Q: Why is my video shorter after import, and how can I fix it?

Thanks for the reply, Shane!

The film that's 1:19:16,01 long was sent to us by a distributor. We're preparing a subtitled copy. I don't know what program they used to make it, though I would add that it shows up at that length in QT7, QTX, and VLC.  And the "shortening" in Final Cut and Adobe Premiere seems to be happening for ALL 23.98fps files, including those I create myself as a test.

For instance, in the screencaps above, I played around with Tears of Steel as an experience. The source file was 24fps. Using this source, I made a 23.98 fps version in Premiere Pro. QT recognizes that it's the same length. But when I import into FCP (or even back into Premiere) it loses a second.

As an FYI, here's a forum thread with a user experiencing the same problem years ago...

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1151482

...but the thread trails off without a solution.

I originally posted this on the FCP X board, but they directed me here. They write: "This is a frame count problem. Files that are in standard 23.98 or 29.97 should use drop frame count, but most don't, so there is a discrepancy between the frame count and actual time."

Let me know if you have any idea how I can fix this. The goal is simply to drag and drop the file into Final Cut and have it show up as the same length as it does in all the video players I've tried.

Thanks for the ponder. : - )

Worst case, when they send us a 23.98 source file, we can just convert it to a flat 24 fps, and then it will be in sync with the subtitle track we're burning in. (Although, it'll have an extra frame every ~50 seconds, which we could live with).

I'm more perplexed why the length would show up as the same, regardless of the framerate, in video players but not editors. Like the two versions of Tears of Steel in the picture above were made from the same source and nothing was trimmed out...they should be exactly the same length, or close to it

Hmm...that might be it, but I'd be surprised. They sent us a subtitle file, and we used a subtitle editing program to toss their .srt and .890 files into FCP.

We can control what timescale the subtitle track uses, and whether we send it to FCP as 24fps or 23.98fps, it's still out of sync with the video track. That is, the timing in the .srt (as opened in TextEdit) is preserved in Final Cut, and the SRT's timecode corresponds to the right timecode in QuickTime, but that's not where that line of dialogue ends up being after we put it into Final Cut.

P.S.

Are you certain there's no frames added? As a test, I opened the two Tears of Steel samples in Handbrake, and the 23.98fps sample and the 24fps sample are showing a different number of frames (17600 and 17617 respectively) for the same length. Is Handbrake off?