24pa Stinks, can I switch?

[kylelewis1]

Re: 24pa Stinks, can I switch?

Wow! I was just quoted by the great Barry Green! Will my name be in your next book if you quote me?

 

[seasonofpassage]

Re: 24pa Stinks, can I switch?

[quote author=Barry_Green link=board=FCP;num=1104521927;start=15#19 date=01/17/05 at 06:50:27]I'm sure you already know this is coming, but: it's something you're doing wrong.  It's not 24PA's fault, 24PA works flawlessly for what it's intended for.  24PA doesn't "stink" (as the original title of this thread implies); it just has to be handled properly.  I see more complaints about FCP in this regard than any other editing program, yet I'm sure it can work properly, which leads me to the conclusion that Apple must not have documented the 24P/24PA process very well.  So all I can say is, ask someone who knows how to do it, and try their method -- you shouldn't be able to see *any* difference between 24P and 24PA, when edited in a 24P timeline and put out to DVD.[/quote]

I think it probably has to do with FCP in some regard. I understand what it should look like, and my prominent belief during the entire thing up until very recently is that I *have* been doing it wrong. For all intents and purposes, setting up a 24p timeline and pulldown-removal capture in FCP is ridiculously easy; they have all the appropriate settings pre-selected in this 'Easy Setups' selection in one of the menus, and 24p is one of them. Initially--and by initially, I mean months ago--I selected it and changed nothing about the settings. When it basically did the same thing it's doing now, I went in and went through pretty much all of the individual settings. Nothing changed. I've gone back and done the Easy Setup a couple of times intermittently throughout the process, and there really doesn't seem to be any change.
I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but the choppiness is dispersed completely randomly around clips. That's mostly what makes it as frustrating as it is--the issue would be over, done with, and the scenes reshot if, say, the choppiness was occurring only in moving/handheld shots. Or if it was only static shots. Or pans. Or tilts. But there are wildly mobile shots where the motion blur and the movement is *perfect* after pulldown removal. This whole thing hasn't been an entire wash--there are shots that come through perfectly. And then the very next shot, which may be equally, more, or less mobile, will be extremely choppy. And there are static shots where the slightest movement, fast or slow, comes out choppy. Next static shot is perfect. There's absolutely no pattern to it that I can see. It'd be a lot easier to also finally convince myself that I'm doing something wrong if the video problem was universal. It's not. And no settings change between these shots, either.
But that point should be moot anyway--every frame of raw footage played back on a TV or a computer screen, before pulldown removal, looks fine. Upon pulldown reinsertion--at either 2:3:2:3 or 2:3:3:2--it should look relatively the same on a 4:3 TV.
While this has been going on, I've looked up the process of getting FCP to show a 24p timeline, on here and on 2pop. All the procedures listed by other people are fairly well identical. I've followed 'em, but no dice.
By the way, in response to another person's post on the difference between what the two 24p settings are used for...F5 is used by more than just lazy people who don't want to go through a 24-frame editing process. It's for people who don't have a NLE with 24p editing capability, people who don't own a DVD burner, and people who are going back out to tape. It's there for a good reason.