PAL 720p25 Varicam FCP Workflow – Via Firewire
I’m all googled out from having to try and find a solution for this one, and in the absence of anything resembling a definitive answer, I am posting my findings here for the good of all mankind (well, for those of us that don’t work in NTSC at least…)
And a very big shout-out has to go to Luke Caldwell of Digital Production Factory, who put me on the right track for this in the first place, and is always happy to talk some shop 
And also to Carlo Ledesma and the crew of “The Last One”, whose project has been the catalyst for this expedition into Varicam land.
The Varicam is a very sexy camera, but unfortunately if you want to use it with FCP in the 720p25 format off tape, it doesn’t play so nice. Here’s why:
Varicam records 60 frames per second (59.94 in dropframe). Always. It achieves variable frame-rates between 4 and 60fps by ‘flagging’ frames for playback. For example, in the case of 720p25, 25 flagged frames in every 60. If you step through the 60 frames, you’ll see that 25 out of the 60 frames are actually moving frames. Everything that isn’t flagged is a redundant frame (actually a duplicate of the most recent flagged frame). In the case of 24p (23.97fps) or 30p (29.97fps) these redundant frames can be removed during capture (also known as a pulldown).
The image shows the duplicate frames in the source footage before pulldown:
And after:
In the case of 25p, this is only achievable in FCP6 via P2 cards, or a very specific combination of camera (HDX900) and deck (1400A). If you shoot to tape from the HDC27 Varicam, you’re ‘officially’ out of luck.
The Final Cut Studio bundle includes a DVCProHD frame rate converter designed to remove these redundant frames after capture, providing you capture at the full 60 frames per second, and have the deck set to output the frame flags. The downside is that 60fps chews up a lot more space than any other frame rate (double that of it’s closest counterpart, 30fps). If you have the space, though, the FRC allows you to create 23.97, 29.97 or 59.94fps files from your 59.94/60fps source files. Again, sadly, 25fps is not a supported feature here.
Conventional wisdom says that the use of a Kona or BMD card is required for 25p, as they have settings that enable the pulldown during the capture process. A good solution, but going through HD-SDI involves a re-encoding of the video, even if you capture at DVCProHD 720p60. It would be nice to be able to utilise the simplicity of a firewire setup, and keep all the Varicam footage in it’s native codec.
Fortunately, where there’s a will, there’s a way.
By capturing 720p60 via firewire – you have ALL the information. By using the DVCProHD frame rate converter tool in FCP (it’s not installed by default in v5.1, but can be found on the install disk under ‘Extras’, and available from the ‘Tools’ Menu), we can create a pulldown to 24fps.
This takes the 25 flagged frames (when set to “remove duplicate frames”), discards the redundant flagged frames, and plays back what’s left at 24fps. We’re very close, but still a frame off the pace. At this stage I compared my 24fps clip with the original, and the 24fps clip lagged behind, predictably slipping a frame each second.
At this point, we open the new 24fps quicktime movie (with NO redundant frames left in it) in Cinema Tools and conform it to 25fps. This speeds it back up by 1 frame a second, creating a new reference file (or new media if you prefer) that plays very smoothly and also keeps up with the original file! Voila, we have just created a 720p25 clip. Adjust your sequence settings accordingly and you’re cooking.
For off-speed material, again, conventional wisdom indicates that a frame rate converter box is necessary. It’s not a bad idea, but you will lose all timecode references, and it’s an extra piece of kit – we’re trying to keep this simple with a minimum of expense and fuss.
Once again, if we digitise, say, a 15fps clip, brought in via firewire at 59.94/60 (Varicam allows anywhere between 4 and 60 fps) then we run that through the frame-rate converter in FCP once again. Here’s the trick: there are three options in the FRC: 23.97, 29.97, and 59.94. By selecting 59.94 and ticking the ‘remove duplicate frames’ box, the FRC discards the redundant frames, leaving us with only the 15 flagged frames playing back at 60fps – a sped up clip.
You could export this out as a new piece of media @ 25fps which would bring it into line with the rest of your cut. Most workflows suggest working with off-speed material as a separate entity to your 25p footage, so I don’t see this as a big deal.
Also, just like any other film-style workflow, you will have to resync your audio to the clips. This is simply a matter of relaying the audio from your clips against the conformed clips.
The one element here that is sadly lacking is any kind of batch process for the DVCProHD Frame Rate Converter. You need to manually process every clip within FCP. The 24 to 25 conform can be performed in Cinema Tools through a batch, though, so that’s something!
If anyone out there has a solution to the batch processing thing, I’d love to hear it.
Great post man, very rare you get good content now days, keep up the good work…
Thanks, Simon. Hard to find the time for the good stuff!
Hi there,
I read your post and it gave me hope.
We are in the middle of post production of a short film where we shot on a Varicam at 720p at 25FpS (but also 33FpS and 50FpS). The Varicam was set at 60Hz (not 59.94).
We are offline editing on an Avid MC Adrenaline on a 30i time line, since our JD HD1400 deck wouldn’t allow us to ingest via firewire when the camera system frequency was 60hz. So since we were on a tight deadline, we just used SD-SDI to ingest into the AVID.
The media which was shot at 33FpS and 50FpS we have just slowed in the AVID. But as you can imagine we are in waiting for trouble when we have to online in a few days.
So your post sounded very encouraging. Almost too good to be true. Therefore I have a few questions:
1. you wrote that you captured the DVCPRO HD 720p60 footage via firewire. What deck did you use? Any special settings other than the ones that makes sense? And what system frequency did you record on your camera 60hz or 59.94Hz? Somehow I haven’t been able to use the firewire anywhere since our frequency was at 60Hz.
You also wrote that for the under/over-cranked footage just captured via firewire by “Once again, if we digitise, say, a 15fps clip, brought in via firewire at 59.94/60″. How did you do that? Since I must have read over 1000 posts that it is impossible to get anything out of the DVCPRO HD deck at 60Hz. But perhaps there is a technique or a menu setting that has been overlooked?
Because your set up sounds so natural and logic. It is very similar to Ken Stones recipe: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/dvcpro_hd_workflow_balis.html
But the big question is: How did you get the footage from the deck to FCP via firewire…
Best regards,
Thomas
Thomas,
Glad to give you some hope - I just hope I don’t shatter that with what I’m about to say next…
When working with Varicam - particularly with off-speed material, you can more or less forget about timecode. Every way I have seen or read of digitising off-speed material results in tc reset to zero. In fact using the technique above, even your 25fps clips will have a zero tc.
Now, this is a while ago now, but I seem to recall a 59.94/60 playback function on the deck (1400 from memory). Pretty sure the camera shot at 60. And yes, basically it was the settings that seemed to make sense. Basically if FCP is seeing your deck and you are getting a pic through that looks right, you’re on the right track. You do need to make sure that the deck is set to send the framerate flags embedded in the signal, or you won’t be able to post conform your material to 25fps. The key there is that the firewire signal sends EVERY frame down the pipe.
But I am puzzled by your post… you’re cutting on Avid? I really can’t speak for Avid workflow as I have not gone down that path. It does seem equally as perilous if you have no precedent, or haven’t read up or talked to someone that’s done it.
Hi Enzo,
I will try to give this a test.
Though, I have a question about your off sped material.
You wrote: “By selecting 59.94 and ticking the ‘remove duplicate frames’ box, the FRC discards the redundant frames, leaving us with only the 15 flagged frames playing back at 60fps – a sped up clip. You could export this out as a new piece of media @ 25fps which would bring it into line with the rest of your cut”.
How do you export it from 60fps to 25fps via Cinema Tools?
As for your question about us cutting in AVID. This is because we could get access to an AVID. Had we perhaps known all these problems/potential problems before hand, we might have changed our post strategy from the start.
If this works i.e. converting the clips to 720p25 in Final Cut, I think we are going to make the conform and online in FCP.
Then the next hurdle would be to import an Avid EDL into FCP, but as you indicate this might not be worth anything if there is no TC at all. But perhaps there is some kind of way you can convert our 30i EDL to a 25p project.
I will rent the deck tomorrow and carry out testing, and will keep you posted how that turns out.
Thomas
“How do you export it from 60fps to 25fps via Cinema Tools?”
You don’t. It’s a two-step process. You first use the DVCPROHD Frame Rate Converter in FCP to get it to 24 fps, then take that into Cinema Tools to go from 24 to 25 fps. If this has been shot at 25, then it will be normal speed. If it has been shot 60 fps solo-mo, this process will slow it right down etc…
I’ll be interested to hear how you go with the EDL. My instinct tells me that won’t work. Especially if you have been cutting in 30i. Would love to know.
“Had we perhaps known all these problems/potential problems before hand, we might have changed our post strategy from the start.”
If I had a dollar for every time I heard that…
Investigating your post-path before you even shoot is the single most invaluable, time and headache saving thing you could ever do. Most people only get burned once
Good luck with it, mate. Keep us posted.