Shot in 24p and 24pa by mistake

A

APE Man

Member
I'm having a huge issue I was hoping you could help me with. I just shot 40 hours of documentary footage in 24pa (going to film). All the footage was captured from my 100a into FCP HD using the 3:2:2:3 advanced pull down menu. All was going fine until I put some footage into the timeline and it needed to rendered. I compared the clip info to the sequence info and found that my sequence was 23:98 while the problem footage was 29.97. I then checked all my captured footage in my browser and discovered that in all but 10 tapes the "vid rate" was 23.97. I checked the 10 tapes in question (the 29.97 vid rate) and found the footage was mistakenly shot in 24p mode (not 24pa)! Not good, I know. I was shooting in 24pa because I'm planning for a theatrical release for the film. The 10 hours of 24p footage is critical, interviews with Senator McCain, Congressman Shays and other major sit down interviews and b-roll.http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=19#


Questions:

1 - Does the 29.97 footage have to be recaptured (it was captured in with the advanced pulldown menu)?
2 - If the footage needs to be recaptured what is the correct capture setting?
3 - Can the 24p and 24pa footage be mixed in a sequence and, of greater concern, in the film?
4 - How much different will this footage look?
5 - Can Cinema Tools fix this? How?
5 - What should I have asked you and didn't (other than will you PLEASE HELP ME).

If you can help me out with this I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thank you
 
I'm sure Scottdvx100 will have the proper advise. But in the meantime here are my answers(ideas) to your questions:

1) I don't think it has to be recaptured. You'll find this out when you go to cinema tools. If there is a problem when you try to reverse telecine then you may have to recapture.

2)If it needs to be recaptured, capture it at plain old 29.97.(the first ntsc dv preset) - then you'll go to step 5 to convert to 24p

3)Try throwing one of your 24pnormal clips into the timeline and render it. It should be all slow motion like with the audio all sloooowed down.(at least from my experience). If it doesn't seem to harm it in any way, it'll still be a problem for changing to film as the clip wouldn't be true frames like the 24p is.

4) The footage will probably look the same, only slow mo'ed as mentioned above. Just try it.

5)Cinema tools can fix this by converting your 29.97 into 23.98 making it 24p and having it work in your timeline with all the 24padvanced footage.

I have no idea if this is the correct way, or if there is a way better way to do this, but here's my how to:

I would convert each individual clip into a 24p clip by doing a REVERSE TELECINE.

Open Cinema Tools. Click cancel when it asks about the database.

On the top tool bar click on either file or the next one and click on OPEN CLIP.

It'll ask what clip to open. You'll chose one of the 24pnormal clips that you've smartly put together in one individual folder.

The clip will open and on the side of it click reverse telecine. Make sure it's converting to a 23.98 clip. Make sure the fields are 2-1. Have the file be new smaller. There's probably more, but I'm on a pc and don't have the file to open right now, but someone else can fill in the gaps. Do your first reversal using AA, and click save or convert or whatever it is.(save your clip with AA in it so you know what setting you used).

After the clip is converted it'll open on the screen so you can view it. Watch it, then scroll throw frame by frame quickly to make sure none of the frames have overlapped each other.

If all looks good and the footage is smooth, import it into final cut and throw it on your 23.98 timeline. See how well it looks with the 24padvanced footage.

You may be able to batch convert all your clips at one go, but someone else will have to guide you for that one cuz I've never tried it. Good luck! Hope I've put you in a right direction and not made things worse!
 
Convert your 24p using Cinema Tools As Stabb mentioned. (Check the help menu in Cinema Tools or the manual for more details) If it was 24pa then it shouldn't have done anything to it so you shouldn't have to recapture.

You should be able to drop these into your 23.98 sequence along with your 24pa footage.

24p requires a conversion and resave with Cinema Tools (remove pulldown, reverse telecine)
In doing some some frames have to be split into their fields and then recombined to make the original frames. This means that soem frames have recompression where theoretically there's some quality loss. Try a few clips but I suspect you won't be noticing it unless it's a lot of fine detail moving quickly. This difference and the added step of Cinema Tools are the reasons why 24pa is suggested if you really want a pure 24 result for film.
 
Thank you

Thank you

Thank you guys so much for your help. I was freaking out for a while there. Two other questions:

Once I convert the 29.98 footage with Cinema Tools and bring in back in to final Cut will it look/sound much different that my 24pa footage?

And second, since I have around 10 hours of 24p footage to convert in Cinema Tools is there a faster/batch way of doing this operation?

Again, many, many thanks!
 
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