I am editing a short that was shot on a Panasonic DVX100A in 24p Advance. The first five tapes were captured flawlessly using Final Cut Pro's 24p Advance capture settings. No Cinema Tools, just right in. Worked perfectly.

But this past weekend we picked up some additional footage, and I'm having a heck of time capturing the footage without getting interlaced
frames in a variety of patterns.

What I'm trying to determine is whether the videographer mistakenly shot the footage in 24p Standard, or whether he did not turn on the
Record Run or Regen feature. Or whether there is some other problem.

Please forgive my shortcomings in terminology as I describe the symptoms:

Played from my miniDV camera into an NTSC monitor, the footage on the tape has the same pattern as the footage on the tapes that were
captured without problem. Four frames show movement in relation to the frames right before it, and then the fifth is the same as the fourth.

When I capture the footage with the 24p Advance presets, I get frames that appear to be interlaced frames (they squiggle back and forth). Sometimes there are two of these frames in a row, sometimes one interlaced frame separated by four stable ones. And of course playback is jumpy.

I've even tried capturing the footage choosing frames at incremental distances from the repeat frame. Meaning, I set the in points at one,
and then two, and then three frames from the repeated frame on the tape, and so on.

I know it is not a sequence setting that is at issue, because the footage from the first set of tapes plays properly in the timeline.

Any ideas?

I so hope someone can assist me in this matter.
Sincerely,

Robert Goodrich

The notice (post) at the top of the page details how to delete preferences. Follow the directions and repair permissions afterwards. Please post back and let me know if this worked or not. I have several other possible suggestions based on the results.

Yeah, I finally got it all working using Cinema Tools. I hadn't used it before, so there was an up-side to this whole fiasco. But if I've learned anything in this crazy business, you really get to know your gear when everything takes a dive.

Anyway, here was the fix:

Adam Wilt had advised me to review the footage, and how to determine whether it was shot in 24p or 24p Advance. Regular 24p in its 30 fps form has two interlacing frames every five, and Advance just has one.

As it turns out, all the scenes except one where shot in 24p Advance. But when I looked at the timecode I could tell that the A frame was not a number that ended in 0 or 5 (the A frame being two back from the interlaced frame).

This should be a lesson to you kids out there thinking of not turning on the Regen feature in the DVX100 menu. Starting the recording on the A frame seems to be quite important for capturing directly into Final Cut Pro using its Advance Pulldown Capture preset.

Anyway, I captured everything in standard 30 fps NTSC in Final Cut Pro. I then imported the files into Cinema Tools, did the reverse Telecine, imported the revised clips back into Final Cut, and blammo, perfect. I am now completely in love with Cinema Tools. It seems to have automatically determined the A frame and made the necessary adjustments that the Advance Pulldown capture preset in Final Cut Pro couldn't do. It even distinquished the shot that was in standard 24p, and confomed it automatically using the appropriate pulldown pattern. Did I tell you how much I love Cinema Tools?

It is rocket science!