I am starting a feature length documentary and have tested a film output using 24f and it looks amazing (60i wouldn't work btw). So I am shooting roughly 100hrs of material and want to do ALL my rough cutting OFFLINE in DV NTSC. Here's what I wanted to do:

1. Digitize all footage at DV-NTSC Anamorphic.
2. Rough cut the film and get approval on picture.
3. "Make Offline" in FCP and change settings to HDV 1080 24p.
4. Re-dig the final selections and color correct/title/etc.

However, Canon seems to in-camera down convert all 24f to 29.97fps interlaced. This is BAD because my timeline will end up 29.97fps (drop) for the offline and needs to be 24fps (non-drop) for the online. In some early tests, I can't get 29.97fps footage to paste into a 24fps timeline and have FCP know how to remove the pulldown accurately.

My question? Has anyone done this or know what I'm missing so that I can do my offline in DV and still keep the timebase accurate and not get into that crappy 3:2 business? My logic for doing a DV offline is due to the amount of footage that I have to work with and the heavy rendering if I choose to do any kind of manipulation (speed, keyframing) to it. I don't want to get 50 hours into digitizing and feel like I made a mistake.

Hope this makes sense.

-Matt

It seems to me you'd be better off keeping it HDV in a 24p timeline from the beginning. You shouldn't have any rendering until you start doing effects.That wouldn't affect your rough cut.

I agree with Bill. I would try and use the 24F HDV media once it gets on your Harddrives as the Master and never go back to the tape except as an emergency. Chances are the amount of time it would save you will more than pay for itself even if you have to buy a new computer to deal with the 24F.

I'm thinking of adding the HV10 CMOS camera to the mix. I know it doesn't shoot 24p but since it's a progressive chip would it shoot 30p and would that gel with my 24f footage?

If you can hold out for the HV20 (April?), it will shoot 24p. See the threads in the single chip camera section.

But if you need to go for it now, you can drop the footage into your 24p timeline and it will covert fairly well, but you get a little of the funky pulldown cadence.