24p with iMovie of Final Cut Express?

C

cfb2002

New member
Hi,

I just bought my DVX100B and was hoping to be able to use 24p/24pa. Having spent all my money on the camera, I definitely cannot afford FCP. I was planning to use iMovie for a while, or if it makes a big difference I would purchase Final Cut Express.

I just heard, however, that neither iMovie nor Final Cut Express supports 24p. Is this correct? And does this simply mean that I cannot shoot in 24p at all if I will not be using FCP? Am I limited now to 30i?

Thanks for your help,

CB
 
Only FCP supports 24p. You should probably shoot in 24pa anyway, if you think you might later use the footage in a 24p timeline in FCP (once you can afford it). You will still be able to edit it in iMovie or FCE on a 30i timeline. (I'm going to use 30i to refer to the timeline in the editor, and 60i to refer to the setting in the camera; in one case the number refers to the frames per second, in the other it refers to the fields per second. Since the only interlaced format you can shoot with this camera uses 30 frames per second, it doesn't matter that the terminology is ambiguous.)

What FCP does is to remove the extra fields that the camera inserted into the DV stream. With those extra fields in there, the footage is effectively 30i. Without the extra frames, it is 24p. Thus you can edit the footage in iMovie or FCE as 30i, or in FCP as 24p.

If you're shooting footage that you know you'll never need to edit in a 24p timeline, you can shoot 30p or 60i. The choice really depends on how it's going to be displayed. If it's going to be displayed on an NTSC CRT (i.e., a plain old television), the 60i may look better. If it's going to be displayed on a progressive display (i.e., a computer, an LCD or Plasma TV, most projection TVs and front projectors), the 30p will look better.
 
Yes, I've had good results editing 24p DVX footage in Final Cut Express 2. You just don't get the option to edit on a 24 frame timeline.

-ab
 
everyone always says that you cannot edit 24p on FCE but i have been doing it for a while and i have not had a problem at all. maybe im just lucky i dunno.
 
Thanks for the clarification. I will eventually move to FCP (when I can afford it), so I think your suggestion to shoot in 24p sounds like the right one.

Given all of that (that I will edit now on iMovie or FCE, and eventually move to FCP, and that I want to eventually transfer it to film and screen it on a projector/progressive display), would you use 24p or 24pa? I'm still somewhat unclear about the differences, and when to use one as opposed to the other.

Thanks again for your help.
 
cfb2002 said:
Given all of that (that I will edit now on iMovie or FCE, and eventually move to FCP, and that I want to eventually transfer it to film and screen it on a projector/progressive display), would you use 24p or 24pa?
Click to expand...

Shoot, that's a tuffy.

If you make a rough edit in FCE, you can then export your cut back to tape. Recapturing the tape into Final Cut Pro should allow you to then work on a 24 frame timeline.

I would use 24pa. It will look more jumpy before the extra frames are taken out, but when the pulldown is taken out the final movie will be 100% progressive, which is what I'd want for a film transfer or big display.

-andrew
 
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