A n00b question regarding FCE

Mark Marx

Mark Marx

Member
Hello folks,

I'm about to get a hold of my first good DV camera (a DVX100BE) and I chose it because of its ability to look film-like/arty/dreamy etc.

I have been led to believe that this is because of its ability to shoot 24p (which I am just about getting my head around).


Unfortunately, I have also read that Final Cut Express doesn't import the 24p footage...is this correct?

Does this mean that I won't be able to utilise the feature that I bought this camera for? ie...the film look. :badputer:



If you know any workarounds (in as simple language as possible!) I would be very grateful. If not then I guess I'll have to pony up for the full FCS version....which would seem a bit like overkill for a novice like myself.
 
FCE cannot remove the 3:2 pulldown and edit with a 23.976fps timeline... with a DVX, you just capture it as 60i and edit normally. it'll be fine.
 
Just remember that 24fps isn't the only thing that makes that "film look"

Just google "film look" and you'll get tons of info. But I would say ignor all of it, go to the pawn shop & get an 35mm SLR & then pick up a cheap 1970s era book on amateur photography.

Learning first about DOF, shutters, iris, exposure, contrast, framing etc. will help a LOT when you start shooting video.

Just like a piano or guitar, learning to make a movie isn't done in an afternoon. Your mom might love hearing you play "Chopsticks" on the piano, but no one is going to pay to download your performance on iTunes. If you want strangers to watch your movies, you need to make them good enough to watch, and that takes a LOT of work.
 
zijital said:
Just remember that 24fps isn't the only thing that makes that "film look"

Just google "film look" and you'll get tons of info. But I would say ignor all of it, go to the pawn shop & get an 35mm SLR & then pick up a cheap 1970s era book on amateur photography.

Learning first about DOF, shutters, iris, exposure, contrast, framing etc. will help a LOT when you start shooting video.

Just like a piano or guitar, learning to make a movie isn't done in an afternoon. Your mom might love hearing you play "Chopsticks" on the piano, but no one is going to pay to download your performance on iTunes. If you want strangers to watch your movies, you need to make them good enough to watch, and that takes a LOT of work.
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Absolutely, I'm well aware of the dedication required to learn a craft, I earn my living as a musician/composer and it wasn't a case of buying any one piece of equipment.

However, there are definitely right and wrong choices as far as technique and equipment go and you need to know that you're not buying the wrong tool for the job. :beer:
 
bigbossbmb said:
nope... it is a 24fps look in a 60i timeline
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That is not 100% true. Some motion and movement does not show up on film. Film footage has more of a stop motion/strobe effect than interlaced footage. Motion is much smoother with interlaced footage because you have two fileds vs. a single frame. Think about editing a baseball player swinging a baseball bat. In the mere 60th of a second the bat moves a lot. I mean a real lot. That is why you see the combing artifact on the screen when editing interlaced footage. Film can have almost a jerky look when doing a semi fast pan. I agree that for most editing there wont be any big difference other than motion being much better using 60 fields per second vs 24 single frames.
 
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no, it IS 100% true... 24p is shot 24fps just like film and it carries the same stutter in movement. adding a 3:2 pulldown to put it in a 60i stream does not effect the stutter. it is just like a DVD player adding 3:2 pulldown to a hollywood movie you play on your tv. if you are seeing the interlacing of the pulldown fields, then you aren't using a broadcast monitor.
 
bigbossbmb said:
no, it IS 100% true... 24p is shot 24fps just like film and it carries the same stutter in movement. adding a 3:2 pulldown to put it in a 60i stream does not effect the stutter. it is just like a DVD player adding 3:2 pulldown to a hollywood movie you play on your tv. if you are seeing the interlacing of the pulldown fields, then you aren't using a broadcast monitor.
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I agree with this comment 100%. I was adding to other comments and yours about editing in 60i timeline. In that case things can get altered. I agree using 24p and then burning to 24p with Blu-Ray will work great. My comment was that 24p and 60i are very different and that just shooting in 24p and editng any old way you like might alter the look of the final out come.

Sorry for the confusion.
 
Indeed.

But what I'd hope you don't say is: Unless you are editing a feature film there is no need to use 24P. If your going to DVD or Blu-Ray just use the standard interlaced frames.

THAT would be untrue.

The other thing is, don't confuse 24p (panasonic mode) with 24p as (24 fps progressive). There is nothing useless about shooting and editing - even home moives - in 24 fps.

CaptM
 
medeamajic said:
I was adding to other comments and yours about editing in 60i timeline. In that case things can get altered.
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24p (not advanced) is meant to be edited in a 60i timeline... nothing gets altered with the film look by editing in a 60i timeline. the entire purpose of 3:2 pulldown is to integrate 24fps material in 60i editing/broadcast.
 
Mark Marx said:
Unfortunately, I have also read that Final Cut Express doesn't import the 24p footage...is this correct?
Click to expand...


No it does not. If you have access to After Effects, you can remove the pull down. But After Effects is not really a general purpose NLE.

However, in my case, I had AE, and bought FCE because I wanted a video splicer and dicer, to then put material into AE.

One advantage of shooting at 24 fps is one gets an 18% reduction in data just by that fact alone... has nothing to do with 'film look', but just how many frames are acquired in unit time... The other reason for using 'p' (24 or 30) is to eliminate the slight difference between field acquisition time, that produces noticeable 'jaggies' in moving objects (for some value of 'noticeable'...). Again not particularlly a 'film look' item...

I do think there may be issues in editing un-pulled down material in FCE, since how the pull down works is to insert fields here and there, so you may end up with material that has some 'strange' artifiacts if you ever do remove the pull down. That being said, there are artifacts in the prosumer cameras due to how the sensor is 'read out', and the artifacts may produce strange 'blocking' areas of of the frame.
 
medeamajic said:
That is not 100% true. Some motion and movement does not show up on film. Film footage has more of a stop motion/strobe effect than interlaced footage. Motion is much smoother with interlaced footage because you have two fileds vs. a single frame.
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The two fields are offset in time from one another, and so one does get the artifact of jagged lines in motion, which on computer screens are very noticeable for many types of motion. Most 'prosumer' cameras do not acquire at 60p (unless that's changed recently with the HD
type cameras...), which would give you a smoother motion, but acquire each field separated by 1/60 (in round numbers...) of a second from one another.

You could of course dump half of your vertical resolution, and expand each field to the full 480 lines, and create a pseudo 60 fps... a cheep shot slo-mo technique... if left at that frame rate, but then average successive frames back down to 30 (in round numbers...) fps...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
The two fields are offset in time from one another, and so one does get the artifact of jagged lines in motion, which on computer screens are very noticeable for many types of motion. Most 'prosumer' cameras do not acquire at 60p (unless that's changed recently with the HD
type cameras...), which would give you a smoother motion, but acquire each field separated by 1/60 (in round numbers...) of a second from one another.

You could of course dump half of your vertical resolution, and expand each field to the full 480 lines, and create a pseudo 60 fps... a cheep shot slo-mo technique... if left at that frame rate, but then average successive frames back down to 30 (in round numbers...) fps...
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I am talking aqbout 60 FPS on a NTSC monitor as opposed to a computer monitor. Yes computer monitor may show interlacing artifacts. most media player for the PC/Mac can eliminate the artifacts.

I agree 2507 frames per seond of progressive footage would look smoother than 60 interlaced fields but we were talking about 24p.

I think we all kind of agree for the most part. :thumbup:
 
Thanks for the info so far folks.

Today I tried to import my footage into FCE for the first time but without success.

When I tried to "capture", the footage could be seen in the capture window but didn't play smoothly....I also couldn't save anything and each time I pressed the capture button in FCE, it just wrote another file name (ie file 1, file 2, file 3 etc) immediately and didn't capture anything.

I was shooting in CINE mode mostly....are there settings in the camera for export?


Just FYI, my camera is a PAL version....
 
Mark Marx said:
Thanks for the info so far folks.

Today I tried to import my footage into FCE for the first time but without success.

When I tried to "capture", the footage could be seen in the capture window but didn't play smoothly....I also couldn't save anything and each time I pressed the capture button in FCE, it just wrote another file name (ie file 1, file 2, file 3 etc) immediately and didn't capture anything.

I was shooting in CINE mode mostly....are there settings in the camera for export?


Just FYI, my camera is a PAL version....
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I was just going to qualify my previous post... using the 24p and NTSC DVX100, Final Cut Express does import this media, because the 24p(a) options perform the 3:2 pull down operation, such that what is presented to the Firewire is DV 60i standard. Once in to FCE, the media can only be edited in 60i, and there may be editing artifacts do to the existence of the pull down.

I don't have any experience with the PAL version.... but here's my thought... PAL is 25 fps or 50 fields... isn't there a 25p option for the PAL version, so why would you want to shoot 24p(a) anyway... and hassle with the fact that FCE doesn't deal with pulldowns...

----- Update....

I looked up the manual for the AG-DVX100BE and there is only the option for 50i or 25p... so, how are you getting 24p???

If you have in fact the camera for 25p... I think FCE may have an easy setup option for that... if not, since the 25p stream is formated on the DV tape as 50i, just import as a standard 50i PAL project.

If you are using an NTSC DVX100, then setup for the NTSC easy setup configuration in Final Cut Express, despite your being in PAL country... or perhaps SECAM country...
 
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j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
I was just going to qualify my previous post... using the 24p and NTSC DVX100, Final Cut Express does import this media, because the 24p(a) options perform the 3:2 pull down operation, such that what is presented to the Firewire is DV 60i standard. Once in to FCE, the media can only be edited in 60i, and there may be editing artifacts do to the existence of the pull down.

I don't have any experience with the PAL version.... but here's my thought... PAL is 25 fps or 50 fields... isn't there a 25p option for the PAL version, so why would you want to shoot 24p(a) anyway... and hassle with the fact that FCE doesn't deal with pulldowns...

----- Update....

I looked up the manual for the AG-DVX100BE and there is only the option for 50i or 25p... so, how are you getting 24p???

If you have in fact the camera for 25p... I think FCE may have an easy setup option for that... if not, since the 25p stream is formated on the DV tape as 50i, just import as a standard 50i PAL project.

If you are using an NTSC DVX100, then setup for the NTSC easy setup configuration in Final Cut Express, despite your being in PAL country... or perhaps SECAM country...
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Hi, and thanks for the reply.

Yep, I guess I should be more careful in my terminology..... I'm a COMPLETE beginner, I literally have no knowledge whatsoever....!


When I said 24p, I was really meaning "whatever that setting is that looks a bit like film"...if that means 25p because it's a PAL camera then I'll remember not to confuse the terms.


Anyway, so far I haven't been able to import ANYTHING into FCE. I have the configuration set to PAL/Firewire but I'm still having problems.


If it's any help I'm running OS X 10.4.11 with FCE 4 on a twin processor 1.8Ghz G5 Mac with 4Gb of RAM.

When I go to "capture" footage, I get the multi-coloured "PREVIEW DISABLED" screen, although there is SOME communication between the computer and the camera, as the rewind/ff/play buttons on the screen operate the camera....although the stop button has no effect and no footage is seen in the capture window..


Is it possible that the camera itself is transmitting some sort of timecode which is messing things up which I need to turn off?


Any help would be much appreciated, and in as simple terms as possible. The DVX is clearly a kicking camera and this community is somewhere that I want to become a part of but as yet ... I can't even get started!!! :zombie_smiley: Seriously, any help would be a major good thing right now....:thumbup:
 
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