18 fps breaks transition previewing, precision editor, and keywords

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Level 2

171 points

18 fps breaks transition previewing, precision editor, and keywords

Greetings,

I'm working on a Super 8 movie project. My films were scanned at 18 fps. When I imported them into iMovie '11 I had no choice but to convert them to another speed -- 24 fps in this case. OK. Most things work fine, but there are a few exceptions.

Keywords: Easy to add, difficult to remove. Never get the checkmarks. Sometimes have to use Cmd-Z to remove they keywords. But it all works fine as long as I have a project whose frame rate is the same as the raw footage, which I can't do with Super 8 transfers. OK, I can live without keywords.

Transition previews: Again, this is only a problem when there is a frame mismatch between the project footage and the raw footage. But with my Super 8 transfers I have no choice: The raw footage is at 18fps while iMovie does only 24 or 30 fps. I chose 24 fps.

One problem is using the transition preview function in the transition Inspector. (Just to be clear, I hover over the little transition thingie in the Project Browser to select it, click the gear, then click Transition Adjustments on the drop-down menu. Then I click the Transitions thing and that opens a palette of transitions. I skim over the various transitions to preview them.) Depending on the transition (assume were doing clip A to clip B), clip A shows up fine but, depending on which transition you choose, part or all of clip B is the wrong footage from somewhere else in the project. (WT...?)

Precision editor: Skimming the bottom row shows a completely different part of the footage than it should! Playback on the middle line works fine, though. Footage on the top strip is the same as on the middle strip when the playhead is to the left of the transition. This should also be the case with the bottom strip and the middle strip when the playhead is to the right of the transition, but the bottom strip shows a completely different footage instead.

Also, the transition playback is a little jerky. Fortunately, all is well with normal playback and exported footage.

OK. I'm on iMovie 9.0.4. I think this is the latest version I can use with OS X version 10.6.8. I saw a post with iMovie 9.0.7 mentioned, but that only works for Lion. OK, so my question is, will these bugs be fixed if I upgrade to Lion and the most current version of iMovie? Or, am I doing something wrong?

Thanks.

AEF

20, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 5, 2012 2:44 PM

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Answer 1

betaneptune Author

Level 2

171 points

Aug 12, 2012 6:23 PM in response to betaneptune

CORRECTION: Sorry, the mismatch of frame rates is not responsible for the bottom strip of the Precision Editor (PE) from showing the wrong footage. I did a test where some Super 8 18-fps footage placed into iMovie 24 fps worked fine. But most cases still exhibit the problem. So I don't know what's causing it.

I'm reasonably sure that frame-rate mismatching is the cause of the keywords problem. I took some test footage with the Mac's camera and that's at 15 fps. If I work with that footage in a 30 fps project, all works well. If I work in a 24 fps project, I never get the checkmarks when marking footage, but I am able to use Remove All to remove all the keyword marking strips. But when I work with my Super 8 footage, 18 fps original in 24 fps projects, it's even worse. I can't remove the keywords except via Cmd-Z. Acutally, many moons ago I think I did find a way, but it was difficult and took much experimentation, and thus much time. Come to think of it, the "many moons ago" was almost certainly a time when I had an eariler verion of iMovie. Other than this, my tests yield consistent results -- so far ((!))

Great program, except for the annoying bugs. I like the design. I really like the "extendo buttons", as David Pogue and Aaron MIller's book iMovie '09 calls them (Apple term: Fine Tuning buttons). And now that I'm adding a few transitions to my VFT movie, I'd really like the PE to work. Bummer.

As for stuttering transitions, I have more experimentation to do.

Sorry for the goof about the PE.

AEF

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Answer 2

betaneptune Author

Level 2

171 points

Nov 18, 2013 5:45 PM in response to betaneptune

The frame rate mismatch is one of the most annoying things in moviemaking. It makes things stutter. You can even see it in TV shows, like "Star Trek TOS" (watch the close-up of the ship moving from left to right above the planet in the opening title sequence), and the stars and planets background in the "Ren & Stimpy" episode "Space Madness." Astonishingly, the same exact moving background doesn't stutter in the "Black Hole" episode. Say what? On Star Trek TOS from iTunes the first season is 24 fps. The second and third seasons are 30 fps. Since all were shot on film at 24 fps, you get smoother motion in the first season. You can even see the difference! On my movie Visuals for Timesteps, shot in Super 8 at 18 fps, converting it to 30 fps looks much better than 24 fps, but it looks better still at 18 fps, which is the frame rate iMovie must be using in its viewer. You can really see the difference with certain scenes.

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