Could someone please explain how the telecine process works when transferring 24 frame per second material to NTSC 60 fields per second? What I am really interested in is if there is frame blending going on... ie do certain images share a frame to make the motion seem smoother? An example would be if IMAGE #1 had the upper scanlines of one frame whereas IMAGE#2 had the lower scan lines. It would flicker back and forth between these fields in a non-linear editor.

Also, are there different methods of telecine? Do any actually just run three frames forward, duplicate the fourth frame for two NTSC frames, and then do that all over again? No frame would divide it's fields between images with this method and there would never be any flicker viewing it frame by frame in a NLE. If so, which is the most common method?

There are two or three articles on the XL-1 Watchdog site that explain telecine. Basically put, it ain't cheap, ain't even close to cheap, ain't getting any closer to cheap.

Nathan Gifford

I don't see any on the site. If there are some, then surely they don't seem to be hinting about it in the article titles. I basically just want to know how 24 frames format into 60i field by field, not necessarily how expensive it is.

Joe,

i think Nathan is refering to the 'DV to 35mm film Technology' articles

I'm still not seeing that in the Watchdog site under "Articles" which is where one would expect to find it. I came across an article called "My First Movie" or something like that but it didn't have anything to do with telecine. I'm surprised no one on this forum knows anything about it and how the frames are layed down to NTSC.