Conform 23.976FPS to 25FPS and Pitch Down Audio?

[olivac44]

I'm working on this show that was shot in 23.976. It was mixed in Pro Tools in a 23.976 time based project and bounced out as such. Everything is great and lines up perfectly. Great job guys!

However, this show has found a network overseas. This is great news, but it means it needs to be conformed to 25fps. So this was our approach to conform the project:

1. Render out a 23.976 master with the 23.976 mix.

2. Import that master into a new project in Premiere Pro and interpret the master as 25fps.

3. Place this interpreted master in a 25fps sequence. Disregard the audio that comes with it.

4. Re-import the original 23.976 mix and place it in the 25fps sequence.

5. Speed up the audio 4% to match the duration of the master (we also tried rate stretching).

6. At this point, the audio is in sync but it's higher pitch. So we decide to pitch down using the Pitch Shifter effect. We decide to pitch shift down 0.724 semi-tones, or 73 cents.

The mix is close to the original, but the voice of the talent is not correct. It sounds like there's four of him. Not only this, but it's panning his voice for no reason. There is no pan in the original mix. We tried this effect both in Premiere and Audition. Next, we tried using the Stretch and Pitch effect, which worked better. It's still not correct but it's much better than the Pitch Effect.

If I can point to number 3 above, again, we disregarded the audio that we interpreted with the master because with the effect it sounded worse than any of the other options.

Someone has to have gone from 23.976 to 25fps before. Will the audio never be correct in this regard? Is there a way for us to do this ourselves, without having to go back to the post-house that mixed it? Or perhaps our approach to conforming is not correct?

[R Neil Haugen]

Have you tried duplicating the sequence, then in Sequence settings, changing the frame-rate to 25fps? I've changed 23.976 to 29.97, 24fps to 29.97, and 29.97 to 23.976 this way, and it's worked fine. No issues with audio changes. Do a short test?

Neil

[olivac44]

Thanks for the response, Neil!

This may work. I hadn't thought about it. I just tested this with a different video and exported the same two small sections. The audio is fine, but the video had some issues.

The 24fps plays fine, as usual. The 25fps has a bit of jumpiness to it, or hiccup on movement. It's every x amount of frames. There's definitely a rhythm to it. I also tried a third render with frame blending, which smoothes it out but adds some motion blur to it.

Have you had this issue?

[chrisw44157881]

try pixel blending for frame blending or just do your original plan and use audition to change the audio speed with pitch protection. its 100x better quality audio.

[excited_Genie16B8]

Hollywood movies most often ramp up the frame rate by 4% and just accept the very slight pitch modification.

[olivac44]

I'm not sure the creator of the show will accept the pitch modification. While it is slightly faster, I think it's okay but we'll see tomorrow morning.