We are currently restoring the media to a bunch of old Avid projects from the early 2000's. These are large feature film projcts with hundreds of tapes each - mostly 24p NTSC and 23.976p NTSC based projects. The projects were backed up, the media was not.

We are using an Avid 2024.2 system with Blackmagic IO and J3 Betacam deck via SDI. Most project have seperate video and audio and those have gone very smoothly. However one particular project is setup as follows with both the video and audio on the dailies tape:

Film Composer v7.20
Project is 24fps NTSC
Picture was transfered to BetaSP with 2:3 pulldown
Audio was also sunk onto BetaSP.
Original Audio TC rate is 30fps.
Picture and Audio were then captured together from BetaSP.

Now these types of projects were never my strong suit back in the day, I still get a sore brain just thinking about pulldown etc, but anyway this is what I understand is going on...

In the 24p NTSC project, V1 and A1 were captured together from the BetaSP tape with Picture Transfer Rate set to 'With 2:3 Pulldown' in the Film Settings Dialog Box. However there is a second option that needed to be set in the capture tool. The Pulldown Switch needed to be set to 'On (0.99)' in order for the audio to be correctly captured and kept in sync with the video now running at 24fps.

It's this setting that I think we are having an issue with. In the currect capture tool of modern Avid this does not appear. Attached is how this used to look (taken from an old Film Composer manual).

So... is there a clever way to get around this and capture an SD NTSC BetaSP tape with both audio and video into an NTSC 24p project accounting for the pulldown to both? Currerntly the Avid will not allow you to select the audio. Is taking the audio embedded over the SDI feed adding to the issue? Or is this SD film project workflow just so old and unsupported that we need to get more creative?

One consideration was to convert to project to 23.976, but initial tests didn't work so well there either. If audio was selected in the capture tool, the resulting capture would be empty / corrupt. Selecting just video worked obviously.

Hmmm. Thanks all.

Did that particular functionality not require we set the hardware to pulldown mode? Not sure these workflows are supported with non-Avid I/O.

Job ter Burg:

Did that particular functionality not require we set the hardware to pulldown mode? Not sure these workflows are supported with non-Avid I/O.

I seem to remember this was certainly the case when outputting to tape. This was a Symphony-only option and also required the Avid Hardware (Nitris BOB). It was called Universal Mastering and required a tape deck that could be switched to the correct standard, as well as having the necessary Ref/Black & Burst generator to keep it all in sync.

As far as inputting is concerned, I'm not sure you needed the hardware.

Looking through some old Avid manuals, I came across this...

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(Media Composer | Symphony Option) Converting a 24p NTSC Sequence to 1080p/23.976
The most efficient offline format for a project that needs to be delivered as 1080p/23.976 is
23.976p (NTSC). In some cases, however, you might need to edit the offline sequence at 24 fps
— for example, if the offline system does not support 23.976p NTSC projects. To convert a 24p
NTSC sequence to 1080p/23.976p, you need to take an intermediate step and first convert it to
23.976p NTSC.

Several limitations apply to this conversion:
• Audio captured without pulldown (60 Hz) needs to be recaptured with pulldown (NTSC
reference at 59.94 Hz).
• Media for the new 23.976p sequences and clips is offline. Sequences and clips cannot be
linked to the original 24p media.
• You need to batch capture and import media. In most cases, you would do this after
converting the sequence to 1080p/23.976.
The last two limitations also apply to other sequence conversions that create new sequences.

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The text continues with detailed explanations of how to do this.

This comes from the Avid Media Composer User Guide v8.3

SD is a different beast, as there was no 24.000fps video in SD.
This concerns 24.000fps film transferred to SD video at 23.976 with 3:2 pulldown added. Capture that into a 24fps project in Media Composer, which would then ingest at 29.97, remove pulldown, and flag as 24fps for playback (so faster playback speed than ingest speed). When bringing in sound separately, you would ingest as-is at 48k and it would then sync up to the picture (which has been slowed down in TK and speeded back up to 24.000 in MC). For TK synced sound (sound running at a slower speed during TK, matching the slowdown applied to picture), this means the I/O hardware needed to capture the audio at a sample rate of 47952, while stamping it as 48000, thereby making playback speed faster than ingest speed.

Spot on explanation as always Job, thank you.

This is a right pain, we came so close but this has thrown a real spanner in the works. The non Avid IO interface is most likely whats killed this option long ago. Would need Michael Phillips to confirm. expect, but he's long moved onto his own projects.

Looking into how to export the rushes bins as ALE's and bring into a 23.967p NTSC project. The thinking being that could then capture with just the 2:3 picture pulldown as audio rate on tape would be correct for 23.976fps playback. 

Any way you can capture with a Nitris DX or even an old Mojo? On an older system, I mean?

Good idea. Yes I'm pretty sure we could get a system with Nitris DX hardware. Will get onto rental company...