Best program for pull-down?

[Rolle_B]

Hello all!

What program is best for making a pull-down in speed on "frame by frame" grabbed Super-8?

For the moment I'm using the built in step-down in DodCap, but every third frame is always blurry then.

Any better suggestions, please... Thank you.

[Patrick]

I can't answer this but surely there's someone knowledgeable who can.

[johnnhud]

I would also like to know this. I am just doing a speed change in FCP and it results in a lot of hybrid frames that really bother me.

[Evan Kubota]

Cinema Tools (part of the Final Cut Studio package)

[digvid]

In terms of doing the pulldown in Dodcap/CineCap, it almost sounds like you are doing an interlaced pulldown when what you want is a whole-frame pulldown.

If you use an "industry standard" pulldown scheme for converting 16 or 18 fps film to PAL speeds, then about every third frame will in fact be "blurry" in that it will be an interlaced frame containing a field from two different film frames. However, when displayed on a television set, this should not look blurry (unless of course your source capture file contained blurry frames).

However, if all you want to do is display the finished product on a computer monitor, you can set Dodcap/CineCap to do a "whole frame" pulldown where no interlacing occurs. The final product should then look sharp both on the computer monitor and on television.

If you use another program to do the pulldown, chances are that you will end up with the same thing you got from Dodcap!

Also...upgrades are free, so you can always download CineCap Standard 1.40 (even if you originally purchased Dodcap) and try the pulldown with that. If you do not like the default pulldown patterns, CineCap 1.40 has a dialog box that will guide you through creating a custom pattern that is more to your liking.

Jeff Dodson

[Taliesin]

Jeff

Thanks for all the hard work improving an already great program.

Taliesin

[Justin Lovell]

Ditto that, great work Jeff!

[Rolle_B]

Thank you for these suggestions!

[VideoFred]

The best is the Cinecap interlaced pulldown method, and is is very very fast, too.

For those who do not like the hybrid frames, there's only one option left: motion estimation. There are two plugins available for Avisynth: MVFlowFPS and MotionProtectedFPS. Both are analysing motion and both are creating new, intermediate frames.

The Avisynth result is very much like Motion Perfect, but you have better control with Avisynth, and it is free. De plugin writers are constant improving the motion analyse code, and soon it will be better than Motion Perfect.

I have made this slomo clip with Avisynth:
It's a recent Fuji clip from Thomas, original 18fps.
I changed play speed to 6fps, then to 25fps for the final result.

Of cource one can convert 16-25 or 18-25 or 18-30 or whatever with these plugins....

DivX required, just click on the link. It's a fast download.
http://users.telenet.be/ho-slotcars/Tho ... mo_001.avi

As you can see, the software created complete new frames.
I use this method all the time, it's great for smooth panning/zooming.
It works fine on 90% of the cases, but sometimes it gives artefacts.
On very fast moving objects etc.

Fred.