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View Full Version : the ol' 3:2 pulldown

jadamburke
05-21-2003, 02:21 AM
I'm working on a short film that was shot super 16mm at 24 fps. To make the project easier to edit, it was transferred to digibeta at 29.97 fps with a 3:2 pulldown. It was then offlined to DVCam, edited in premiere, then onlined back to full res and put on another digibeta.

I now have that final edit but I need to remove the pulldown of the entire film (20minutes) and return it to 24fps on my computer. The problem I'm foreseeing is that because it was edited at 29.97 and the cuts might be in the middle of pulldown frames that a single reverse pulldown wouldn't properly remove the fields for the entire film. I'm assuming I will have to break apart each cut on the final edit and apply an automatic reverse pulldown on each shot. Any better ideas? or shortcuts?

Also my director was kind enough to put some nice cross dissolves in at 29.97 fps. These I imagine will be even trickier to revert to 24fps without fields. Any tips?
Phred42
05-21-2003, 06:03 AM
You're correct. Why do you need it at 24fps? If you're just doing effects work, then you'd only need to take the pulldown out of certain shots, right? Anyway, if it was cut at 29.97, then yes, there are probably breaks in the 3:2 cadence. Lucky you - you get to chop the 29.97 master up and remove the pulldown from each shot before you do your work.

In the future, make sure the effects are done before the online happens, as that's when they'll need to go in. When you're having the one-light transfer done for the offline, get a best light transfer of the stuff you'll be doing effects on. That way you can start working right away, while the offline edit happens.

If your 3:2 cadences are mixed, the only way to properly deal with dissolves would be if you'd done the conform yourself and had handles on the clips. Then, you could film compress each shot separately (if your intended goal is a 24p master), or film compress each shot, do whatever you need to do, and then film expand back to 29.97 if you're trying to stay in NTSC land. If you can't get handles, I think you're up the creek without a paddle. Sorry.

So....if you only need to work on a few shots, hand-remove the pulldown, and blame the editor for any wonkiness in the dissolves.
wireFrame
05-24-2003, 01:48 PM
Dude, you have to ask the online editor to give you the shots you need for your effects work. I wonder why it was onlined when the effects work aren't there yet.

My suggestion is to go a few steps back in the whole process. This might be a more time-saving/faster approach than figuring out how to untangle those 3:2 puldowns. The good thing is that you have an edit as reference for the timecodes for your needed shots and all you need to do is to talk to the online editor and ask him to kindly dub you a copy (of your shots) from the online materials.
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