Converted 60i DV dvx100B footage to 24P MAJOR timecode problem in FCP Help

[rjcam]

Hi
I had about 25% of footage in a documentary shot accidentally at 60i while I intended to shoot the whole thing in 24P (regular).
I did not realize using the rear scene dial to a "Flourescent" preset f2 would pull the whole camera out of 24P.

So, anyway, I converted all the lousy 60i footage successfully and it looks good, but the timecode has major issues.
the 60i footage got stuck with DF - dropframe - timecode.
And I guess ALL 24P true footage (with no pulldown in there anymore), is automatically NDF - non drop frame.
So my Timecodes are all off in the re-connected completely edited timeline (the original timeline was cut originally at 29.97 before all pulldown removals and Compressor 24P conversions). The whole film was cut originally at 60i / 29.97 the way I originally thought I was 'supposed' to do it. And then I saw how horrible the interlacing looks on flat screens etc... Really bad, so I felt I had to make it all true 24P in the timeline and for eventual DVD / h.264 exporting.

My question:
I have the whole 2 hr 35 min film cut, and if I try to re-connect the 25% of the clips that were shot at 60i and now converted using Compressor, the timeline is so far off. Is there any way around this and to force a DF vs NDF Timecode type thing to correctly recognize my original edits - or even close to it.

The odd thing here is that I had one whole tape shot wrong at 60i DF. And after I converted it to 24P NDF it came very close to correctly re-connecting all the clips the way they were supposed to be in the timeline. It was only about 20-30 minutes into the first 35 minute clip of the tape it started to go off the original timing of each edit in the timeline.
But on other tapes, where only a one minute clip was at 60i and converted the same way, the re-connected edits are way way off.
So the long 35 minute clip mathmatically made sense - it was off 2 frames per 2 minutes or something like that. And that seemed consistent.
But this other clip, which was a short clip that started right after a lot of 24P regular over 29.97 shooting, as a new 60i clip, well, the timecode starts off by almost 11 seconds (behind), and the ending timecode is off even more. And this is on a single 1 minute clip, not a 30-40 minute clip or anything.
So it appears I might be taking crazy pills or somehow Compressor mis-read or went haywire writing the new timecode and it's way off and making my timeline a huge mess.

Any suggestions how to make this a lessor pain in the neck? Is there anything at all I can do short of re-editing 40 minutes of the film all over again?

Thanks!

 

[rjcam]

I Solved my problem!!

So these clips - they are about 74 of them, the timecode starts all over the place about plus or minus 14 seconds per clip no matter if it was digitized at 30 minute length or 1 minute. makes NO sense huh? Ridiculous that Compressor 3 reassigned my timecode wrong on them all and then makes re-connecting them impossibly hellish.
SO, with internet down yesterday, I scanned FCP manual on my laptop, and VOILA!
In the 'browser' window of FCP, I selected my new Compressor made 24P NDF clip (it was made from DF 60i remember?). I made sure I was at the first frame of the new 24P clip. I then opened the original digitized 60i DF clip and noted the starting frame timecode.
Then, with your new 24P clip still highlighted in FCP, go here on the FCP drop down menus above:
MODIFY > TIMECODE

Then I entered in the new timecode, with the original from DV tape 60i clip's starting timecode number - it then overwrites the new timecode over your actual new 24P file - so there are warnings to not do this unless you have a good reason, and I had this great reason, if I ever tried to redigitize from the tape ever again, the new Compressor TC value was way off anyway and this is near frame accurate now! I Reconnected the media to the new 24P *(23.98) timeline I had forced*from my new sequence setting and*with a cut and paste of the original 60i edits -- the interesting thing here is that FCP more or less reconnected all the edit points correctly. Some were a little off, like 0-2 frames, but mostly that was close enough for picture, it was more audio that caused some problems here and there and it was much faster and easy to fix those.