Prospect HD to capture Varicam footage

[Devon Lyon]

David:

We are 2/3 the way through shooting a feature film shot entirely on a Varicam (with P&S Pro + Ziess Super Speed primes). We are shooting in 24p at 1280x720. I am not the DP (I am a producer/director on the project) so I think the Varicam shoots 24fps within a 60i stream. Although I am not the feature editor, the executive producer wants access to all the footage before we likely hire a feature editor. Mainly to review all the footage and cut together a trailer.

I am thinking of just capturing all the footage to my system via renting a deck and capturing it all with my Prospect at the filmscan setting.

So, David, what do I need to do to capture into Prospect and extract the 24fps? Any help would be much appreciated. We are in the final 6 days of the 22 day shoot, so I will check this message stream as I get a chance. As always, thanks for all your great help.

[David Newman]

The Varicam embeds 24p in 60p 720. There is an option within the Premiere Pro capture control when using Prospect HD (not in HDLink,) to remove this pulldown and record only the real 24p (which is what you want to do.)

[Devon Lyon]

David:

I am only a few days away from renting the deck and ingesting 38 tapes shot with the Varicam. I have looked at the settings you mention above, and I just don't see the option.

When I created a new project, I used the Prospect 1280x720 24p and the Prospect 1280x720 59.94, but in neither did I see an option to remove the flags. I want to try and iron out any questions and establish my step-by-step now and not when I have the deck in-house as that is rather expensive.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Jake Segraves]

The Remove Pulldown option is in Premiere's Capture Settings. Look at this technote to see exactly where to select this option:

http://www.cineform.com/products/Tec...seTelecine.htm

Look at the Extracting 24p Using Premiere Pro section towards the middle of the page. That should show you what you're looking for.

[Devon Lyon]

Jake:

Thanks for the link. I think my problem might be that I am trying to trouble shoot in advance and therefore don't have the DVCPro HD deck hooked up. So, when I go to the capture settings section the button is NOT there and that is likely the problem :)

So, when I do have the deck, and before I get to the step where I change the capture settings, should my PROJECT settings be a Cineform 1280x720 24p project or a 1280x720 59.94 (or 60p)? My guess is the 24p as that's what I want to edit the files in.

Finally, I notice on the Cineform page you sent me, under the "Remove 3-2 pulldown" section, it lists the Sony V1U and the Canon HV20. Will this still work on footage that was shot with a Varicam?

[David Newman]

The 24p from 60p functions for Varicam are part of CineForm Prospect HD/2K capture interface within Premiere Pro, it is not in HDLink.

[Devon Lyon]

David:

Got it. The only remaining question is what should the project setting be (see question above). Do I set it at 24p? Do I set it at 23.98? Do I set it at the 60p? You get the jest. I normally test before I ask questions, but in this case I don't own a DVCPro HD deck and will have it at the end of the week only for a few days, so I am trying to have as many questions answered in advance as possible as to avoid delay. Thanks!

[David Newman]

You set it to 1280x720 at 23.976p.