Pull Down Frame Rate Issue in DP

[gives]

I have a colleague that has been sent a 23.976 fps Qt for scoring and it's pull down.. In Protools he can adjust for this in the Setup Window for frame rates and set the frame rate to pull down or not. Is there such a setting in DP for this.. Maybe in the new update. The problem he is having is of course that there is timming problems if he can't adjust to the pull down frame rate..
Guess it's a Telecine thing on there end were they need to lay it back this way.
As some may know, In the United States and other countries that use the NTSC television standard, film is generally photographed at 24 frame/s. Color NTSC video is broadcast at 29.97 frame/s. For the film's motion to be accurately rendered on the video signal, an NTSC telecine must use a technique called the 3:2 pulldown to convert from 24 to 29.97 frame/s.
Thanks, G

[m2]

Short awnser "no" DP does not understand pulldown or pullup issues. It's really not designed to primarily be a post production DAW.

[rockitcity]

I believe the correct way to deal with a pull-down session in DP would be to set the frame rate to 29.97 and resolve to an external clock running at 47.952. You can set a MIDI Timepiece AV to do this, and then set your audio interface to resolve to external word clock.

If your session frame counter doesn't line up with your window burn, you might try setting DP's frame rate to 30fps using the same pull-down word clock. This used to be the way Pro Tools counters worked. Frame counters at 30 fps were the same as 29.97 pull-down, but a straight 29.97 was different. Never felt like doing the math to figure out why, and I haven't tried this in DP to see if it works, but it would be an easy experiment if you have a pull-down Quicktime video to work with. Just sync it up at the head and see if the window-burn and session frames match at the end.

[jimjacobsen]

Good luck. There's NOTHING worse than dealing with this pull down, pull up, pull off, throw up crap. I have often resorted to telling a music editor: YOU deal with it.

[dchai]

The Fireface 800 is equipped with SteadyClock•„•, RME's unique sync and clock technology. With this, the device becomes a sync reference for the whole studio. SteadyClock refreshes clock signals, removes jitter, and takes permanent care of optimal conversion quality, thus guarantees a sensational sound quality, completely independent from the reference clock's quality.

SteadyClock allows the Fireface 800 to control the sample rate freely on its own. The Settings dialog includes a direct choice of the video and audio world's most often used sample rates. Additionally, two faders can be used to set the sample rate freely and in real-time, within the range of +/- 4% and +/- 0.4%.

[sdfalk]

Short awnser "no" DP does not understand pulldown or pullup issues. It's really not designed to primarily be a post production DAW.[quote][/quote]

Perhaps not, but DP does contain a substantial amount of post
production functionality that Protools does.
Having used both I can say with certainty that DP can hold its' own
quite well in a post environment.
Motu should really just finish the job and deal with pull up pull down
issues like Protools/(and now) Nuendo does.
Since there own Digital Timepiece hardware supports pullup/down
smpte sync, you'd think that would be reflected in there software
as well.

[editdroid]

You certainly can work at this frame rate as long as you have hardware with a clock that can supply it.

Your internal mac hardware cannot, nor can a motu pci 424 card. A motu digital timepiece can or some other kind of word clock generator that has this feature.

Once you have the correct hardware in place, you look in the "Setup" menu at "audio system clock" and reset it from internal to something else depending on what hardware you have. If you have a motu digital timepiece you can use motu's "control track" or else you can use a word clock source that has these settings..

The software can sync to an external clock signal and that is the only feature you need to use DP with pull down material.

good luck,

Jason

[Bischofftep]

As some may know, In the United States and other countries that use the NTSC television standard, film is generally photographed at 24 frame/s. Color NTSC video is broadcast at 29.97 frame/s. For the film's motion to be accurately rendered on the video signal, an NTSC telecine must use a technique called the 3:2 pulldown to convert from 24 to 29.97 frame/s.

I've written about this here before, but here's the basics:

The standard for dealing with post-production scoring is to have the producer/editor/whomever provide a 29.97 version of the piece to score to. Even if the piece was shot on film at 24fps it can be telecined to 29.97. More importantly, if a piece was shot digitally it is already 29.97 even if they tell you it was shot 24fps (23.98, actually). If they removed the pulldown (or performed an inverse telecine, much the same thing, really) then have them put it back in when they send you the locked picture to score to. Preferably with a timecode burn-in so you can be sure you have the hit points the same as they do despite the change in frame rates.

The upshot is, time is time, and frame rates are just a way of measuring how many pictures per second we're going to see. Your hits will line up within 2 frames no matter what they do to it in the 24 to 29.97 range, and DP and all its accouterments are all geared towards 29.97.

More detail if you want it, but that's the skinny as I know it.

[magnetman]

My two cents: For the folks that feel that DP is not a post production tool, take a look at the motu.com DP5 web site. They have an enormous amount of attention placed on the film scoring capability of DP. Well, film scoring is Post Production.

It stands to reason that tomorrow morning, we will find that DP 5.02 will be on the motu.com introducing support for the DVC Pro HD 23.97 frame rate.

We need it yesterday.

regards,
Michael Stern
Scoring Mixer