24 fps EDL issue

Report · Nov 10, 2019

I made an EDL of a 23.976 project for Resolve of a baked file with LOTS of dissolve of varying length. The colorist noted that a lot of dissolve were wrong. So I investigated.

I seems that Premiere is calculating all dissolve in the 30 frame world, not the 24 world the project is in.

If you look at a sequence in Premiere, a dissolve 1 second or longer is shown as 1:00 rather than 24 in my case. When the dissolve is created in the EDL, the value is written as 30. This error grows as the dissolves get longer.

I see no settings in EDL creation that would fix this. Is this just me?

Report · Nov 10, 2019

edl's are an archaic format and are probably (not really sure) incompatible with 23.976 frame rate. are you trying to use the edl to add cuts to the exported file in resolve? That's always been problematic for me. And gotta say that getting a sequence from premiere to resolve can be tricky. There's a version of resolve that's free so you should be able to load the project and do the divide in the edl and quickly by referencing your premiere project adjust the dissolve lengths or doing an xml or aaf export from premiere and loading that in resolve and using that to adjust the dissolve lengths.

I know it would be nice to solve the problem, but sometimes it's just easier to find a workaround.

Just did a quick edl export from premiere and looked at the edl and there doesn't seem to be any indication in the edl of framerate. May be a problem with the way premiere exports the edl as there must be a way to change the frame rate from at least 29.97 ntsc to 25 pal.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

I think you'd be better off not having any effects in what you send to resolve. There are reference movies you can send to resolve to try and get them to 'conform' the stuff but it's problematic whether from avid or PPro.. and takes time... best to just send simple edit via EDL ( or XML ) or whatever... and then get it back and start to do your edit from there...( effects, etc. ). Best thing is really to just do stuff in resolve and stay there. Then share your files ( with colorist ) and conform in the same program.

Report · Nov 11, 2019

Ok, here is my update after getting back to work and refreshing my memory and doing some tests.

The problem is specific to this sequence!! And it sticks with this sequence no matter what I do - Duplicate it, edit it into a clean, empty sequence, copy paste, import to new project. Nothing fixes it. As I noted above, if I create a simple two shot sequence with a dissolve in this project, the EDL will be correct. It is just this cursed sequence.

I can change the sequence to 29.97 and the dissolves are recalculated correctly to reflect the real time of the dissolve ( a 24 frame dissolve becomes 30). If I make an EDL from this modified sequence, the EDL is correct. If I change the sequence back to 23.976, the dissolves in the sequence are back to what they were and the EDL is wrong again.

My suspicion is that it is related to still frames. There are lots in this show and they are being manipulated in Premiere rather than in After Effects with real media being created. Our experience is that a show of this nature will never translate via XML for Resolve accurately. The still duration's get messed and the XML version of the show does not sync with the reference.

When I look at the EDL that has been created, I see really odd things such as some still frame events are being tagged as Drop Frame. Inside Premiere, its does not seem as if still frames are even assigned frame rates. So why in the EDL?

End of story - we hand fixed all the dissolves in the show and are moving on. I do not know if we learned anything.

Jef

Report · Nov 11, 2019

Maybe it leads towards creating a still of the freeze frame using the Export Frame button you can add to the program (and source) monitor which will immediatly import it into the project and you can drop it at your playhead? I usually do this as I don't like messing with the frame holds if I don't have to.

Report · Nov 12, 2019

The still frames I noted were JPEGs and TIFFs not freeze frames from moving image clips.

Jef

Report · Nov 12, 2019

Oh, got it, 'real media', sorry I missed that. Glad you've resolved to Resolve.

🙂