Reverse telecine from TV capture sources

[nateo200]

Hey guys! So I like to record TV shows with my Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt, works great, no issues really at all. However most TV is either 1080i60 or 720p60 so when I throw the captured shows into FCP X to cut the commercials out I set the project to 720p30....if I set the project to 720p24 it doesn't seam to automatically pull down...also I've tried exporting to a ProRes file and then trying to let Handbrake or Compressor handle it but no luck...its weird to me because I KNOW what I'm capturing originated as 1080p24 from an Arri Alexa! I was just reading an article from a TV engineer bragging about how he could send a 24p source telecined in 60i and pull out 24fps even after it had gone through multiple different sources and encodes....Not really a big deal I'm more curious than anything...Anyone know what a possible issue could be? Thanks!

 

[LethalWolfe]

I'm just going to venture a guess and say that w/o metadata attached that lets software know what the original cadence should be and where the A frame is that'll you need to use software to allows you to manually put in that info (assuming the software is not capable of deciphering it on its own). You'll probably have to go act by act to do it as the commercials won't have the same cadence as the show.

I'm curious though if you are capturing 1080i60 or 720p60 why are you setting your timeline to 720p30?

 

[nateo200]

I'm just going to venture a guess and say that w/o metadata attached that lets software know what the original cadence should be and where the A frame is that'll you need to use software to allows you to manually put in that info (assuming the software is not capable of deciphering it on its own). You'll probably have to go act by act to do it as the commercials won't have the same cadence as the show.

I'm curious though if you are capturing 1080i60 or 720p60 why are you setting your timeline to 720p30?

Well If I'm removing the commericials I shouldn't have an issue with detelecining it right? Commercials I know are all over the place, I see some in 60i and 30p so i get rid of those as I've seen havoc with detelecined sources that had a few 60i sections that looked bad or whatever. Also I set the project to 720p30 because 720p60 is just wasted bandwidth if the TV show was originated at 24p...I capture in a dedicated software at 60p or 60i because my capture card requires the software to capture at whatever the source is spitting out and then move it to FCP X, I would stick with 24p but can't get the detelecine to work so 30p is better since its half of 60 so it goes into it pretty clean. And I wouldn't do 60i because interlacing is ugly. Should I just cut the commercials out in a 1080i60 or 720p60 timeline (depending on what I captured as) then output the content to something that can do a better job? I mean surely I could recover 24p from this, no metadata on where the A frame is but I've heard somewhere can do a pretty good job of looking for it? Maybe there is a plugin for After Effects I can use? Aside from TV shows, I'm planning on capturing from cameras that output 24p in 60i wrappers over HDMI so if I could figure this out it'd be nice. Also probably already assumed but when I say 60i I mean 59.94i (or 29.97i if your picky), 23.976, etc.

 

[Policar]

If you're cutting a commercial for 1080/60i, it might be worth just being lazy and leaving everything as-is, simply converting the 720/60p footage to 1080/60i and cutting in a 1080/60i timeline.

When I deinterlace, I use Compressor's pulldown detection and have so far had no problems with that. If it failed I would use After Effects, try the automatic correction, then play around if it failed to recognize the pulldown cadence. The issue might be that the cadence gets broken over a long period of time, so maybe chop up the pieces you need (with handles) and tackle them one-by-one with Compressor or After Effects.

720/60p is trickier. I might bring it into After Effects and slide the footage over a 24p composition until it was lined up with no repeating frames if all else failed. There's certainly a better way of doing it, maybe converting to 1080i then deinterlacing that with Compressor, but I don't know what it is. :/

 

[nateo200]

SO I recently captured a behind the scenes video of a TV show along with its intro, this time however I captured 1080i60 through HDMI vs component HD cables. Maybe the HDMI keeps the cadence better because I simply dropped the 1080i60 ProRes footage right into a 1080p24 project, selected deinterlace on all the clips and exported, I noticed on export it had to background render twice despite the Timeline being ProRes HQ and my capture content being ProRes HQ, maybe it was reserve telecining? Anyways the content came out PERFECT, the TV show had allot of action and movement and the show is originally shot on the Arri Alexa in 1080p24 ProRes 4444 and the cadence is perfect! Pleasant little surprise to see this all working, now if only Direct TV would just broadcast in only progressive formats with native frame rates . Either way I'm surprised, I didn't use Compressor or anything but FCP X and I figured FCP X would deinterlace like crap but it seams to be doing a proper 3:2 pull down versus what I thought would a crappy 2:2:2:4 pull down used for FCP in the past.