24p adv) into a 23.98 timeline on my FCP 5.0, using Cinema Tools to remove the standard pulldown from the 24p material.

Then I found this sticky on the site from Noah, and noticed that it was from March 2005, but it put some muddle back in the picture for me. I am hoping that perhaps the info is outdated, that now this is not the case, that I can indeed import my 24p adv and my 24p footage into a 23.98 timeline without "random frames" being erased.

Below is Noah's sticky, wondering if this is still a consideration. Sorry to extend this issue, but a lot of people including the gurus at the Apple store here in NYC were very eager to read the thread and find out what you all have to say.
-----
DVX100 24pA footage should always be captured at 29.97 because that's what's on the tape. When a user wants to cut at 23.98 they need to properly remove the 2:3:3:2 pulldown introduced by the DVX100 during filming. The DVX100 flags these extra frames and embeds these flags into the Firewire data stream. FCP can read these flags back during ingest and conform the 29.97 pulldown footage back to the 23.98 captured by the camera. That is what the Remove Advance Pulldown from 2:3:3:2 sources checkbox in the capture settings is for. But in order to do this properly, the FPS setting in FCP must be set at 29.97 to give FCP the full firewire data stream and allow it to properly recognize the flags and remove the Advance pulldown frames.

If you set the capture FPS at 23.98, FCP will randomly delete frames to get from 29.97 to 23.98 but they will not be the correct frames. You'll wind up with a 23.98 file that looks odd during playback from FCP because the 2:3:3:2 interlaced pulldown frames are still there along with randomly missing progressive frames. This has become the number one issue plaguing FCP users with DVX100 footage who want to cut at 23.98 and has resulted in a lot of confusion. I've hoped to lobby Apple on this issue so that they might include a warning pop-up in FCP giving notice that 23.98 FPS capture will result in improperly digitized DVX100 footage but haven't made any headway and Panasonic hasn't been able to either- maybe you can help with that.

I know it seems counterintuitive that one would use 29.97 as the capture frame rate in order to ingest 23.98 footage but that's how it must be done because of the way the format is recorded to tape.

Noah
 
What he's referring to there is, the footage is on tape as 29.97, not as 23.98, so FCP needs to be told what it will see when the data stream starts coming over the firewire. If it's set to 23.98, it will expect to see a 23.98 stream, but that's not what it will see. It will then not know how to remove pulldown properly.

Just remember his last sentence:

I know it seems counterintuitive that one would use 29.97 as the capture frame rate in order to ingest 23.98 footage but that's how it must be done because of the way the format is recorded to tape.
 
I'm trying to figure out how I use the 29.97 capture frame rate to "ingest" 23.98 footage, understanding both your explanation and Noah's original points (thank you). I know that both my 24p and 24pa footage is NOW on the tape at 29.97.

Since I want to use a 23.98 timeline, will it work if I import the 24p advanced footage using the "DV-NTSC 24p (23.98) advanced pulldown removal" option and "Cinema Tools 23.98 from DV-NTSC" option for the standard 24p footage? The other easy set up options are DV-NTSC (which I would use if I were importing standard 24p into a 29.97 timeline as I understand it) and DV-NTSC 24p (23.98) which I'm not sure when I would use.

Again, you convinced me beautifully and clearly why I should use a 23.98 timeline, and I should give you a thank you credit on my film for that, but all this pre-workflow homework will be a bust if I screw it up in the capture settings!

thanks.
 
Hi,
If I have 23.98 footage, and edit on a 23.98 timeline than render as 23.976 to burn as a 23.976 dvd, will that do anything awkward to the footage? I wanna try a film out test. I actually edit with Vegas 8 tho. And I used the Sony HVRZ5U camera. I'm only posting here because this is what I found after doing a search.
Thanks
 
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