CF24....the only thing missing is 2:3 pulldown on .m2t files....
 

.....the first company that offers this, will make goo-gobs of money, i'm sure.

2:3 pulldown can be easily done to the downconverted CF24 DV file, hence making gorgeous 24p from CF24....

....but the .m2t mpeg file cannot be 2:3 pulldowned in post just yet.

Who will offer that functionality first??? only time will tell. but it better tell quick, cause NAB is this weekend! *smile*

- Shannon W. Rawls

Shannon, you know who!

You can easily remove the pulldown in Cinema Tools after converting the M2T to a more editable codec. Only problem is that it still looks like CF24 which, unfortunately doesn't look anywhere remotely like 24p. Oh dear.

Graeme

I could remove the pull-down on raw m2t files just fine in After Effects 6.0 Std. It wasn't convenient, but it worked. What I really want to see is support for CF24 pull-down removal in programs like Aspect HD.

<<<-- Originally posted by Graeme Nattress : You can easily remove the pulldown in Cinema Tools after converting the M2T to a more editable codec. Only problem is that it still looks like CF24 which, unfortunately doesn't look anywhere remotely like 24p. Oh dear.

Graeme -->>>

That's probably because CT is starting on the wrong frame. By default, programs start on frame "0". In Vegas it allows you to choose 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4. In my tests, you must choose "2" for the 2:3 pulldown to work correctly.....then it in fact does exactly like 24p, cadence and all. Only thing...I can't do it to .m2t files. only 29.97 .avi files so far.

Ofcourse I can make a 4:2:2 YUV HD intermediate 1920x1080 HDCAM ready intermediate file from my .m2t HD footage, and then do the pulldown on that.....but good lord, do you know how long that will take?? Can you say ONE WEEK to render about 4 hours of footage! and another WEEK to render the master!! (and about 1TB of drive space)*smile*

- Shannon W. Rawls

Shannon mate, switch cams - get the HVX200 (When it comes out which is who knows when), no problems then ;)

Aaron

<<<-- Originally posted by Aaron Koolen :
Shannon mate, switch cams - get the HVX200 , no problems then ;)

Aaron -->>>

1 problem-------> P2 ----> *sad face*

- Shannon W. Rawls

From Steven White: "What I really want to see is support for CF24 pull-down removal in programs like Aspect HD."

------------

We won't disappoint you....

<<<-- Originally posted by Shannon Rawls : <<<-- Originally posted by Graeme Nattress : You can easily remove the pulldown in Cinema Tools after converting the M2T to a more editable codec. Only problem is that it still looks like CF24 which, unfortunately doesn't look anywhere remotely like 24p. Oh dear.

Graeme -->>>

That's probably because CT is starting on the wrong frame. By default, programs start on frame "0". In Vegas it allows you to choose 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4. In my tests, you must choose "2" for the 2:3 pulldown to work correctly.....then it in fact does exactly like 24p, cadence and all. Only thing...I can't do it to .m2t files. only 29.97 .avi files so far.

Ofcourse I can make a 4:2:2 YUV HD intermediate 1920x1080 HDCAM ready intermediate file from my .m2t HD footage, and then do the pulldown on that.....but good lord, do you know how long that will take?? Can you say ONE WEEK to render about 4 hours of footage! and another WEEK to render the master!! (and about 1TB of drive space)*smile*

- Shannon W. Rawls -->>>

Cinema Tools is fairly rapid at pulldown removal. I wouldn't worry too much and it's fullly configurable to the pulldown cadence. As you know, I write my Film Effects plugin and fully understand the 60i to 24p conversion process, 2:3 pulldown removal, how to check cadence, determine cadence and make sure the right frames get removed. I am, of course, removing the right frames :-) and I am, of course, sure that CF24 still looks bad :-(

We all know that CF24 is an in camera film look simulation. Pulldown frames have nothing to do with how bad or good it looks, as we're all used to watching film on NTSC with all those pulldown frames, or putting such video into a modern TV that does the on-the-fly pulldown removal so that we see 24p. It's got everything to do with the algorithm Sony uses. There are lots of algorithms out there for 24p simulation - I write one, DVFilmMaker, Magic Bullet, CineLook, etc. etc. and they're all better, more visually pleasing simulations than what Sony are doing. The big issue is that if you shoot CF24 then that's it - no going back, but if you shoot 60i you can pick from all the different ones on the market. All I can say is that if I made my simulation look like Sony's, then I wouldn't be selling any, and Disney would not have used it on Mary Poppins.

Graeme

Gee wiz Graeme, to need to read me your resume' or tell me how Disney gave you a call. You can pop off algorithms, cadence talk, and other technobable if you want to.

All I care about is when my clients say "WOW, THAT LOOKS BETTER THEN DVX 24p" after I have pulldowned the CF24 downconverted DV on my "PEE CEEE" computer is all I care about. *smile*

Work with me now....Have you ever seen it done on a PC using Vegas??? If not, then I get it now. You gotta come up for air from that Macintoch programming and see what's happening on the IBM side of things. If you're not interested in doing that, then you shouldn't make blanket statements based on witnessing (and programming plugins) for a single platform. You walk with MAC....I walk with PC. Your plugin is for MAC....you have nothing for PC. You program in MAC, not for PC. Your pulldown is for MAC...not for PC. You sell software to us for MAC....not for PC. SO if it's ugly on MAC....cool....but I'm here to tell ya'....and I'm no spring chicken to movie making and 24p....that it looks GOOD on PC after the pulldown is done correctly.

There is no rebuttle to this. No need for telling me how many degrees you have or how long you been writing code. I'm sittin' here STARRING at the results with my own two eyeballs. DVX 24p and Z1U CF24 correctly pulldowned 24p. I have had OTHERS stare at the same and take a pick. I have not done it on MAC...so I won't comment. Have you done it on PC?? if yes...then you did something wrong...if not.....do what I am doing. *smile*

I realize the CF24 to 24p solution takes money out of your pocket because nobody will then need to purchase your Nattress plugin if they can get 24p without you, but that's no reason to keep doggin' it out my brutha.

All I need now, is for someone on PEE CEE to remove the pulldown on CF24 .m2t files "the same way Vegas does" for CF24 .avi files.

Love ya Graeme.

- Shannon W. Rawls

"I realize the CF24 to 24p solution takes money out of your pocket because nobody will then need to purchase your Nattress plugin if they can get 24p without you"

Well, if it only works on Vegas, it shouldn't be taking any money out of his pocket.

I doubt that is why Graeme is disagreeing with you.

We've already had a massive CF24 vs 24P thread, and nothing good really came out of it.

Can we just agree to disagree on this one?

Shannon - No need to get so loud! I hear what you say, I just disagree with it. Sony disagrees with you - or at least the Sony rep at the Ottawa presentation did. It doesn't make any difference which platform you remove the pulldown done because the "damage" is done in the camera.

If you like CF24 then fine. That's your choice and your subjective opinion. I don't agree with CF24 looking good, but that's my subjective opinion. Can we agree to disagree on that?

However, to say that you need to use a PC and Vegas to remove pulldown to make it look good, and that to say that doing it on a mac won't work is just plain silly. Sorry. It is. Pulldown is pulldown is pulldown. It's a video thing, it's standard and it doesn't matter wether you use a PC, Mac, SGI or linux box to remove the pulldown. It doesn't matter which application removes the pulldown or who programmed it. All that matters is that it's done correctly. It's either right or wrong - no shades of grey. If it's wrong, you'll see split frames in the result.

Perhaps what is happening here is that you like a particular look, and that look is not 24p. You like a different look, and that look is CF24. I write code to make 60i look as close as possible to real 24p. I could certainly write it to make it look like CF24 too - that's not a problem as Sony's algorithm is very much simpler.

Luis, that's a good suggestion. I just couldn't leave Shannon's response un-answered. Opinions I can agree to disagree on, but facts must be correct.

Graeme

Luis, me and Graeme just blabber mouthin' with eachother. no harm.

Graeme, get loud? huh? what do you mean...where am i typing in all caps or yelling? don't be so sensitve. And I never said it won't work on MAC, you did. Who said you need a PC to make it work. I beleive I said I do not KNOW about MAC, so I cannot comment, but I can vouch for PC & Vegas. Sadly, the only pro editing system MAC users are privy to is avid & Final Cut Pro. Fortunately, PC has a huge assortment of options for editing. I mention this because if Windows Movie Maker was the only editor for PC, and it didn't do the Pulldown correctly with CF24...then I would unerstand your point. However, PC has "others" who work things "differently". Just so happens that Vegas works things Correctly. Apparently Final Cut Pro does not, and sadly there are no other alterantives for MAC, so if FCP don't work, then you're SOL.

And I never said i like the look of CF24. I don't like the "look" of anything. Where did I say that? Be fair....what's going on with all this stuff you keep saying that I said that I never said?? Don't put words in my mouth to get your point across.

I beleive what I did say was I like 24p. And it just so happens that CF24 properly processed and pull downed in Vegas becomes 24P (TRUE TWENTY FOUR PROGRESSIVE FRAMES PER SECOND) *smile* Same as your Nattress program does it for 60i. Not the 'look' word like you keep saying i am saying, but 24p made from CF24. Unless ofcourse you call what your program does to 60i a so-called "look". Apparently you've never made CF24 to 24p, and that's ok. nobody's perfect. But I have....successfully.

If you think pulldown is a video thing, is standard and don't matter what program does it...then why do you say "all that matters is that it's done correctly" in the end of your statement?? Well does it or doesn't it matter??? I guess that means Pulldown ain't Pulldown ain't Pulldown... because there are different ways it can be done, right? Apparently Vegas is doing it right. Again, I ain't saying MAC is doing it wrong, because I haven't tried it to make a statement like that, but you sure have and you say it's ugly, so that only leads to one conclusion for me for CF24 in FCP currently......lolol

It's all good Graeme, alls i'm sayin' is if you think CF24 pulldowned (as best you can do it) in FCP or Nattress is ugly, then cool, I understand. If that's true, then apparently it's not doing it the same way Vegas does it. But be fair and just say that only. To only test it in MAC and tell the world blanketly that it's ugly even though you have not seen or even tried the alternatives is not fair. Come to my studio and take a look, and if you sit up in here and say that the Z1U 24p DV footage made from CF24 DV is uglier (or whatever) then then DVX100a 24p DV footage shot at the same time & same scene with same lighting, then I would say.....ummmm, i dunno what I would say. I would probably just ask if you had been drinking or smokin' chronic before you arrived. *smile*

- Shannon W. Rawls

Certainly no harm Shannon. By loud I mean the tone of how you write, not shouting in all caps.

By "correctly remove pulldown", I mean that you match the pulldown cadence and extract the original 24 frames that were generated before pulldown was added. If you get the cadence wrong you get the wrong frames and it all looks out of whack.

I'd love to come to your studio and chat abou all this over a few beers. That'd certainly be cool, but if you're not near Ottawa, that's a journey that I'm afraid it'll be hard to make as I've got a 6month old daughter that's hard to travel far with. That said, if you're at NAB we can have a pint there instead.

Sure, when you remove pulldown from CF24 you get 24 frames every second. Problem is they're not progressive, or at least not progressive in the sense that they were shot that way. They're interlaced frames that have been de-interlaced by throwing away a field and interpolating the missing info. There are two problems with this. 1 is resolution. You loose some. That's not too bad as human eye is not that sensitive to that, unless you really know what to look for, and even still on movement it's often hard to tell. 2 is the motion blur. When you throw away a field like that, it gives the visual appearance of doubling the shutter speed in terms of motion blur. That's what I see in CF24 that I don't like. Or indeed, that's what I should say I don't like normally. It's fun if you're doing a gladiator battle scene effect, especially if you adjust the shutter speed higher too, but I don't think I could watch too much of it before it annoyed me.

If you've got an M2T or DV file that you could pulldown and send the original to me, that I could pulldown in Cinema Tools, then we could see if there's any differences. That's what I like to do - experiments to see what's happening without opinion getting in the way, leaving only facts. Drop me an email graeme@nattress.com if you want to try that. It would certainly be interesting, and perhaps we can take this discussion forwards rather than just yammering on our own points of view?

Graeme

I would have to agree with Graeme on this one. I talked to a SONY rep at a tradeshow who told all of us that CF24 is not 24p. It is a timing issue. The fact is that the CCDs are sampling a image 30 times within a second. No matter how good it looks in Vegas the fact is that you cannot get 24 frames out of 30 and have them be whole frames. It is simple math. 24/30 does not give you a whole number. That extra data has to go somewhere. If you add a pulldown you are not forcing the CCD to sample 24 times within a second. It still samples 30 times. It is like keyframe animation. Lets say you have an animation made up of 30 keyframes. Now you only want to have 24 of those keyframes make up the total animation. The problem now is that the extra 6 keyframes you took out cause uneven gaps in the timeline. There is not the exact same time space in between each keyframe anymore. Now with frames from a camera there is no way to create an in between frame that takes place between two current frames. You see the problem? With CF24 not every keyframe(moment of time or frame) happens within the same exact amount of space. A few of the frames actually happen before or after at that point of reality. Now the difference may be very very small but by no means is CF24 the exact same as 24p. There is no math formula in the universe that could shift frames in moments in time. Actually the only real way you could do it would be to upsample the 30fps to 600fps and then scale down again to 24fps. This is the only way you can divide those two numbers into 2 new whole number values. Of course upsampling to 600fps wouldn't be 100% accurate either. Im sure CF24 looks great to you but I know a lot of people who think it is garbage and some of them do use Vegas. If you and your clients love it then please keep using it. Now why wouldn't you use CF25 and do a 4% time shift? With this method every frame gets captured for that moment in time. The 25 fps are then mapped into 24fps making the video 4% longer but with the exact same pixels as before and the exact same distance between each frame timewise. The SONY rep I talked to told me on an HD LCD or plasma monitor you can still watch 50i footage here in the US. Besides once you get your true 24fps video you can apply a pulldown and have a true 24p with a 3:2 pulldown in a 30i video to watch in the US.

Graeme,

I find your analisis of the CF24 very interresting, the motion blur part especially. If the false 24 does induce a sense of double shutter speed, could we reduce shutter speed by 1/2? Make it look less juddery? My clients love the CF24 look and I don't blame them, on a SD monitor it really looks good (It may be the way I shoot?) but I have to agree with Shannon, what the clients like is the most important whenever I work for them. But I also do a lot of shorts and then, the technicalities are more important for me.

Graeme, what is your opinion about CF25 or CF30, does it look OK to you? I do have to regularly send stuff to Europe so 24 has been a good "intermediate" for me, easy to transfer in NTSC or PAL. Would CF25 be better? What problems would it induce when editing? Thinking about FCP5's hability to work with native HD.

Thanks buddy

Shannon - I'm listening. My ears are alittle stopped up from a week shooting stills in the northern mexican desert but , you've got a mac man wanting to hear more of what your saying. Has anyone used all of the solutions and compared the results. The way I see this thread is a lack of consensual reality between both sides. There's got to be someone who's used Graemes' software, magicbullet, dvfilmaker, shot 24p with a dvx and , also seen Shannons' solution . Hey , the obvious candidate is probably on this thread. Graeme , I love to hear your comments on Shannons' solution but I'd love it more if there could be a real , side by side , projected comparison. Is there anyway an exchange of files could be arranged? I completely respect your judgement and would like to hear your professional opinion . Shannon , your system , again , please my man ? I've got 4 apples but I would be open to owning an orange or two , if they provided an advantage, ( esp if there's a notebook solution and a 1/3 priced version of vegas on ebay !!) thanks Kurth

I think the only way this will be resolved is by people posting footage.

So how about it? Would anyone actually care to demonstrate or prove their points and let our eyes be the judge?