My FCP footage looks like sh*& !!! HELP!!!

Logan LeBlanc

Logan LeBlanc

Well-known member
Hey all, I've just noticed that almost every single piece of footage I've ever edited has issues w/a jagged edge/interlacing-esque/jittery effect once I render it. Am I capturing my footage incorrectly? I shoot 24p which means I should only have to edit on a 30p timeline, right? What should my Capture Settings be? Someone PLEASE HELP as this is a HUGE pain in the BALLS (worse than the ass)!!!
 
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See what I mean?
 
Hey cheese. I was under the impression that because I am not shooting 24p advanced, the timeline was supposed to remain in 30p. Was I mis-informed? I hope that's it. I mean, is there any way to change the time line settings to 24p even though I already have a lot of stuff edited? Thanks and forgive me, I'm not a brain when it comes to FCP.
 
Dude -

24p on a 30p timeline is just freaky.

If you shoot 24p, you can edit on a 60i timeline if your final delivery format will be 60i. If this is the case, your capture settings should be for 60i as well. You'll see some jaggies in some of the frames on the computer screen, but when played back on a 60i monitor/TV it will look about the same as any telecined footage.

You can also remove the pulldown and edit on a 24p timeline; then, if the footage is burned to a DVD, the player will add pulldown if necessary.

But 24p on a 30p timeline is guaranteed to give you a crappy result.
 
In FCP, there's really no difference between a 30p and 60i timeline, at least in SD. So don't sweat it. So long as you're editing in the "29.97 timebase" option, you've got the right timebase for 24p, 30p, or 60i. Just never, never used it for 24pa.

Your footage seems to be being deinterlaced in real time by FCP, which causes the lines you see. I think FCP by default shows interlace lines at 100% resolution, but deinterlaces when showing footage at odd resolutions ("fit to screen," ect.)

The bad news: not much to do about it except deinterlace everything in cinema tools, re-edit everything in a 24p timeline.

The good news: you don't have to. The DVD should look fine unless you've got another problem, too. See how it looks on an NTSC monitor out of FCP--something you should always do, anyhow. (This is all assuming you shot in miniDV, of course. If you're doing this with DVCPROHD there may be issues.)

In the future, 24pa, advance pulldown removal, and a 24p timeline is by far the best workflow. It's so much better than the alternatives (except that FCP has trouble with capture, so use a decent deck and be there to log all footage) that I'm not even going to list all the advantages. There are too many; it would take too long.
 
First of all, NEVER judge image quality from the Canvas window on your comptuer screen, NEVER, EVER, EVER, NEVER. You can only judge by an external monitor.

To clear up those jaggies, set the Canvas to 100" and enlarge it to make it cover the full computer screen. Those jaggies will go away.
 
I don't know fcp, but it is the general consensus that if you are editing 24pA, then you want to edit on a 24p timeline. That is the point of pA. If it's just 24p with the usual pulldown, then you would want 60i. But, for pa, I'm pretty sure you should be editing on a 24p timeline.

Jason
 
24p
capture and edit with 29.97 ntsc.. The pulldown stays in, dont mess with anything.


24pa
capture with pulldown removal and edit with 24p timeline.
 
Policar said:
In FCP, there's really no difference between a 30p and 60i timeline, at least in SD. So don't sweat it. So long as you're editing in the "29.97 timebase" option, you've got the right timebase for 24p, 30p, or 60i. Just never, never used it for 24pa.

Your footage seems to be being deinterlaced in real time by FCP, which causes the lines you see. I think FCP by default shows interlace lines at 100% resolution, but deinterlaces when showing footage at odd resolutions ("fit to screen," ect.)

The bad news: not much to do about it except deinterlace everything in cinema tools, re-edit everything in a 24p timeline.

The good news: you don't have to. The DVD should look fine unless you've got another problem, too. See how it looks on an NTSC monitor out of FCP--something you should always do, anyhow. (This is all assuming you shot in miniDV, of course. If you're doing this with DVCPROHD there may be issues.)

In the future, 24pa, advance pulldown removal, and a 24p timeline is by far the best workflow. It's so much better than the alternatives (except that FCP has trouble with capture, so use a decent deck and be there to log all footage) that I'm not even going to list all the advantages. There are too many; it would take too long.
Click to expand...

When you shoot 24pa, do you get any problems? Care to name a few advantages?
Even on a monitor my footage flickers and looks interlaced. I've de-interlaced and that only offset the already shitty interlaced look. I think it blows that with a program like FCP I'm having issues like this. I mean this problem ruined 2 fest entries (including Dramafest) already and I'm about to start editing some wedding footage for a company. If the results are terrible, I may as well not waste my time editing 6 hrs of footage, ya know?

P.s. Does anyone know of a FCP guru. Ya know, kind of "The One" when it comes to FCP?
 
Dude - the issue isn't FCP. You have to know what you want, and how to get it. If you want clean 24p footage, shoot 24pa and edit in 24p. If you shoot 24p and put it in a 60i timeline, some frames will be jaggy. If you're determined to use a 60i timeline, shoot 30p if you want progressive. You just need to match up how you shoot with how you edit.
 
None of what you guys are talking about is the issue. Ben B has it right...you cannot judge the quality of your image on the Canvas or Viewer....PERIOD.

Shane's Stock Answer #2: Blurry playback

ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL NTSC MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.

1. Disable overlays on the canvas
2. Make sure you've rendered everything (no green bars at the top of the timeline

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24787

Video playback requires large amounts of data and many computations. In order to maintain frame rate and be viewable at a normal size, only about one-fourth of the DV data is used in displaying the movie to the screen. However, the DV footage is still at full quality, and is best viewed thru a TV or NTSC monitor routed thru your camera or deck.
 
Now, as for this whole 24p shinanigans...

#23 Differences between 24p and 24pA

Shane's Stock Answer #23

Quoting Ken Stone's site found at:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/24p_in_FCP_nattress.html

24p Normal
When shooting in 24p Normal, the camera is adding normal standard 3:2 pulldown to the video, which results in 24p footage designed to work with any non-linear editing suite and it will play back and look good directly to any NTSC monitor. You can use 24p Normal footage just like normal video from any DV camera, and everything will work fine, but obviously, the footage will have a film look to it. If you’re just going straight back to NTSC video tape, then using 24p Normal is the simplest, easiest workflow. No special treatment of the footage is needed and you really can just edit as normal.


24p Advanced
Before you shoot 24p Advanced, you should fully understand it’s workflow implications. If you watch 24p Advanced footage before you’ve removed it’s pulldown, then it will look a bit jumpy and jerky. This is totally correct, because 24p Advanced is not designed to be viewed as is.
To use 24p Advanced and gain all it’s advantages, you should know that you cannot edit it as is (as this would leave it’s jerky looking pulldown intact), but you must first remove it’s pulldown. Final Cut Pro will do this for you, leaving you with the 24p footage without any of the extra “padding” fields that are added to make it’s frame rate 29.97fps. Now that your footage is 23.98fps, it must be edited on a 23.98fps timeline, and this can cause problems if you, for instance, want to include other footage, B-Roll, or stock footage, that comes from a different source. However, once you have your finished edit at 23.98fps, you can make a 24p DVD, which will allow you to compress your MPEG2 less than if you were making a normal 29.97fps NTSC DVD, and hence attain higher picture quality. Similarly, if you’re making a web movie, you will find it easier to get a higher quality result from 23.98fps media than normal NTSC media. 23.98fps movies are also easier to take out to film that 29.97fps movies.
If you are editing in a 23.98fps timeline, Final Cut Pro will add pulldown on the fly, over Firewire, so that you can see your movie on a normal NTSC monitor. Similarly, it will add pulldown when going back to DV tape. However, this will not work on a non-DV format output, say to Digital Betacam, and slower Macintoshes do not have the power to add 3:2 pulldown in realtime, falling back to lower quality pulldowns which although are not too bad while editing, will not make the final project look as acceptably good on television as a final product.

What that tells me is that 24P just adds a "look" of 24 fps to the footage that resembles that of telecined film, but that you work with normally at 29.97fps. Or, if you want to, you can add a reverse telecine and work at 23.98. Either way.

BUT, with 24PA, the footage looks jittery when played on the tape. So sure, you can work with it and output it to tape, but that tape is useless to anyone OTHER than someone who can capture it and perform a reverse telecine to work with it. It will not work as a Master tape for any viewable purpose: Broadcast TV, projected video from tape, a master tape for dubbing purposes. So, in effect, it is useless as a tape master, and should be avoided.

If you want to have a tape master, shoot and edit 24P at the 29.97 framerate.
 
Logan LeBlanc said:
Does anyone know of a FCP guru.
Click to expand...

I'd also highly recommend going through Barry's book/DVD set. He explains the ins and outs of 24p very well.

First question you have to answer is; what is your purpose in shooting 24P?

Remember you can capture movement in 24p like you do with 60i. If you're audience will be watching on TVs, it's not a good idea. What is your goal? How does 24p contribute to your film's desired look? If it's just to make it look like film, well, I've seen 60i shorts done well that look like 24p film. So 24p by itself is not a magic bullet.
 
Well now....

You got some great answers, good answers and some really bad answers.

Here's what I suggest:

1) Make sure your RT Playback is set to high and not dynamic - RT Button on timeline.
2) Make sure you monitor on an external monitor... if not:
2a) Make sure your canvas and viewer are set to 100% and the windows are open enough to see all the video - FCP will drop lines of resolution if not set to 100%.
3) Understand that you will have 2 frames of interlaced in every 5 frames of video... but these interlaced frames aren't like 60i interlaced frames... they are actually 24p frames combined. SO - if there is ANY movement in the camera the distance covered between fields is GREATER than shooting normal interlaced 30 fps.
4) IF you stop your playhead on one of these 'combined' (interlaced) frames, you WILL see jaggies on your canvas and jitters on your monitor. No way around that.

The key question is does it look ok when it is flying by???

Not sure what you mean by ruining your film. I have to be honest and ask if you really understand what is happening to your film. I've shot 24p, 24pA, 30p and 30i on this camera and never once did I think FCP was ruining my footage. Will it look different in all 4 capture modes....? YOU BET YOUR BALLS.

Good luck,

CaptM
 
Thanks guys. I shot in 24p for the film look and decided to edit in a 30p timeline. I simply don't get why this is happening. Does it matter if I'm using a slave camera for capturing?

Oh and it looks like poop when it's flying by, Capt. I mean the flicker is just as distracting as the jaggys. It's really frustrating though. I mean some shots have no issues and the very next clip will be crap, shot in the same scene file and everything.
 
...happening to your film...

How it is being shot... how it is being transcoded to tape... how it is being captured to FCP... and how it is being displayed inside FCP.

What's the setup of the camera? You have thin line detail on in the setup? That could give you issues... Do you see the jaggies on the progressive frames?

Could you post an h264 version of a few clips so I can get a feel for what you are seeing? Have to admit... I can't get a read on how bad it is just by listening to you. I need to see the problem.

CaptM
 
This isn't FCP. This is your expectation of what you think you should be seeing, or something. MANY of us use FCP without issues...and it looks great.

Look at your source footage on the external monitor...then look at your captured footage. Should look exactly the same.
If you still see the stepping...that is because DV is compressed 5:1.

Adding the de-interlace filter was a mistake..
 
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