24p to Blu-ray with Mixed Media

[Jason Garrett]

Ok you guys, I hope somebody won’t mind to oblige me in examining my situation and providing advice. I recently picked up a Canon HF S20 to make the move up to 1080p from my Sony DCR – HC 96 Mini DV. I’ve done a few home movie DVD’s with the Mini DV video and I’m generally familiar with video formats and Premiere.

I have to confess that my head is swimming with the complexities that I’ve gotten myself into with this new camera. First, I didn’t have any idea that AVCHD was going to be such a beast to edit generally speaking. I had an AMD 650 Duron desktop until 2007 that I captured and even edited video with and it was ROUGH. My *new* desktop is a dual core 2.8ghz recently upgraded to 6 gigs of RAM running Windows 7 64bit and two internal 7,200 rpm drives. I never dreamed that my machine would choke on this video like it is. LOL Wow! It sliced through that Mini DV video like a dream. I can deal with it though if it’s mostly a time issue in exporting it. I’ve seen the Cineform option and not interested in files that huge. I’m using Premiere CS 5 by the way, but with a recently upgraded video card that is only 512 megs and not compatible with the Mercury GPU function. If I had only known ahead of time.

My bigger issue is that I read prior to purchase that the 24p on this camera was such hot stuff that I shot a bunch of video in that frame rate and only now am I really realizing that I probably should have done a lot more homework on this than I did. I am aiming to create a documentary type project and have the capacity to output this to both Bluray and DVD if possible. I have a lot of older video from the Mini DV and even old 8mm stuff that I captured with the Sony that I am hoping to use too.

For starters, the 24p is importing to Premiere showing as 29.97 frame rate video and the output video is really jerky with any movement at all when I try to encode to 24p. I see now on here that this is about what to expect. The original source video is not nearly as bad and it seems to output best with 29.97 encoding oddly enough from this project. Am I missing something here? What’s happening with that?

I actually started this project with CS 3 and I am fairly certain it was 1080p 24p, but not the AVCHD project settings that CS 5 has. The project has a large amount of assets and I hate to have to go through importing them all again if I don’t have to – particularly the huge number of still photos that I have imported in nested folders.

Basically, it boils down to me wondering what my options are for creating Blu-ray discs of this project as a priority and what would be the most universal settings for that – I assume that not every television is going to have a 24p mode even if I have the capacity to encode to that. I hate to end up with something that can’t be viewed even by anyone with a Blu-ray player. I admit that as technologically inclined as I like to believe that I am – this is all getting into realms that I am not familiar with. I just bought a Blu-ray burner for my pc and a player for my 1080p 40” LCD television to test this project with.

Do I want to do the 2:3 Pull-down to all the 24p video and make everything 29.97 or is that already being applied by default and that’s why I’m seeing the clips as 29.97 as assets? I see that NTSC projects have that as a default setting. So, on export I want to use 29.97 I would assume – that seems to make the video smoother, but still not ideal. Luckily, most of it is not action oriented, but there are a lot of panning shots that will be jerky I’m sure unless I find a *frame rate* to help that.

Sorry for the length and I apologize for any terminology that I may have gotten wrong or not used in description and the vague project settings in description. Like I said, this is going into territory that I haven’t had experience with and I may have shot myself in the foot not learning more before I jumped in to do it. I appreciate any suggestions to pull this off.

[Jason Garrett]

I should probably qualify my familiarity with Premiere as *very basic* LOL maybe not exactly ‘generally familiar’ compared to most of you here. I have used it for as much as capturing my Mini DV video and creating relatively simple projects – transitions, some of the audio filters, key frames for basic effects – audio fading in/out etc. I’ve basically made a few home movie DVD’s with it using SD video. I only stumbled upon this site in the last week or I might have been better educated on what all I was getting into, but I’m in a bit of a crunch for time if any advice is available.

If my 24p imported as 29.97 – then am I on the right track to export this entire project to a Blu-ray burnable file(s) with a 29.97 frame rate? Is there anything I can do to minimize the shudder with pans and motion is maybe my biggest concern?

[Bill Pryor]

You need to dump the footage and bring it back in as 24p. Check your settings in PP. Edit the whole thing in a 1080 24p timeline and export that way for Blu-ray. Bringing in the 24p footage as 29.97 is the root of your problem. It needs to be brought in as 24p (or 23.97 if that's what it is).

[Jason Garrett]

Maybe it’s in the help file, but I started over for other reasons (way too many assets imported bogging it down). I made for 100% sure that the project was 1080p and 24p ACVHD or whatever and it STILL imports the footage as 29.97 regardless with a brand new project in CS 5.

Listen, I work at an IT Helpdesk with some really inept users and I hate to sound so helpless, but can anyone clue me in why it seems to refuse to import as 24p?

Beyond that though – when I go to export am I not looking to use that 2:3 Pulldown that is apparently being applied to this imported footage? I mean, the there is a bunch of video that’s not 24p in this project.

Like I said, this is involved far more elements that I have ever dealt with and I am a bit lost as to how to approach incorporating these mixed frame rates, etc.

[Jason Garrett]

Nevermind – I’m an idiot….. I shot everything in PF24 thinking that was the ‘True 24p’ setting. It’s 60i – and now I’m even MORE confused! LOL

If it’s the ‘fake’ 24p and actually 60i…. importing as 29.97 into Premiere – can anyone give me any clue on tips to make this work? Am I better off that it is actually not the ‘True 24p’ that my camera offers?

Wow, I know this site has a lot of pros and I hate to sound like such a dunce, but this just keeps getting deeper out of my element of familiarity.

[Bart Walczak]

Right click on a clip and choose modify->Interpret footage. See if you can assign a frame rate of 24p, and look for the box "remove 24p pulldown", perhaps this would help.

Plus of course you must create a proper 24p sequence.