Pulldown removal interfering w/ DV Start/Stop detect?

[SantaCruzMichael]

Hey everybody,
I'm trying to capture entire DVX 24pa tapes and use the "DV Start/Stop Detect" feature to automatically divide the raw footage into clips.

The problem is, "DV Start/Stop Detect" adds markers to the wrong spots- adding markers in the middle of clips and missing the beginning of others.

I first encountered this problem years ago and gave up on this feature of FCP. Now I've got a lot of footage to log quickly, and I could really use this timesaving tool.

In other posts, I have seen DVXusers comment on the same problem.
One suggested that the Advanced Pulldown Removal might be occasionally taking out the frames that DV Start/Stop detect is looking for.

This seems plausible. However, since DV Start/Stop Detect is checking the TIME/DATE data on the tape for gaps (rather than the actual TIMECODE metadata) it seems like missing frames could cause this tool to create more breaks, but wouldn't likely make it miss any.

Has anyone tried importing footage as 29.98, using DV Start/Stop Detect to mark clips and then removing pulldown frames later?

Or has anyone found another fix for this problem?

Thanks,
Michael

 

[NoahK]

Start/stop is not a good idea to use with advanced pulldown removal. It's more efficient to properly log clip by clip and avoid timecode breaks during shooting.
Noah

 

[jbaum]

-I've developed a workaround to solve this problem using FCP and Cinema Tools. You have to capture the material at 29.97 first and do your pulldown removal after. After many issues using FCP's pulldown removal feature I ALWAYS use Cinema Tools to remove pulldown on both 24p and 24PA footage. It does a much better job at detecting and fixing any cadence issues.

-The advantages are this will retain your start/stops and create a native 24p quicktime version of your footage with 24-frame timecode (instead of just skipping the interlaced frames as the automatic removal does). You will temporarily, however, need some extra hard drive space to create the native 24p version.


You have to weigh the time and extra steps this takes against doing your sub-clipping manually though. I still think it is faster and worth the advantages once you get the process down.

In detail:

1. Capture your 24PA footage onto disk at 29.97 WITHOUT advanced pull down removal. (I use 'capture now' to capture the whole tape.)
2. In your logging bin select your clip, then do MARK > DV Start/Stop Detect. FCP will correctly mark the beginning and ends of your shots.
3. ctrl-click > reveal in finder. Then ctr-click again on this file and select Open With > Cinema Tools. Cinema Tools will open with the clip you selected.
4. Click the 'Reverse Telecine' button and Cinema Tools should show a pop-up window with automatic advanced pulldown removal. Make sure the 'make new file' option is selected.
5. Let Cinema Tools remove the advanced pulldown. This will take a few minutes to process, but when finished you will have a native 24p quicktime version of your original clip in the same capture scratch folder called (clip name).mov.rev
6. Go back into FCP. On the clip in your bin, ctrl-click > Reconnect Media. Click the locate button.
7. In the window that pops up, deselect the 'Matched Name...' and 'Reconnect All...' check boxes. Then select the (name).mov.rev version of your clip in the browser and click 'Reconnect.'
8. A 'File Attribute Mismatch" warning box will pop up. Click 'Continue'.
9. Your FCP clip will now be linked to the native 24p version of your footage with the start/stop markers intact. You can MODIFY > Make Subclip to turn the markers into subclips of your shots.
10. Create a 23.98 sequence and edit natively!

You can now delete the old 29.97 file from your capture scratch to save some space, or keep it as a backup if you wish.

This really isn't as complicated as it might seem, and you can even continue to capture footage in FCP while Cinema Tools is removing pulldown from another clip as long as you have a fast hard drive.

My first post--felt obligated to share--so hope this helps!

Best.

Josh

 

[NoahK]

Eh- why would you waste all that time going into CT tools for something FCP does automatically and also doesn't do automatically on shot that don't have advanced pulldown? On shots that don't have 24pA pulldown you can send those into CT if you want to but you certainly don't need to waste your time with all the rest. I mean all that finder action, deleting media, reconnecting media- totally unnecessary busy work. Bottom line is shoot 24pA always and avoid this stuff entirely...

Also- welcome to the forum but in general I'd suggest participating in recent threads. This one is 3 years old.

Noah