Best way to convert a 30fps footage to 24fps footage in Premiere Pro / DaVinci Resolve

Hi gents,

I am trying to find the best way to "save" a 29.97fps footage, converting it to a 23.976fps footage in Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve.

For now what I applied is the below:

*1/48s (or 1/50) shutter speed

*Interpret footage to 23.976fps

*Posterize Time Effect to 24fps (closest I could get to 23.976fps)

*Change speed of the interpreted footage to 29.97/23.976 = 125% (as the interpreted footage will play it at 80% speed)

*Frame Blending = Optical Flow

Anything else I should do to make it "look" as close as possible as if I natively filmed at 23.976fps to begin with? Would accelerating the footage that way with optical flow help with the dropped frames/jitter of the footage?

Thank you!

jdominh wrote:

Anything else I should do to make it "look" as close as possible as if I natively filmed at 23.976fps to begin with? Would accelerating the footage that way with optical flow help with the dropped frames/jitter of the footage?

In Resolve, all you need to do is to create a 24fps timeline, drop your 29.97fps footage into it, and then use the retiming options in the Inspector Panel (on the Edit Page) to choose whether or how you want any frame interpolation to be done.

Using a "Retime Process" of "Optical Flow" (in the Retime and Scaling section of the Inspector Panel) turns on frame interpolation, where Resolve will attempt to create frames to "fill in" the gaps in cadence between the two frame rates.

You can then control how the interpolation is done this by choosing one of the "Motion Estimation" options. "Enhanced Better" generally does a decent job, but there are certain patterns that can confuse it and create rather wonky results - in particular I've found scenes with repeating linear features (picket fences, ladder rungs) whose inter-frame movement is close to their spacing can look pretty weird.

If you have the paid-for Studio version you can use "Speed Warp", which seems to solve that problem very well and generally gives me quite good results. It is CPU-intensive, though, and will make it pretty much impossible to scrub the footage. And it will take quite a long time to render compared to non-interpolated footage. I typically set the clip to "Enhanced Better" while editing and then switch it to "Speed Warp" when I'm ready to render.

Can you apply a 3:2 Pull Down to the other footage to bring it up to 29.97 FPS?

That should look better than dropping frames with Reverse Telecine to convert 29.97 FPS down to 23.976 PFS.

Thank you but i believe this option makes the footage "look" like it was shot in higher frame rate ie too smooth. This is the option i use for slow mo indeed though

Gary3000 wrote:

If you select frame blending, Premiere will combine frames,varying opacity, to more closely match the 24fps frame rate.

Resolve has the option to do frame blending as well, but I avoid it.  In these days of the audience being able to freeze-frame or play in slow motion I find interpolated frames to be preferable.  I can't speak for the current versions of Premiere Pro, but the "Speed Warp" interpolation method in Resolve does a pretty good job in almost anything I've thrown at it.