P2 Import Mystery... I'm stumped

Luis Caffesse

Luis Caffesse

Admin
So I get a call from a friend yesterday who had some issues with some P2 DVCProHD footage on a project.
He tells me it looks "choppy" and couldn't figure out why, so he called me to see if I could help.

He came over today with the footage so I could take a look at it, and I have to admit I'm stumped as to what happened.
I seriously doubt anything can be done to fix the problem, but now I just want to get to the bottom of it so I can know what happened.

Before I run through this let me say there were many problems and bad choices made in their workflow.
This was not my shoot and there is nothing that can be done about those decisions now.

Here is what I know:

1) They shot 720/24P onto P2 cards (NOT 24PN)

2) On set they pulled the cards out of the HVX and plugged them into a Mac Laptop with a PCMCIA port and then imported the clips into FCP straight off the cards using log and transfer.

3) They then wiped the cards (never backing up the original MXF files)


The resulting QT files are indeed 'choppy' and the audio is horribly out of sync (and cannot be resynced manually).
Looking at them in FCP the framerate shows up as being 23.98
But oddly the datarate shows 5.8MB/sec as oppossed to clips I've shot at 23.98 which show up as 5.9MB/sec.

The cadence of the footage is as follows:
2 duplicate frames, 3 unique frames, 2 duplicate frames, 2 unique frames... repeat.

So basically it looks like this:

A A B C D E E F G H H I J K L L ... etc.

Now, here is where it gets weird.
Once they noticed the footage was 'choppy' they started copying the MXF files from the end of the day to a hard drive before wiping the cards.
Upon reimporting the MXF files from a drive the footage is fine (unfortunately they only have the MXF files from half of the shoot).

So clearly it was not an issue of how the footage was recorded.
The issue must be in how it was imported.

Thing is, try as I might, I couldn't recreate the problem today.

Anyone have any ideas?
 
Probably blew up the 3:2 cadence. This is why you should always back up the MXF's. Once the cadence is hosed and you don't have the original files your goose is basically cooked.

Noah
 
NoahK said:
Probably blew up the 3:2 cadence.
Click to expand...

Can you clarify what you mean, Noah?

The thing that confuses me is that it's 720P footage - so we're not dealing with a 'pulldown' that needs to be removed, just duplicate frames which should be able to be removed cleanly given it's all progressive.

And - the QT clips they ended up with are 23.98fps, which tells me the dupes were (supposedly) removed on import, otherwise they would have been left with a 59.98fps file. I suppose it's possible that somehow the wrong frames were removed.

But what option in FCP would possibly do that?
It did cross my mind that they may have changed the UB FRAME setting - but that can't be in because the footage was reimported fine when brought in off a drive. So it has to be an import problem.
 
That's what I mean- sounds like the wrong import settings were chosen and the incorrect frames were removed. Hence without the MXF originals to pull from again with the proper settings you might be SOL.

Noah
 
Hi,

To be more clear. When they imported to FCP, and they were shooting 24P, and not PN, theythey set the time line for 23.98 and left the remove 2:3:3:2 checked. FCP did exactly as told and removed every 3rd frame from the A Frame resulting what you have. There is no rescue for this project because they didn't save their masters, the MXF files.

Hope that clarifies, I know it doesn't hurt any less.

Best,

Jan
 
Jan_Crittenden said:
Hope that clarifies, I know it doesn't hurt any less.
Click to expand...

No worries - it doesn't hurt me at all as it wasn't my project.
:)

The thing is - that explanation still doesn't seem to make sense to me (unless I'm missing something in FCP that is).

I tried to recreate the problem by shooting 720/24P and then importing into FCP and setting the options to remove pulldown.

But in FCP there is only one checkbox, and it reads: "Remove Advance Pulldown and Duplicate Frames."
They are both controlled by the same option.
So when I tried to recreate the problem by shooting 24P and importing, the footage had the duplicate frames removed perfectly fine and left me with a clean 23.98 file.

I guess I don't see where FCP would ever try to remove pulldown from a 720P file.
Unless those two settings (advance pulldown vs. duplicate frames) are seperate in other versions of FCP?

I'm running 6.0
They have 6.2 (or is it 6.02)?

EDITED TO ADD:
As annoying as it is not being able to recreate a problem, I will say it's nice to know the workflow is solid enough that I can't seem to mess up my footage when I'm actually TRYING to.
:)
 
Hi,

I think what he did was to manually set the frequency to 23.98 in the project setup, rahter than have it come in at 720/60. All the stuff was imported with the advanced pulldown removed so that what his the bin was 23.98. Should have been 59.94. Then use the frame rate converter to get rid of the extra frames.

Does that make sense?

Me
 
Honestly... not really.
I'm not trying to be difficult but no matter what I do on my FCP system 720P footage has it's duplicate frames stripped perfectly on import (unless I turn that option off and then I get 59.94 files).

But I haven't been able to find a way to get FCP to try to remove a 'pulldown' from 720 footage on import, and leave me with choppy footage. Setting a project to 23.98 won't effect the importing of footage - it will only affect the footage on the timeline. Import settings are seperate.

I've never had to use the Frame Rate converter to remove extra frames (only to retime slomo footage recorded on the Firestore back before their firmware upgrade).
 
yeah but it's not what you are doing, it's whatever they did. I've seen FCP setup in the most bizarre ways so I'm not surprised they managed to break the unbreakable.

Noah
 
Or if you want to have them screen shot their capture and sequence settings and post here- might be helpful.

Noah
 
NoahK said:
Or if you want to have them screen shot their capture and sequence settings and post here- might be helpful.

Noah
Click to expand...


I'm actually working on that.
But it's probably a lost cause to figure this one out exactly.
We're dealing with people that don't understand the P2 workflow or inner working of FCP - so many of my questions are going over their heads.

And of course, as is so often the case, they want to blame the program for the problems.
 
I have two different clients with this same problem. I tested both of their cameras and both tested fine. The MXF files are also fine. For some reason when FCP re-wraps the footage it is writing a Quicktime with a lower frame rate. I have seen 5 fps - 9fps.

Very strange I agree. I have never had this problem on my own machine. Their footage always seems to import normally when I do it.

Are you running FCP 6.0.2? PowerPC or Intel?
 
Shipsides said:
Are you running FCP 6.0.2? PowerPC or Intel?
Click to expand...

They are running FCP 6.0.2 Intel.

I'm on FCP 6.0 PowerPC, and like you everything is fine on my machine.
Haven't heard back yet from the guys who were having the problem.

Once they realized they were kind of up a creek I don't think they're anywhere near as interested in figuring out this problem as I am.
 
Well I'm running on Intel as well. One of my clients says he had the same problem on 3 different machines, while I cannot reproduce it on any of mine. I am going to take his original P2 card and see if it happens when importing directly off of that through our Dual Adaptor.

I'm interested to see if it'll pop up again at all.

My other client fixed the problem by capturing his footage through firewire when playing off his camera.. not a very elegant fix but it worked for the one clip he just couldn't import.
 
I understand that - but it's one thing to say 'it sucks' and that it sometimes causes problems... and it's another to have a problem that seems to be consistent. 10 cards were imported and they all show the same exact problem on import, all QT files resulting in the same messed up cadence. It really seems like a setting issue moreso than a 'FCP just messed up randomly' issue.

Then again maybe it works for most of the people all of the time and a none of the time for a few people. I guess that's possible.
 
I got that problem for the first time too. Import 720PN with easy set-up FCP 5.1.4 for several clips and 3 clips have wrong fps, one is 19.98, one is 21.98 and another 3 fps, all the others one are perfects.

For those 3 clips, they play correctly in P2CMS however, but when I import them they have the wrong fps and the lenght is different from original clip. It's the first time I'm having this problem, I will try to re-import them and see what's happening.
 
Luis Caffesse said:
Haha.
Alright, fair enough.
Guess I'll chalk this one up to unknown user error.
I just hate not knowing exactly how things went wrong.
Click to expand...

Hey Luis, have you find any answer to this problem ?

I tried Import with Raylight and everything is perfect with the MXF.mov, but it's very weird what FCP did for those 3 clips, I will like to know what happening.
 
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