Dammit! 1st Cam = 24 frames, 2nd Cam = 25. HELP!

[Jordan Brindle]

Hello guys,

I just got in from a wedding shoot and for some sick reason, my main cam had reverted to 23.976 frames. All my main cam footage is in this format, but my 2nd cam is rightly in 25 frames.

I'm trying to get my head around the right way to 'fix' the a-cam footage for a smooth edit?

All video footage will need to be synced with an external audio source.

This is the last thing I needed right now. I would appreciate all and any help, guys!

Thank you.

[Graham Bernard]

What is the % of 25 to 24? 2 hours of 25fps and maybe 10 minutes of 24fps? Just giving some numbers to the amount of trouble you're in.

[Nate Haustein]

Might not be much help, but in FCPX I would use the Optical Flow option when retiming. It's slow, but it interpolates frames where necessary to smooth out the frame rate change. I believe there is a similar way to do this with various plugins on the market.

Or just do a straight up retime in Vegas and see how it looks. Would that be 104% speed?

[Graham Bernard]

Yeah, I'm with Nate here.

Do a quick test with COPIES of the three items: 24 and 25 and the Audio needed to be synched; set VP to what is needed, 25fps and see how "bad" it is. Vegas is rather good at getting us out of similar scrapes!

Nasty . . ..

Keep us informed.

G

[Jordan Brindle]

Originally Posted by Graham Bernard

What is the % of 25 to 24? 2 hours of 25fps and maybe 10 minutes of 24fps? Just giving some numbers to the amount of trouble you're in.

Hi Graham. We're talking 2+ hours of 24 and 2+ hours of 25. Half and half. All my a-cam footage.

Originally Posted by Nate Haustein

Might not be much help, but in FCPX I would use the Optical Flow option when retiming. It's slow, but it interpolates frames where necessary to smooth out the frame rate change. I believe there is a similar way to do this with various plugins on the market.

Or just do a straight up retime in Vegas and see how it looks. Would that be 104% speed?

Hi Nate. I don't have FCPX, will have to look into doing a 'retime' in Vegas. Is that a clip-by-clip adjustment?

Originally Posted by Graham Bernard

Yeah, I'm with Nate here.

Do a quick test with COPIES of the three items: 24 and 25 and the Audio needed to be synched; set VP to what is needed, 25fps and see how "bad" it is. Vegas is rather good at getting us out of similar scrapes!

Nasty . . ..

Keep us informed.

G

Do you mean drop the 24P into a 25P timeline? The 24p in the 25p timeline has some blur ghosting. Not sure how much a render out would change that, but i assume the external audio would be out of sync.

Thank you for your help so far all. I'm shooting another one today and stressing out over this, not good.

[Graham Bernard]

Today's shoot: Do a test to confirm you ARE running at 25fps and capture to VP to confirm.

OK, here is my method or getting 23.972 to 25fps for DVDA:

1] Select the Timescale to Absolute Frames

2] Put a COPY of ALL 24 footage onto timeline and NOTE the total Frames

3] Render in its native format

4] Put 3] onto a new VEG timeline and check Total Frames. 2] and 4] should be the same.

5] Change Project Settings to 25fps

6] Apply the TOTAL frames number from 4] into the Vegas End Point

7] Now, Ctrl+Drag the end of the Clip to match the number of frames.

8] Render a 25 Project Digital Intermediary that will match your B-Camera 25fps. My choice is the SONY MXF. You may choose something else to get close to your B-Camera output.

Issues:

Voices could be lower register, so adjust for pitch in the pitch setting. I use Elastique, and that makes a great job.

The Audio to be synced is the next issue.

Any ideas people?

Grazie

[Jordan Brindle]

Hi Graham,

On shoot right now, thank you so much for laying this out for me. When I get in I'll have a better look. Re: External Audio, it's the audio from the speeches and ceremony, I'd assume once the 24p has run through this process it would sync up?

[Paul Mailath]

I seem to recall the cineform did a pretty good job of converting 24-25p. is it still around?

[Jordan Brindle]

Alright, so after conforming the 24p footage to 25p via the above methods, and dropping the newly rendered 25p file into a new time-line, I'm running into the issue of out of sync audio from the external source. Even after increasing the audio speed/tempo by 4.1/4.2%.

Am i up shit creek without a paddle here? What can i do to sync these up?

[Darren Levine]

I would give it a go the opposite way: first try syncing the external audio to the 24p footage on a 24p timeline.

[Jordan Brindle]

Originally Posted by Darren Levine

I would give it a go the opposite way: first try syncing the external audio to the 24p footage on a 24p timeline.

Whats the worst that could happen if i just edit this entire thing together, 24p and 25p, then burn it as a 25p project? Besides from some ghosting, what else am i looking at here? Because I've already spent an entire day banging my head against a wall trying to figure my way around this, in the end, I'd rather take the slight quality hit if it means getting it to the client on time and out of my hair.

With the external audio in the timeline and 20 mins of footage from the 24p cam and 25p cam in a 25pal project, the audio is syncing, too. I thought it shouldn't? So confused right now, i think the stress is affecting my thought pattern. Is it only after burning to DVD that the stuttering/issues occur?

[Darren Levine]

while striving for the best quality is what many of us tend to do, keep in mind that the average client doesn't notice nearly the level of detail that we the image-makers make.

my point being, if the conversion results in a little but of image loss/odd blur/etc... show it to a friend or relative, just ask what they think, if it looks OK to them, consider delivering to the client. Then if the client has an issue, bang your head some more till it's perfect

just think... web compression has been making our great images look like crap for years, people are used to it.

[Jordan Brindle]

Originally Posted by Darren Levine

while striving for the best quality is what many of us tend to do, keep in mind that the average client doesn't notice nearly the level of detail that we the image-makers make.

my point being, if the conversion results in a little but of image loss/odd blur/etc... show it to a friend or relative, just ask what they think, if it looks OK to them, consider delivering to the client. Then if the client has an issue, bang your head some more till it's perfect

just think... web compression has been making our great images look like crap for years, people are used to it.

Right. I think i will take the hit. I just burnt a quick copy of the speeches (wedding edit), which has minimal movement, and that is relatively good.

I'll use more b-cam footage of the dancing.

Does anyone know if there is anything that can be done to minimize the ghosting besides conforming, etc?

Thank you to everyone who has helped so far. Really appreciated.

[Jay Massengill]

A few questions:

What two cameras did you shoot on?

What file format of video?

How many sections of the recording were long enough to span over to multiple files during the original recording?

What sample rate was the external audio recording set to?

[Jordan Brindle]

Originally Posted by Jay Massengill

A few questions:

What two cameras did you shoot on?

What file format of video?

How many sections of the recording were long enough to span over to multiple files during the original recording?

What sample rate was the external audio recording set to?

Hi Jay.

Cam A: Canon 6 D [24p].
Cam B: Canon 5D MK II [25p].

.MOV format.

External audio is WAV format 44,100 Hz i believe.

It seems half way through the day, with the shitty 6D controls, i must have accidentally switched to 1920x1080 24 when changing white balance, or one of the other on-screen adjustments, and failed to notice. It's only half of my footage and this option isn't as easily changed on the 5D MK II which explains why it never happened on that camera in the past.