Ran into this mini tutorial:
When working with 23.976p footage, I know that many capture cards will add 3:2 pulldown when laying video off to tape, but what if you don't want to go to tape? What if you just want a 29.97 file, but have a 23.976 video? I ran into this issue when I began submitting video to DG FastChannel. They require 29.97 MPEG-2 files.
First I tried taking the finished 23.976 sequence and nesting it in a 29.97 sequence. This appears to work OK at first, but on closer inspection FCP uses the inferior 2:2:2:4 pulldown pattern to turn 23.976fps into 29.97fps. This looks pretty bad with any amount of motion going on in the video. There is no way to get FCP to change it's pulldown pattern when rendering files.
After much research into the issue and trial-and-error, I finally came up with a solution using Compressor. I thought I'd post it here to hopefully save others from bashing their head against the wall looking for a solution short of round-tripping to tape and back. Here you go!
1. In FCP, select your sequence then choose FILE > SEND TO > COMPRESSOR. Or you can export your sequence to a video or reference video then open that in Compressor.
2. In Compressor, select your video then right click and choose NEW TARGET WITH SETTING > APPLE > FORMATS > QUICKTIME > APPLE PRORES 422 (HQ). Or pick whatever codec you like to work with.
3. Click on that newly created compression setting to open it in the Inspector window. Click the Encoder tab. Click the Video: (SettingsâŠ) button. Make the frame rate 29.97. Check the interlaced box. Set it's drop down menu to Bottom field first. Click OK.
4. Click the Frame Controls tab. Set Frame Controls to On. Set Output Fields to Bottom first. Leave Deinterlace on Fast. Leave Adaptive Details checked. Leave Rate Conversion set to Fast. Leave the Set Duration to: on 100% and make sure it's radio button is selected and NOT the "so source frames play at 29.97 fps" button.
5. Make changes to the Filters or Geometry sections as needed. Those settings listed above are the ones critical to getting the proper 3:2 pulldown added.
6. Submit the compression, then bring the resulting video back into Final Cut Pro. Place it in a 29.97 timeline and make sure you watch it on an NTSC monitor to verify that it looks good. If you step through it frame-by-frame you should see the familiar pattern of 2 split/interlaced frames followed by 3 whole frames. This is a very important step. I tried many solutions that looked OK playing back on the computer monitor, but looked terrible on the NTSC monitor.
Yay! Hopefully you have successfully added the 3:2 pulldown and now you can compress it for DGFastChannel or do whatever else with it you need to do.
Do you think this is the workflow?