24AP clips and frame rate problems in FCP

D

DaniB

Member
We have a huge stack (300 or so) of mini DV tapes shot on either the DVX100 or Canon XL2, most were shot 24AP but we do know some of them may have been 24p by accident.

I'm dealing with a problem that I've never encountered before, and it has several parts:

First off, when we digitize, we generally do "capture now" instead of logging because we know what we need and it's faster for getting through the amount of tapes we have. But FCP seems to be very tempremental in "removing advanced pulldown" as this message often doesn't appear and we have to keep re-opening the log and capture window, or changing back and forth the capture settings or just restarting FCP to get it to co-operate. At times, I have resorted to just capturing without seeing the "removing advanced pulldown" to save time, and deal with the problem later. Incidentally, everything we are digitizing is all offline, so its just for offline cutting.

We have two G5 systems. One has FCP 6 on it, the other has a version of FCP 5 (only because we just set it up and haven't upgraded it yet). We have been digitizing on both because we aren't cutting anything yet, but this shouldn't make a difference.

I have encountered some clips which have massive sound sync issues (and about 30 of black at the end). These clips ONLY have the issues when played in FCP in the viewer (or canvas). If played in quicktime they play fine. AND even weirder - if played on FCP 5 system, in the viewer they play fine.

The item properties show that these clips are exactly the same as all the rest except that they are 29.97. I checked thoroughly through all the FCP settings, user preferences, sequences presets EVERYTHING, and could not find a difference between the two systems except for the fact that one is a newer version of FCP. So what is the problem here.

Again the 29.97 clips play fine in quicktime, or in FCP 5, but in FCP 6 they have sound sync issues in the viewer or canvas. Its not a sequence issue because we aren't even bringing them into the timeline.

I've tried making copies of the clips and "remove advanced pulldown" manually with tools, but it says there is a "cadence" issue. And this still doesn't explain how they work fine in the older FCP.

This is all an offline edit, so as long as we can find a way to solve the sound synch issues without destroying time code, then we don't need to worry about quality.

Sorry for the long winded-ness, hope someone out there can help. I'm stumped.

D
 
Look. You need to cut your losses and start over.

Don't capture the whole tape. Chances are you WILL have slippage.

Since you don't know which tapes were shot 24p and 24pA just capture everything (EVERYTHING) at DV/NTSC easy setup 29.97.

Now... make your decision... 24fps or 30 fps. Which will you edit in?

Which will you DELIVER in?

...

Let me slow down...

When you shoot 24pA it is CRUCIAL that you maintain the cadence throughout the entire tape, or you will have capture issues trying to remove the cadence... OR even removing the cadence thru the TOOLS menu after you capture. Your best bet is to log and capture those tapes. I guarantee that if the camera op wasn't even thinking that there MIGHT be an issue then they did something SOMETHING to that tape to mess it up. Take the time to log and capture.

Cut your losses and start fresh.

CaptM
 
Hey --

Here's a better answer for you (kind of)...

Buy Live Capture Plus... I've been using it and works great. Then hire a kid to sit there. Will log your tapes... fix errors (to a point) and best thing is... all the clips will be separated by Start/Stop.

This will ensure that if you want the cadence removed (24p or 24pA) you will have the proper chance of doing it correctly.

CaptM
 
Thanks for your response, but its not very helpful. This is offline right now, and 3/4cut so its simply not practical to "start fresh". We will be going online soon, at which point, the tapes will be captured again, this time 10bit uncompressed. Until then we need to just get these projects in working order so we can finish the cut.

Haven't figured out why its so tempremental with removing advanced pulldown yet. And so far discovered that the only way to fix the problem is to recapture making sure it says "removing advanced pulldown". Fortunately this is a problem with only a few tapes.

It would be great to figure out why FCP5 plays the pulldown conflict clips fine and FCP 6 doesn't. Seems to be just a playback setting that I can't find?? this would solve all our problems, as we need to upgrade the other computer to FCP6 to work in unison with each other.

Any ideas?
 
Ok... explain the sync issue.

What are you monitoring on? What do you mean by sync? Slips? Off by 10 frames all the time?

CaptM
 
Ok,

Whilst everything plays fine in FCP 5, certain clips on the FCP 6 system play as follows:

Sound is off sync from beginning (don't know by how much) and there are several minutes of black at the end whilst the audio still runs. and even when I've recaptured said clips, to make sure all the capture settings are correct, a quick test in FCP will play fine, on opening in a different project, its out of sync. I immediately thought it was a project setting, but I tried opening the clip again in many different kinds of projects (new ones that I made) but same issue occurs.

All of our other clips have been captured with 24AP settings, when you look at their properties they say 23.98 frame rate, the ones that are out of sync say 29.97.

I understand the reason is because they are shot 24pA but FCP failed to remove pulldown on capturing due to a bug. (this is not the first time I've seen this happen). I just don't understand why FCP 5 plays everything fine, and FCP 6 doesn't.
 
p.s. I'm monitoring in FCP, a second screen, and an NTSC monitor.
the clips play like this in the viewer.
 
Ok...

I've got NO idea what's going on. The REASON for this is not the pA material not being captured right.

Not sure why 5 works and 6 doesn't.

When was the last time you did basic maintenance?

Repair Permissions (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility) on your system drive
Trash Preferences in FCP 6 (Google for FCP Rescue 6)

Even if the material was captured at 29.97 and is pA you shouldn't ahve audio issues AT ALL.

I've got to re-read this whole thread again... (you type TOO much!! for my small brain).

Do the trash-permissions and see what happens. Save your keyboard layout if you have a lot of keys remapped before you do it though. You will also loose any favorites. But this really might be the issue.

BTW - where do you live (in general... not specific...)

CaptM
 
Hi,

Thanks - sorry about typing too much! I'm in LA. I literally just reformatted the G5 put leopard on and FCP 6. not even two weeks ago. The plan is to do this with the other comp too but obviously not until I know what's going on.

We thought it was happening with Sony tapes, but we noticed it on Panasonic tapes too. Now I'm wondering if I can narrow down which capture causes the problem - Lefty or Poncho (those are the comp names).
 
I've had the same problem too with using the advanced pulldown capture since I upgraded to FCP6. What I found is that FCP 6 will remove the pulldown on the fly but i think the metadata doesnt reflect that it's 23.98, so it plays it back at 29.97. So basically the video is actually sped up, but the audio isnt. That's what causes the sync issues. If you look on your NTSC monitor, you'll see that the frame rate doesnt quite look right (if you're having the same problem I did). What I did with those 2 clips was actually to go to Cinema Tools and have it conform to 23.98 (or 24, depending on your cup of tea) and everything was good to go after that.

Let me know if that works for you.
 
Well that worked - but I don't really understand it.

Is it an FCP 6 bug? Should I be downgrading to FCP 5?
 
ok some advice please...

The old projects which were captured and cut in FCP 5, when brought into 6, certain clips have these issues, so it is carrying across from 5.

But I'm nervous to upgrade the other system to FCP 6 in case we run into massive issues, even though I now know this quick fix.

Howcome even though we captured everything 24pA, some clips say 23.98 in the properties and some say 29.97? If its not the way its being captured - what is it?
 
Yes I have. I'm pretty certain its a bug so trying to connect the comp to the internet to do updates.
 
Not sure it is a bug or I would have seen this with more people. Lots of folks use FCP6 the DVX and 24pA shooting.

What version of QT do you currently have running?

Don't upgrade yet!!

CaptM
 
Dont mean to threadjack:huh:

I had something similar happen on a project I've just finished. I was told that all the footage was 24pa but when I imported using the remove pulldown capture preset i got a mix of 23.98 and 29.97 clips.

I went crazy, even calling the original camera person and asking them what they shot at. I tried so many tests and uninstalled and reinstalled without any luck. I trashed the prefs. I thought it was my blackmagic card at one point. anyway...

So i did a test by importing all of one tape with 29.97 selected and no pulldown. I then watched the entire thing and noticed that i got strobing as well as footage that looked fine in a 29.97 sequence.

Turns out that it was a mixed bag. I ended up cutting out most of the 29.97 footage and exporting at 23.98 and had no noticeable problems.

Don't know if this helps but i believe what's happening is that FC( I have 6) will determine if the footage is 29.97 or 23.98. I'd like to know if this is the case for the next time.

Thanks in advance Capt for all your help.
 
I have version 7.3.0 quicktime

I haven't done updates yet. Thinking of calling FCP to find out what the problemo is. For now its solved by the little cinema tools helpful trick - but that still leaves a lot to be explained.
 
We shot at 24pA on 2 HVX-200's and 2 DVX-100A's. I'm having the exact same problem. SOME clips play back fine, others go way out of sync.

I believe FCP6 is playing the video back at 23.98 fps, but the audio back at 29.97, because the sync gets worse as the clip goes on.

I haven't tried the cinema tools trick yet.

Here's the weird thing... The tapes were all digitized by my assistant editor on FCP6! And they played FINE on his system (I checked them). But for some reason, they're messed up on mine. Looking at the Capture Scratch, the Quicktimes are fine, too. In perfect sync. But the moment I try and re-import them, the sync issues reappear. :huh:

My assistant editor is using FCP6 (the install version, without updates - he has a terrible internet connection). I'm using the most up to date version of FCP6 (I JUST updated via Software Update, before I began this project). This makes me think this is a BRAND NEW BUG. Yay.

I think I may just start from a scratch and re-digitize everything. 11 60 minute tapes. Ugh.

Makes me want to shoot everything in 24p and edit at 29.97, from now on.
 
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