Big Problem: 2 frames interlaced, no 3:2..!!!

Let me clarify. This is 29.97 fps 601 video coming from a Digibeta to FCP via a Kona 3 and a Phillips router. The tape is a film transfer. The pulldown is in the footage added by the tele-cine. FCP will not see the frames with the pulldown. Why would I need to remove the pulldown, I am digitizing at 29.97 and outputting at 29.97?

I'm not certain the pulldown frames are the interlaced frames but it sure sounds like it.

Exactly, why wouldn't we see the frames?

We can't see the duplicated pull-down frames, we see 2 frames (not repeated) with the wrong fields together, then normal frames. We see this on the digitized clips and exports. Our house Avid sees the pulldown frames as they should be on tape, what is the difference might be the question? Or, is this a house sync delay issue or problem with our VTR?

Also when slowly jogging though the digibeta, we don't seem to see the proper pulldown either, but the Avid can digitize and see the pulldown. Any thoughts?

Yes and helpful. What I must be further misunderstanding is why our renders from Color frame blend these fields together and yield a shadow image to areas of motion.

I feel like our system is not interpreting the field dominance correctly on some frames. Our quicktime exports look very interlaced on areas of motion while playing, like the dominance is inverted. On 29.97 fps video, all fields are interlaced and one field is different from the other yes? So why do I only see the zipper effect on two frames?

Our footage is being rejected by DG systems, only happens on this particular footage.

Sorry if this is basic, its been a long week.

Thanks to Patrick for trying to solve this issue, but I'm not sure if I am explaining our problem correctly. I have worked with lots of film transfer footage on FCP in other facilities and never seen this issue. If anyone else has a good idea of what I am describing and has any helpful ideas, my thanks in advance.

Here is a basic question to start with.... If our footage is 29.97, from Digital Betacam, digitized at 29.97, and it has 3:2 pulldown, when I de-interlaced the footage would I not see 2 repeated frames of video?

If the answer is yes then that might reveal our problem because we do not see this at all.

Our Kona 3 adds the pulldown back automatically if we layback to tape, which we are not doing. Having tested the DG delivery workflow, I can send a 23.98 QT file to Episode using the DG template and it delivers a 29.97 file. Nice. Also Cinema tools will add pulldown I believe.

But... if the pulldown interlaced frames are "normal" in FCP, and they continue to show up in the exported QT file and that is the cause for DG's rejection... does that mean that anything we finish in FCP has to be de-interlaced and/or have pulldown removed and finished 23.98? I'm all for that frame rate. I just know I have finished things (to tape) shot 24 fps on film and not seen these issues in a 29.97 environment before in FCP.

I can see this happening if the field dominance is inverted or set to none where is should be lower. Doesn't having all the same field dominance's set the same do the same thing as the Avid does when it views only 1 field? Isn't it about interpreting field order, like you do in Shake or AE?

Thanks for the link to the Color info, we had resized shots prior to Color in Shake, not FCP but I assume it's causing the same issues. I never would have imagined that all these problems would exist between these bundled software packages. It would be great to have these things talking to each other properly without knowing the secret handshakes.

One last thing... per my earlier simplified question... If we have pulldown and I de-interlace the shot, instead of seeing the interlaced pulldown frames, wouldn't I see two duplicated "frames" as I step through?

First off, I appreciate the helpful comments to date. I believe that I have come to the solution by information in the FCP manual, but I wonder who out there is working this way and how this impacts other simple FCP workflows. Responses are welcome.

Volume IV-170: "The telecine process adds duplicate video fields to make 24 fps film footage fit within 29.97 fps video. The film–to–NTSC video case is particularly complex: the film is slowed from 24 to 23.98 fps during the telecine process to match the discrepancy between 30 and 29.97 fps. Simultaneously, film frames are repeated in a 3:2 pattern, resulting in duplicate video fields. *Once your video footage is captured to disk, you need perform a reverse telecine operation to remove the 3:2 pull-down. You can perform the reverse telecine operation on media by choosing Tools > Cinema Tools Reverse Telecine."*

+FYI... In Avid it is not necessary to remove 3:2 pull-down just to edit, certainly if you were doing opticals, but not as standard workflow.+

Appendix C, p. 419: "If you edit 3:2 pull-down footage without removing the pull-down first, you need to be particularly careful to match the five-frame pull-down cadence at every edit. Edits with
broken cadence, such as a repeating or out-of-order frame (for example, A, B, A, B, C, D) can confuse reverse telecine operations. *In general, you should avoid editing 29.97 fps pull-down footage. Instead, remove the pull-down of your footage first, edit at 23.98 fps, then reinsert pull-down during output."*

Question: Is this the standard workflow for most people out there? Do you always remove 3:2 pulldown with Cinema Tools first and edit at 23.98?

Questions: What about digitizing pre-edited masters, that maybe came from other edit systems like Avid where you don't need to remove pull-down. In order to digitize a master and export a file from it, if that tape has pull-down footage within it, do you need to remove pulldown just to have it export properly? And if this master is mixed with pulldown and non pulldown footage?

Question: If I am recapturing clips from a project already edited in Avid @ 29.97 with out removing pulldown, how do I convert that into a timeline I can capture to in FCP with pulldown removed?