Advanced Pulldown Issues

I'm capturing footage from a concert recorded on a bunch of Panasonic DVX100a cameras. ALL cameras were configured identically for 24p Advanced recording.
Most tapes are capturing fine, but with some I am constantly getting an error in the advanced pulldown cadence. So, I have several questions:
(1) Is there a way to actually SEE what the pulldown cadence is for the footage in question?
(2) Where can I go to get more IN DEPTH information on pulldown cadence (I have already read a bunch of stuff on it)—specifically as it applies to FCP, if possible?
(3) From what I've read about Cinema Tools, it seems to be more suited for standard 3:2 pulldown, not advanced 2:3:3:2 pulldown. Am I mistaken, and how would I go about using CT in this case?
(4) In the capture window, when I advance through the footage one frame at a time, I can see that every 5th frame appears interlaced (I realize this is the split frame in the middle of the 2:3:3:2 pattern). This pattern is consistent—even at the point where the errors occur there seem to be no "breaks". So what problem is there with the pulldown cadence that's causing the error?
(5) If I capture the footage normally, at 30fps, can I then dump it back to tape at 24p Advanced to re-apply the 2:3:3:2 pulldown? Is this an acceptable way to fix the problem, or will I end up with the interlaced 5th frame (see question 4 above) littered throughout the new footage?
Any posts, articles, books, or web sites that can be suggested to help me understand this problem are appreciated.

Thanks for your reply...This is all good info, and just makes me realize how much more I have to learn on this topic! I was under the impression that removing the pulldown would help with the appearance of interlacing once the material is captured...but could be understanding this incorrectly. I suppose I'm simply trying to get the best image quality with as little appearance of interlacing as possible. The other problem is that I'm sure whether it was shot as 24 P or 24 PA...it's unfortunately an acquired project that was started quite a while back, and we are taking over from a big ad firm who is not so willing to help. Sooo...there wasn't much difference in interlacing/quality etc when I capture with pulldown versus without, so I'm assuming that means its 24 P. We are adding this material to some newer material just shot on DVCPro HD at 24 p, and will eventually make it's way to DVDs, the company's website, etc. Don't think it will be used for broadcast...Sooo, any advice about workflow would be great!! Should I be capturing at 29.97 or 23.98? With/Without pulldown? Is there anything I can do about the interlacing? Thanks!!!

Similar Messages

Looks like a pulldown issue, duplicated frames are baked into transcoded files...

Have a bit of a messy project atm...this started with a client call on my way back from a festival where I ran large format video screens as a VJ & camera switcher/editor (Sasquatch in NW USA) so I was tired from 5 solid days of work. I dropped by their studio to examine an example clip…tired and thinking they had a good test case pulled up & ready to look at.
Well, the first clip we analyzed ONLY had shutter speed issues. Checking the source file/.mov it was apparent it was shot at a shutter speed closer to 1/1000 than 1/60, adding a bit of pixel motion blur in AE solved that... In retrospect his export from FCP7 had the pulldown problems in the EXPORTED version of the clip, but we hadn't checked that (we watched the source clip play back and he sent the reference clip with me so I could match the edit). So the issues that have been in almost all subsequent clips were not present in the initial analyzed file unfortunately!   When I got back to my workspace & the files were ingested it became obvious that there's a bad pulldown at work in most of the transcoded footage. The client had mentioned it looking 'choppy' and rather than just being motion blur it was a case of duplicate frames. Bad pulldown removal...
MOST of the footage as I have it is ProRes 4:2:2 LT 29.97p with every 3rd frame duplicated (1 out of 3 duplicated rather than 1 out of 5).   The ProRes format didn't come from a digital recorder in this case, it was transcoded from the source media using a software tool to organize & collect the source media and compressor to transcode for editing. Since these 2 episodes were left in the editing pile for months, the source files are obviously *no longer around*….
In the past I've dealt with reverse pulldown issues from 24p & 24pA (where the frames are either interlaced or duplicated to achieve the pulldown) but these all give a 5 frame cadence. Also when done correctly they don't destroy good frames and leave frame dupes. What we have here seems more like improperly handled PsF (via HDMI or SD output from 1080p cameras) or pulldown incorrectly applied to 29.97 over 60i/59.94i, or...?   In any case these are destined for 60i broadcast, so simply interlacing them again to create the 3rd frame is out of the question, and frame blending isn't much better than the dupe frames.
Removal of every 3rd frame which (since that = every 2nd frame) obviously gives a visual "jump" over the now removed dupe frame, and leaves footage has to be converted from 20p to 29.97 which looks horrible regardless of how its done (conformed or interpolated).    Removal of every 3rd frame from 29.97 is actually not too hard, as 2/3rds of the frames are still 'good' it's easy to
apply a conform to the file headers bringing the rate down to 19.98p, bringing that into AE and creating a comp that's set to 'preserve frame rate when nested' under advanced, then putting that into a 29.97 comp..., that works relatively well but the missing frames STILL need to be replaced somehow...
To make matters worse, some clips have a cadence that doesn't stay consistent (the repeated frames will 'jump' from every 3rd periodically), OR worse yet there are sometimes 4-6 duplicated frames in a row (???), and then other sequences have only occasional frames repeated (meaning they need to be identified manually by stepping frame by frame). Some of this is potentially due to rounding errors in the pulldown, but there's got to be something more amiss as is evident by the other inconsistencies...very odd.
In any case what do to about the 3rd frames that need to be 'repaired' or 'created'? This is the crux of my issue, and software interpolation alone isn't going to cut it... Since a simple pass on the entire clip(s) causes vast sections get time stretched (not just every 3rd frame synthesized but rather the whole thing interpolated), I tried going in and setting timestretch keyframes manually (so I could manually stretch the area where the 3rd frame needs to be 'created). As the software applies motion techniques that obviously assumes the distance between frames in both directions is equal...well it just replaces 1 visual problem (dupe frames) with another (visual distortions).   This has been the case with ALL the software tried so far...
I've tried AE's native higher quality mode (rather than just frame blending, which will look awful. Twixtor (demo) in AE, Smoke (autodesk), DaVinci Resolve (Light version but I have access to the GPU accellerated version as well) & Apple's Motion. All do a horrible job (FootageFIxing directory examples in dropbox) of handling this automatically, which I expected. However I had originally intended to simply 'replace' every duplicated frame using the interpolated footage, this resulted in WORSE matching to surrounding frames due to the poor interpolation not matching up well on many frames than frame blending, not better (portions of the frame 'jump' out of alignment with both the previous & following frames, after analysis it acts like a spine with a midpoint that is not parallel to a line drawn between the start & end points).
So dropping 29.97 to 20p then synthesizing every 3rd frame (until cadence jumps) is where I'm at. Once done synthesized frames have to be checked and a huge % of them (when there's motion on a person in the scene or camera pans etc) have elements…or whole frames…that are incorrectly synthesized. So pieces of surrounding frames have to be roto'd & composited into selective areas to 'patch' the portions that get 'squashed', 'stretched' or 'rippled' into position (VERY VERY noticeable).
Lastly, due to a variety of shutter speeds used the motion blur across frames is also an issue, so once a shot has been correctly re-synthesized for the missing frames it must be evaluated for whether motion blur is required, which brings us back to the rendering process that was assumed at the start of this (in other words final output of each clip may need motion blur in post before delivery).
At this point I'm left with doing the synthesis of the 3rd frame and 'repairing' the areas of that which distort too heavily, or duplicate (some of the camera pans are done to track high speed motion, birds flying through frame etc)...
Anyone have any interesting techniques I could try, beyond telling the studio I'm working with that they're hosed (that discussion is coming but I'm going to show best efforts and the timeframe required to achieve that across all shots/edits)....

Oh and the easier way to removing the dupe frames was just to drop it to 19.984, set (nested) comp advanced settings to 'preserve framerate when nested' and watch for the occasional rounding error when back in a 29.97 container composition. It would be nice to be able to specify 29.976...
In any case the missing frame needs to be replaced, not removed. The visual jump i that gap actually looks to be closer to 2 frames when motion of objects is estimated by hand.
Also (as I think I mentioned) other clips seem to have even further oddities.
The reality is that I can actually create smoother motion by doing a lot of hand massaging of the footage (scaling previous frames in simple pans, hand-rotoscoping/masking/compositing in sections of frames around missing ones to synthesize motion in onscreen talent & background objects, things tracked across the screen by the camera and so on.
But that's a heck of a lot of work and probably beyond what's achievable at present I suspect...

23.98 fps advanced pulldown removel with lower field dominance??

When ever I have captured 24p advanced material shot on a DVX100B, I have always used Final Cut Pro 5's advanced pulldown removel easy set up (2:3:3:2). I haven't run into any issues until now. When I try to capture 24p advanced material, for some reason Final Cut sets my field dominance as lower (even). I made sure I was using the capture pre-set for advanced pulldown removel (23.98) and I was. Is there any way to fix this? I tried trashing my preferences but that didn't help. This is progressive scan material so in the past Final Cut Pro has always set it to field dominance as "none". Also, because my 24pa material is having a lower field dominance and as 29.97fps, I have to render in my 24pa sequence which I have never had to do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
PS: I'm using OSX 10.4.8 (the OS choice drop down menu hasn't been updated)
Update: I tried capturing a short clip (about 30 seconds) and it worked fine, but when I try capturing my clip, which is about 10 mins, I get it capured at 29.97 with lower field dominance.

Anyone ?

Reconnect media dialogue not working properly after advanced pulldown rem..

i'm running a macpro with the latest version of FCP (5.1.4) and tiger (10.4.9)
i have a project where some of the footage is 24Pa, but was captured as regular 29.97 ntsc footage. because it's 24pa it's creating some interesting banding when i try to export out with out removing the pulldown. in an attempt to remedy this problem i decided to remove the pulldown and export everything as a 23.98 file (it's going on the web)
I selected all the clips that needed to have the pulldown removed and used the "remove advanced pulldown" from the tools menu. fcp went through and processed everything as it should, but when it finished it only reconnected a couple of the clips, leaving the rest offline.
I then selected the offline clips to manually reconnect them, and the reconnect dialogue opens, it lets me choose the files, but it doesn't show the file in the bottom half of the window, but it will continue to let me choose the next file down, the problem is when i hit the end of the list of files to reconnect, it still shows all the files in the top, and none in the bottome, but the "skip" "locate" and "search" button are no longer available and the "connect" button at the bottom is also not available.
i've checked the processed files with quicktime and they all read as 23.98 files now.
I made a copy of all the media files beforehand, so i have all the raw captures as 29.97 clips just as a forethought.
any ideas as to what the issues are? and why the reconnect dialogue is acting so strangely?
2.66 macPro Mac OS X (10.4.9) 2gb ram fcp 5.1.4

This shouldn't work. What the proper way of doing things is to capture, reverse telecine, THEN import into FCP and begin editing. You cannot, AFAIK, edit, then reverse telecine and have it connect. This is because all the original clips are linked to 29.97 media, and you are trying to connect them to 23.98 media...and it doesn't want to because the frame rates differ.
Remove pulldown BEFORE you edit, not after.
Shane

Advance pulldown removal problem

There is a bit of info i've found about similar issues but nothing covers my scenario. I captured dvx100a 24pa footage-- but without the advance pulldown removal selected. The clips therefore all had frame rates of 29.97. I then went to tools and added the "*remove advance pulldown*".
Two different things happened to my clips. It's corrupting some clips and not others. Some worked and changed to 23.98 fps. Others instantly went offline and when I tried to reconnect the media from the capture scratch I get this:
"*File Error: 1 file(s) recognized, 0 access denied, 1 unknown*" and I can't reconnect the media--that still plays fine in quicktime from the capture scratch. I have to re-digitize all the random clips that this happens to.
I'm wondering if it might be a fps and timecode issue-- or a codec issue. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
thanks.

Think I figured it out. There was a duplicate folder with the media files on two hard drives and FCP may have been trying to reference both. Deleted one folder and files went offline then when i reconnected the media and applied "remove advance pulldown" it worked this time.

24p advanced capture issue

hi, folks...
posing an old question that was never completely resolved because i've bumped up against it again.
here's the situation: i've shot and edited hours of footage at 24p advanced on a canon xl2. captured using 2:3:3:2 advanced pulldown removal without problems-- edited nicely into sequence.
but somewhere along the line something happened. now when i capture 24p footage and edit into the timeline i get motion blur every fourth frame (the pulldown frame?) the only way i can get a clean clip is if i capture 23.98 footage using the DV NTSC (30 fps) setting rather than 2:3:3:2 pulldown, then use the "advanced pulldown removal" feature from the tool bar after the fact (thanks patrick for this work-around).
so... situation is i can deal with this funky capture issue but it's an extra step and a pain in the rear-- anyone have any theories on how this happened and/or a permanent fix so i can shoot and capture the way fcp is supposed to work?
btw: checked the camera set-up again -- still 24p advanced, triple checked my fcp capture and sequence settings-- it's all at 2:3:3:2 pulldown removal and 23.98 as it should be. clip analysis on captured clips shows frame rate coming in at 23.98... as it should. couldn't find anything on topic in the search. appreciate thoughts. thanks much.

have you changed or downloaded anything at all that
might force the change in procedure, like a quicktime
update perchance, ipod update maybe???? just fishing
for a clue......
thanks, zeb... but no. i do remember the day things went haywire-- i captured footage off one of the reels and noticed two of five clips had captured at 29.97 instead of 23.98. it was puzzling but i went back through capture presets, sequence, etc and remember double checking and resetting all the pertinent settings before going back and recapturing the footage that had come in a 29.97. it then captured at 23.98-- but the every-fourth-frame motion blur issue cropped up at that point. and it's been happening ever since.
i know the fcp settings are correct -- i just don't get it.
fyi... i notice that as footage plays out through the firewire from the xl2, it looks fine in the camera viewfinder but i can see the motion issues on the log and capture window as it plays-- this is obvious even before initiating capture.

Problems removing Advanced Pulldown frames

I'm relatively new to 24PA, until now, I have captured quite a few projects now without any problems. The footage is always shot DVCPRO 50, I use the Panasonic AJ-SD93 Deck to capture the footage, selecting "remove advanced pulldown frames" in the FCP capture settings, and end up with great 23.98 progressive advanced footage.
The most recent project I've been working on, we received tapes that were shot by the same production group, same settings, same camera, and I was capturing with the same deck, same FCP settings, etc...however, after capturing, the files were not 23.98, but 29.97 (as a test, I captured from tapes in a previous project, it immediately came in as 23.98).
I tried to solve the issue after the fact by selecting the "Remove Advanced Pulldown" selection in the tool menu and received the error message *"File does not contain frames encoded using Advanced Pulldown".*
The 29.97 footage, based on my knowledge, seemed to indicate that it was, in fact, 24PA. For two reasons, one - every fifth frame in the 29.97 footage was a "split" frame, and two, breaking the footage down into fields, it seemed to have the 2-3-3-2 cadence associated with 24PA. However, for whatever reason, Final Cut could not find the cadence.
Why might this be?
I'd appreciate any informed opinions, but I can say that my guess is it has something to do with timecode and timecode breaks. The footage had an awful lot of timecode breaks and the timecode was being forced. I am wondering if this has something to do with why FCP could not pick up the cadence in the footage. (The only other variable that changed from previous successful 24PA projects is that these tapes were dubbed, and perhaps the dub house - which has shown itself prone to the occasional mistake - messed something up, but in this instance, don't see any evidence of that.)
Ultimately - I worked around the issue just fine, but it only makes matters more confusing, I brought the footage into Cinema Tools and did a Reverse Telecine (3:2 pulldown) and the footage turned it into clean-looking 23.98 progressive footage. Like I said before, analyzing the footage appeared to reveal that it was certainly 24PA with a 2-3-3-2 cadence and not 24P with a 2-3-2-3 cadence.
Any thoughts are welcome, thanks -

Just a thought: if the dub house made the dubs over SDI or analog, then the 24PA "flags" that were on the originals were likely not retained. That may be why FCP isn't seeing the pulldown cadence. I believe the only way to retain those advanced pulldown flags is to dub via firewire.
You can try capturing at 29.97 and running the files through Cinema Tools. Or see if the production company can send you the camera originals.
Jay

Removing Advanced Pulldown from AVI files

I've recently switched from Vegas 4.0 to Final Cut Pro 5.1 and I'm trying to remove the advanced pulldown from my AVI files. I tried using Cinema Tools and it could not use the AVI. Then I tried using FCP tools/remove advanced pulldown option and the file went offline. Can sombody tell me how to do this?
Thanks

It wasn't out of sync before. I shot it on the Panasonic DVX100 in 24pa. Removed the pulldown and edited the film in Vegas. Now I want to transfer it to FCP change it to 16X9 and make a 16X9 24P DVD in DVD Studio Pro. When I did copy it back to tape from Vegas I used LP instead of SP so I could fit the entire movie on a mini dv tape. Maybe that has something to do with it not being able to remove the pulldown during capture? I think I'm going to try and split it up into 2 tapes and record sp mode.
Mac Pro 2.66 Mac OS X (10.4.7) FCS

Field Dominance inconsistent after Advanced Pulldown capture

Following up on my immediately previous post (regarding the interview footage I captured from my dvx 100A using advanced pulldown setting in FCP5) I notice that, according to my FCP5 browser, some of my captured 23.xx clips show a Field Dominance of Lower (Even), while other clips show the word None under Field Dominance. Should I be concerned? And, if so, what's the solution?
Thanks!
Powerbook G4 15" Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Answered in another topic. Thanks!

Browser says Advanced pulldown didn't take: try cinema tools?

I'm in the midst of capturing many hours of interview footage shot in 24PA on a DVX100a. Although I always use the advanced pulldown capture setting, my results are inconsistent at best. According to FCP5's browser, some of my captured clips are 23.xx fps while others are still 29.xx fps.
1) Can I trust the accuracy of the info I see in the FCP browser with regard to the frame rate of my captured clips?
If so,
2) Should I now go back and try to recapture the clips that are listed as being 29.xx fps? Or would I be better off using Cinema Tools, which I understand can remove the pulldown from an already captured clip. One factor in my reluctance to re-capture is because there are occassional TC breaks in my footage that I often have trouble removing pulldown on the fly.
Thanks!
Powerbook G4 15" Mac OS X (10.4.4)

I had this problem once with DVCPro HD, and found the problem to be that if my capture started in bars & tone (I would go 1 second into them, to ensure I got every frame of video), FCP would take the B&T frame rate for the whole clip, which happens to be 60i. So as a result, any clip that had B&T at the head was at 60, while any other clip that started midway through the tape was fine. Perhaps you have the same situation, where you are capturing a camera generated signal, which will be at 29.97, so FCP assumes that that is the frame rate you're going for.
Hope this helps.
Craig

Remove Advanced Pulldown and Duplicate Frames

I've been researching this but still have not figured it out:
When I import Canon XF100 footage shot in 24fps from my CF card into FCP 7, in the "Log and Transfer" window under "Preferences", should I check or uncheck "Remove Advanced Pulldown and Duplicate Frames"? My thought was to uncheck the box since it is a function specific to P2 cards and that it wouldn't make a difference either way for my footage. Also (and I could be wrong), I didn't think any pulldown was necessary since I was shooting in 24fps. However, when I examined 2 test clips taken through both paths, there was one noticeable difference: the unchecked clip is larger (644.8MB) than the checked (582.8MB). Hmmmm....
Does this mean the footage changes based on if that box is checked or not?
And in my shooting/import scenario, should I check or uncheck that box?
Thank you.

23.98 and 23.98
> I have a few different cameras and some need pulldown and some don't but I've always left it checked under the > assumption that if there's nothing to pulldown it can't/won't and everything has been fine.
good to know. i agree. based on my conversations with the canon xf software folks, they were not entirely sure whether or not to check the box, so it doesn't seem to be a significant impact on the work flow.
thanks all for your input.

ADVANCED PULLDOWN REMOVAL - Problem with 60 Hours of Material

After I capture about 60 hours of material and worked for the past 3 months in a 90 minutes documentary I realized that the material was shoot in 24P advanced and was not captured in advanced pulldown removal mode! What should I do now? Should I do an online of the 90 min sequence with advance pulldown removal? What should I expect to happen? Thanks a lot in advance for your help.

I am delivering an EDL to do an online in HD for later on blow it up to 35mm. I just don't want to fix problems in the online because it'll take time therefore MONEY. I was thinking on recapturing the master sequence in my machines at advanced pulldown removal, fix any problems and then export the EDL to go to the online.
Dual 2 GHz G5; 4.0 GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.4.8) Dual 2 GHz G5; 2.0 GB RAM,

Why doesn't "remove advanced pulldown" work?

I have several large files captured directly from my XL2 in 24p Advanced mode and when I import them into FCP 5.1.2, the "remove advanced pulldown" menu item complains that there's no puldown in these files.
They're large (an hour each) dv files. about 10-12GB each. And they definitely have pulldown in them. Cinema Tools reverse telecine fixed 'em up just fine.
Any ideas? Thanks!

Interesting.
A little more background...
I am trying to implement a "poor man's" hard disk capture system. I run the firewire cable from my XL2 into my Powerbook and was using iMovie to record to a .dv file whilst simultaneously recording to a DV tape. I think my mistake was using iMovie instead of FCP. But the strange thing is that one of my events I recorded worked fine, and FCP's 23.98 timeline caused the video to be rendered beautifully as 24P. But the other one had nasty interlacing artifacts that lead me to believe the file wasn't captured well.
Anyway...I will try this again using FCP's capture now, and see if I can use a capture preset that removes pulldown as it goes.
One question: if I really don't want pulldown, should I be recording in ordinary 24P on my XL2?
Thanks!
Mac Pro, G5 Dual, 12" PB G4

How to Remove Advanced Pulldown?

Some camcorders, such as the Panasonic AG-DVX100A (which is what I have), are designed to shoot in progressive mode at 24 fps (literally 23.98 fps) and then record the video to tape as a 60-field interlaced signal by applying a special kind of pull-down called advanced 2:3:3:2 pull-down. With previous versions of Final Cut, you could remove the redundant fields created by the camera’s pull-down, so that you can edit at 23.98 fps or 24 fps.
This was done previously by the following:
In Final Cut Pro, select the clips or sequence.
Choose Tools > Remove Advanced Pulldown.
How do I do this in Final Cut Pro X?
These menus do not exist and when I drop a previously existing clip into a new project there are duplicate frames (whether I choose to create the project properties based on the properties of the first clip imported or I specify manually I want it to be a 23.98p timeline), meaning that FCPX has not removed the pulldown automatically.
When I import a clip from tape/source then FCPX handles it correctly.
But there needs to be an option to fix this in already existing clips that have been imported prior to the existence of FCPX without re-importing all the footage.

well, in case anyone else who uses a dvx100 has this problem with previously imported 16x9 24pA .AVI files that you want to use in FCPX here is what i had to do. use compressor. convert each of the AVIs using these settings:
Name: FC
Description: DVX 24pA AVIs to MOV in FCPX 23.98P timeline
File Extension: mov
Estimated size: 11.05 GB/hour of source
Audio Encoder
16-bit Integer (Little Endian), Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz
Video Encoder
Width: 720
Height: 480
Pixel aspect ratio: NTSC CCIR 601/DV (16:9)
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: 23.976
Frame Controls On:
Retiming: (Fast) Nearest Frame
Resize Filter: Linear Filter
Deinterlace Filter: Reverse Telecine
Adaptive Details: Off
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Progressive
Codec Type: DV/DVCPRO - NTSC
Multi-pass: Off, frame reorder: Off
Scan Mode: Interlaced
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Pixel depth: 24
Spatial quality: 100
Min. Spatial quality: 0
Temporal quality: 0
Min. temporal quality: 0
Compatible with Mac

Advanced Pulldown

Has anyone had difficulty with removing advanced pulldown after capture? I captured footage shot with a Varicam, DVCPro HD 720p60. When I selected a clip to remove advanced pulldown I got an error message saying the clip was not DVCPro. Capture settings were all correct. Any ideas?
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6) Quad

Has anyone had difficulty with removing advanced
pulldown after capture?
no, never
I captured footage shot
with a Varicam, DVCPro HD 720p60. When I selected a
clip to remove advanced pulldown I got an error
message saying the clip was not DVCPro. Capture
settings were all correct.
i was under the impression that the varicam did not use advanced pulldown. also, 720p60 needs no pulldown inserted.

Advanced Pulldown Issues

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