PROJECT FRAMERATE

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

A SHORT DONE AT MY STUDIO WERE SHOT AT THE CORRECT FRAMERATE, BUT AT WRONG PROJECT FRAMERATE.

UNFORTUNATELY THIS METADATA TAG CAN NOT BE CHANGED. I HAVE A REALLY HARD TIME UNDERSTANDING WHY RED DOES NOT ALLOW PEOPLE TO CORRECT A SIMPLE USER ERROR LIKE THIS. PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES. ESPECIALLY IN SHORT FILMS. IT'S THE LEARNING GROUND.

GOOGELING ON THE NET I FIND A LOT OF SIMILAR CASES.

WHY RED, WON'T YOU ALLOW USERS TO CHANGE THE PROJECT FRAMERATE ON OUR .R3D's?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

So was this shot at 24 over 25?

 

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

They shot it with a project setting of 23.976, the audio was recorded at 25 fps on an external recorder.

 

[Victor Lazaro]

You can still conform the footage I. Your NLE, no?

 

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

Sure, they run it through Final Cut X and sync the audio there. I wanted them to test the workflow of syncing in RedCine and do an offline-edit based on ProRes Proxies that could be made on our render farm. But it seems like will need to go for a more modern/indie workflow...

 

[Gunleik Groven]

OK, but that's not too bad. As long as you stay at projectframerate for edit, retiming the audio shouldn't be a big deal, and retiming the images to 25 to fit the audio, sounds like a bad plan...

I'd do the project at 23.98, and finnish, and then retime master to 24 for DCP and 25 for DVD/Broadcast. The pitch shift is controllable within these parameters and audio is kinda more flexible than retiming the imagery and losing conform option...

Just thinking out loud...

 

[Andy George]

i just shot a short film at 23.97 framerate but the camera was set to 30fps project frame rate so all my footage is sped up sad face

 

[Ian Laurie]

This happens. Unfortunately Red i believe has the technical limitation of only being able to give you preciesly what your settings dictate. Kinda standard with all cameras. Proper training, or proper supervision can overcome this. It should be insisted on. I am sorry to hear your struggle, but use it to teach them.

 

[CK Olsen]

umm... unless I am misunderstanding your issue, if all your footage appears sped up, just slow it back down and play it at 23.976 fps as intended.
This is easily tweaked by reinterpreting the footage at the correct playback rate within your edit program.
(If it was shot at 30fps, then played back at 30fps, the footage would not appear sped up.)
-CK

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Incorrectly set project frame rate happens quite a lot.... I would have already made a simple little command line tool that could fix it on individual clips or entire mags, but they haven't given us the ability within the SDK yet to rewrite metatada. Only to change a few simple things when writing out trimmed clips. This one is a big one that has been requested by many of us on many occasions.

Sure, proper adult supervision of camera operation can really help with this, but the fact still remains that mistakes happen.

Not all NLE softwares out there simply allow for playback at your desired rate. Some of them want to go of the project or marked rate on the clip and then want to do funky things like interpolation when you alter the playback speed. There are plenty of ways to make this work and it really isn't a huge issue in the grand scheme of things. But RED is about options and this is one option I think is overdue. That's just my thinking on it...

 

[Bobby Farokhzad]

Jon, there is no camera system that I know of to date that allows you to change a frame rate after it was shot. A frame rate is simple physics just like a shutter speed or a T stop of a lens, unlike white balance or ISO which are metadata. Your issue is a bit of an editing nightmare but it is possible to confirm the audio to the video even though they were captured at different frame rates. To render audio takes much less time than video so I would confirm the audio to the video frame rate.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Thing is though, Bobby, that's not really the problem here. The clip was shot at 25fps and he wants it to be recognized as and played back at 25fps. Because of an improper project setting on the camera, the clips are marked as 23.976fps. When you load it into RC-X or any other NLE or other software, it's going to assume it's a 23.976 clip. In Premiere or Avid, you can simply change the playback rates to 25fps for the affected clips and turn off any interpolation and you're fine. It's just a hassle in terms of it being an extra step and making sure everyone in the post chain is on the same page. Some NLEs screw with you and don't let you simply change the playback rate without retiming and interpolation of some sort. It can also be a real problem when trying to round-trip through coloring and finishing software because, depending on software and workflow, changing the clip frame rate may not transfer through properly as retiming and other options often don't carry through in common EDL and XML formats. In most workflows this is going to require transcoding of the footage to fix it, when that should not be necessary. All due to an improper number in the metadata -- it's the number that needs to be changed.

 

[jimhare]

If you make Quicktimes you can use Cinema Tools to reconform and it will forever be right. Will only bite you if you wanted to go back to the R3Ds at the end.