35mm film > DV > DVD 24p

[Southstorm]

Hello Everyone,

Hoping someone could help me out with this. My brother shot a 35mm-24fps film. It has been developed and transferred to MiniDV tape for editing, and then going back to the processing house to have the film edited.

In the meantime, I would like to take the edited MiniDV, and put it on a DVD for previewing. I could leave it at the DV rate of 29.976fps, but ideally I would like to restore the 24fps from the DV and put it on a DVD with 3:2 Pulldown.

Any suggestions/ideas? Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks,
Southstorm

[Blue_MiSfit]

Absolutely. Bring the DV files into AviSynth, and apply inverse telecine.

I'm guessing your DV files are in an AVI container?

Something like this should work:


AVISource("foo.avi")

tfm
tdecimate

converttoyv12


Note: for best quality, I'd suggest using Cedocida to decode these DV streams.

After verifying this avisynth script, bring it into an MPEG-2 encoder like HC, and encode at 24p with soft pulldown enabled for DVD compatibility. Process your audio however you like (I'd suggest AC3 encoding with eac3to), then author/mux/burn.

Cheers,
Derek

[Southstorm]

Thanks Blue_Misfit.

I hope it will be that simple. My only concern is that the video has been edited. Would this throw off the pattern of the Telecine? I see that Decomb is adaptive, so maybe this isn't an issue...

[Ghitulescu]

It would be that simple if the DV tape was correctly done (that includes using 23.976 on the projector side as well as 2:3 TC is 30 and not 29.97).

[SeeMoreDigital]

Don't forget Donald Graft's DGpulldown v1.0.11 (http://neuron2.net/dgpulldown/dgpulldown.html) application :)

[Mug Funky]

really depends on the editing workflow here.

if it was cut by an experienced editor, it'll most likely have been cut as 24fps and the editing program would be aware of the 2:3 cadence and cut around it.

if the editor is inexperienced, or misunderstood what was required of the project (ie that you're finishing in 24p), they may have cut it at 60i.

telecide will correctly find cadence changes, but might lose an orphaned field that corresponded to a real film frame depending on where the cuts land in the 2:3 sequence.

if you have keykode, timecode, etc burn-ins printed on your DV rushes, you'll still be able to recover everything for the final conform of the actual film, but there might be hellish times ahead for you if all your EDL timecodes are in 29.97 and the film is at 24...

i'm going to give the editor the benefit of the doubt and say it'll all be fine, and just reverse the 2:3 pulldown in avisynth using the above methods and DGpulldown to put soft pulldown in your DVD and everything will be peachy :)

i'm SO glad that all the film work i've done has been in PAL land where this just isn't a problem. a PAL frame has one and only one film frame on it. the telecine runs at 25fps and stays there, locked to a PAL signal.

editing in NTSC land must do all your heads in.

[Southstorm]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I get the MiniDV this weekend. Then I can experiment a bit. I do know for a fact that it was edited at 29.97 fps. Hopefully the IVTC can be done. I will let you know how it turns out. As always, all comments are appreciated.

Thanks again,

Southstorm

[SeeMoreDigital]

if you have keykode, timecode, etc burn-ins printed on your DV rushes, you'll still be able to recover everything for the final conform of the actual film, but there might be hellish times ahead for you if all your EDL timecodes are in 29.97 and the film is at 24... Tell me about it... :mad:

I quite often receive NTSC television commercials where the pull-down sequence has been corrupted. And given TV commercials often contain many scene changes (during their short run-times), it can be very time consuming getting them back to 24 (23.976) fps.


Cheers

[Mug Funky]

@ SMD:

i usually pass the buck on these ones:

"it was clearly onlined in 60i, so it should stay that way unless we want to get the director involved and they can pay for a re-online".

[edit]

ohhhh, wait. i just figured out why USA based producers are so anal about having ALE and FLX files for every reel of film - their rushes timecodes are completely useless, and the conform needs to happen from the ALE files.

haha! in PAL land it's soooooo much easier - if it was all logged right to start with, each reel's timecode corresponds perfectly with the timecode on the rushes tapes, so the vanilla EDL from the editing program is always good enough.

NTSC sucks in so many ways :)

[Southstorm]

Hello Everyone,

Finally got the footage and was able to experiment.
I was able to use Telecide() and Decimate() to recover the progressive frames. Unfortunately, as I figured, since the footage was edited in DV 29.976fps there was some residual combing at edit cuts. I used Tdeint() to clean this up allowing it to use the hints sent thru from Telecide(). This seemed to take care of things. If anyone has a more refined method, please pass it along.

There does seem to be a very slight jitter up & down at certain static scenes. I don't quite know what it is caused by. I have attached a short clip as an example: http://www.mediafire.com/file/p9ssvj4nyva6ony/Jitter%20Example.mp4

I'm sure it's a simple fix having to do with Chroma or Luma. I'm not too sharp on those things though.

[RunningSkittle]

can you maybe upload a sample of the original please?

[Southstorm]

As requested, Here is a sample of the original DV file.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/37zwsdaa5fw5amf/Jitter%20Example.avi