DV 24p to Betacam SP

[Jean-Philippe Archibald]

OK.

I have a short movie, done in 16:9 24p 2:3:3:2 using an XL2. A festival wants it in Betacam SP. Fortunatly, a public local broadcasting station agreed to do the transfert for free. But they works with Avid symphony and do not have any DV capture capability.

They asked me to provide an uncompressed file compatible with AVID on an external hard drive. From what I understand, I need to convert my 24p piece to 30fps using 2:3 pulldown before to render to a uncompressed file.

What is the best way, quality-wise, to do this?

[Mark Holmes]

I've delivered to Avid post houses, at least in HD with the DNX HD Codecs. They are a free download, are cross platform, and deliver great results, as they are based on the same technology as Apple's ProRes codecs. Link below for installation (download is at bottom of page):

Answer

Once they are installed, simply render your project to the appropriate template under Quicktime 7 in Vegas - Avid DNX options will show after codec installation.

It is also best to discuss to discuss what you're planning with your post house. They should be happy with this, though. The Avid community seems to love the DNX stuff.

[Jean-Philippe Archibald]

Thanks Mark, these codecs might be a good alternative over the huge undompressed files.

But my main question is how to go from 24p advanced to 30p in order to be compatible with the Betacam SP format. Should I just make a render from my 24p timeline to any codec (uncompressed or an Avid one as Mark suggested) and choosing the 29,970 option in the codec setting?

[Jean-Philippe Archibald]

Let me rephrase my question:

I think that the way to go for an analogue transfert is to provide a file with 2:3 pulldown frames inserted. Now I can do this from my 24p timeline if I am rendering to a NTSC DV file, but I don't have this option when rendering to an uncompressed file. Is it ok, quality-wise, to render to 29.97 fps?