Delivering in 29.97, working with 23.976 footage

[DanRourke]

Hi.  I have seen countless posts on forums and on Google regarding mixing framerates in Premiere Pro which is really handy, but no one seems to have the same scenario that I have - or at least I have not found it.  I have to deliver a series to a broadcaster and it is being shot in 23.976.  I need to deliver in 29.97.  At first I was going to cut in 23.976 and do the math so that my commercial breaks and overall length will be correct once converted to 29.97 in the online phase.  But I noticed that if you cut 23.976 footage in a 29.97 timeline, it seems to convert the footage correctly, adding pulldown.  I took 00:07:29:00 of a short promo that I did in 23.976 from one sequence and copied into a new 29.97 sequence.  The duration changed to 00:07:29:14, telling my that the pulldown was added.

Is this the correct way of working with 23.976 footage to deliver in 29.97 for broadcast?

I am using Premiere Pro CC 2015.

Dan

[Jerry MacKay]

I'm having a huge problem getting a commercial to play properly on Spectrum (formerly Time Warner). I had created an HD spot in After Effects at 23.976 (we shot the footage that way). I rendered it at 23.976, then brought it into Premiere. In Premiere, I put that into a 29.97 timeline, where it appeared to add pulldown correctly. I then exported with Media Encoder into an interlaced format, upper field first. The file looked bad on my progressive computer monitor, which is what i expected, but it looked fine when played to my broadcast monitor.

I submitted the spot to Time Warner, and the spot played back poorly. It looked as if it thought it was progressive...it looked just like it did on my progressive computer monitor.

Am I leaving a checkbox unchecked somewhere?

[Jerry MacKay]

I should add that I just did a test in After Effects, where I import the 23.976 spot I created, and convert it in After Effects to 29.97 with pulldown added. When I bring that into Premiere and export it with Media Encoder, the final file looks exactly the same as the original one I made. So I don't know what else I can do to make it work with Spectrum.

[Warren Heaton]

Hmmm... if you simply drop p23.976 footage into an i29.97 Sequence, you're not getting true 3-2 pulldown.

You'd want to use After Effects to conform p23.976 to i29.97 so that you can control the Field Rendering Order and the 3:2 Pulldown Cadence.  This can be done to source footage or to an edited master.  For episodic television, applying it to source footage could be effective.  For theatrical, you'd likely do it to the edited master when ready to create the home video version.