what’s the best way to keep the duration of the clip the same but change a master fro 25fps to 29.97fps. ? if I reformat it it comes out a few frames short of what it should be - is that normal. and when people ask for a 29,.97 do they mean NDF or DF! Sorry Im from the UK!
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DF timecode makes no difference to frame rate or duration. It is a stupid kluge for getting 29.97 timecode to match the time on a real clock. It’s a US TV broadcast Control room thing.
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so if they’ve asked for a 29.97 master - just run the reformat to 29.97 NDF and hope for the best?
Yes and no . . . If it’s a 30 second spot, make sure it’s 900 frames. There are ways to make it look better than a basic repeat-every-5th-frame timewarp, depending on the actual delivery spec. If it is 29.97 progressive, I just let it go at that. If it is 59i, which actually uses 29.97 timecode, I tw the spot to twice the desired length, then interlace it. This makes a 3:2:3:2:2 pulldown which looks a little better of tv, but not on the web.
As far as audio goes, I leave it as is if it is less than a minute. Maybe 2 minutes if there is no lip sync. Anything beyond that, you might need to do an audio tw.
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complicated stuff. so run a timewarp not a reformat. what’s the desired duration for a 60 and a 90?
I presume its 1800 and 2700 or there about
yes. Not there about. It has to be exact or it will be bounced if it is for tv.
Not for nothin’, the big commercial traffic places usually take 23.98.
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I timewarp because I feel I have more control, plus there was no such thing as “reformat” when I started doing this on the Quantel Harry.
IMHO Timewarp always adds some jitter to the image no matter how I set the interpolation settings … maybe it’s me and I’m missing something … 
Only way I found to properly convert from 25>29.97 is to create an interim 24fps master and then add 3:2 pulldown to create 29.97fps
- reformat your clip from 25 to 24 by changing framerate in the timecode&rate box
- open a new blank 24 sequence
- drop your 25 clip in this sequence and timewarp it to match duration (30 sec if it’s a 30 sec spot), this will be just for reference
- drop your 24 clip on top of this one and go cut by cut, slicing the 24 clip and removing the extraneous frames from it by nudging the incoming shot to match where the edit points are
- once done, you should have a proper 24 cut that matches in duration and where the original cuts are
- remove the timewarped 25 clip
- add pulldown to this new 24 sequence and create a proper 29.97 master
Few issues with this method:
- yes, you are messing with the edit as the cut in/out points will miss a frame or two at head or tail depending how you slice it
- yes, the audio may slip if the scenes are longer then a few seconds and there is a lot of talking heads but you may play with sliding those shots to cheat it and find a happy medium
Hope this makes sense. Cheers!
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I find this method way too cumbersome, which is why I would simply tw progressive to twice the duration then interlace. But, however, it is the way to go if the distributor accepts 23.98 (just don’t add the pulldown.) The fact of the matter is, however, many venues that ask for 29.97 these days want it progressive, in which case nothing will look good. TW it and pretend it’s OK. No one really cares anyway.
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thanks - ill give it a go! unfortunately its 90 seconds long and lots of edits. maybe ill just send it out for a standards conversion !
I haven’t had to do conversion in a while so I haven’t tried it myself but I noticed that the latest version of Topaz AI says it can do “seamless frame rate conversion”, I’m not sure if that means it can change it to a legal video standard but its worth a shot if you have it.
I got the email touting this from them only a couple days ago, so you might need to update to the latest version
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So here is what I did - which seemed to work as good as I thought it would. made a 29.,97 NDF empty sequence. dropped my 25 fps clip in it - and at the right duration with a timewarp. dropped the audio on it which was correct and the right length. I guess cos audio doesn’t have a frame rate. and it looks good enough!
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