XL-H1 HD-SDI 3:2 pulldown removal question
 

So I just did a shoot where I captured HD-SDI from the XL-H1 to a Mac Pro w/RAID in the field. I captured uncompressed and the footage is absolutely gorgeous. But I recorded the system sound separately and will be merging it with the video in Final Cut Pro.

I recorded as 1080i60 using Final Cut Pro. I want to remove the 3:2 pulldown before I start merging the audio but everytime I use Conform to 23:98 in Cinema Tools to do this, it seems to be throwing away the wrong fields (I get some interlacing artifacts in still frames). It also cuts the frame size down to something smaller too. Is there a specific way to remove 3:2 pulldown from the movie files?

Michael,

It's a PITA, but the method I've found that works the best is to create self contained QT's of your different clips, where each clip has the same cadence by starting/making the in point on an A frame (first of 3 progressive frames) and ending/marking out point on the second interlace pulldown frame. (last of 2 interlace pulldown frames) Export the clip and then bring into Cinema Tools.

In Cinema Tools, Open the clip and click on Reverse Telecine. Then try these options and render out a short clip to see if it works. See attachment for Cinema Tools settings that I use.

Btw, for some reason Cinema Tools saves the clip with a default display of 640x360. Don't worry, it's just displaying that--go to the QT View menu and click on "View/Actual size and you will see full raster frame. :) Click on "Save" in QT and it will come up as a regular 1920 x 1080 clip from then on.

If this doesn't work for you, try After Effects pulldown removal.

Ouch. It can't do the 3:2 pulldown during capture if the project is setup correctly from the start?

I'm getting ready to test/shoot green screen footage this week on the H1 to figure out our workflow before we start shooting a project.


Agreed, the HD-SDI footage is some great looking stuff!

No, AFIK the AJA and Blackmagic cards won't do this. I know that the CineForm Prospect HD product with the AJA Xena card can do it, but it costs $2K on top of the cost of Adobe Premiere Pro and the Xena card.

Thanks for the eye opener and the workflow Barlow!

Michael,
I hope the rest of the shoot went well, I had a great day the first day working with the Mini 35 & the Ziess Primes.
I can't wait to see the RAW capture.

Your phone is full and your email has been bouncing back for days.
I have a shoot and need the Marshall back,
call me
J

Barlow,

I tried this, but it still doesn't work. I tried all combinations too, but none work. Any other suggestions?

lol .. i called you before I saw this :)

Hey guys,

I have dealt with this EXACT situation, and let me tell you, its a MAJOR PITA.

One thing that really blew my mind was that if there's even one dropped frame on capture (VERY easy to do unless your RAID has tons of extra bandwidth / capacity), After Effects and or Cinema Tools will completely fail to remove the pulldown, as they are both rather stupid and un-adaptive.

An easy way to check your captures for any drops is to open the uncompressed files, and check the frame rate. If it says exactly 29.97 then you're good to go, and cinema tools (if you get its settings right) or After Effects will remove the pulldown happily. Just make sure you trim the clip to start at the beginning of the cadence pattern. Remember, saving the 24p means re-encoding, so go lossless with Sheer or the Animation Codec, or maybe Photo JPEG (that's what I ended up using).

The only solution I was able to find that would reliably remove pulldown from captures with a couple dropped frames was to bring the uncompressed MOVs into AviSynth on Windows, and use one of its delicious adaptive pulldown removal plugins called TIVTC. It's made for performing inverse telecine on improper / format converted telecine, so it's very smart and adaptive. Every clip I fed it was nicely repaired, except for some very bad clips with lots of dropped frames (under 20fps average), which were very jerky. PM me if you need info on AviSynth :)

-Derek