UPDATE: Here is my latest workflow

A tutorial using Final Cut Studio 2 on how to convert footage shot in 30p to perfect 24p…Used in the short Sofia’s Peoplehttp://philipbloom.co.uk/films/35mm-films/sofias-people-canon-5d-mk2/ Thanks to Denver Riddle for his original workflow post on cinema5d.com

I don’t have any workflow ideas for non final cut I am afraid. I am sure someone can point you in the right direction.

There are many quicker ways of converting footage to 24p but this by far and away the most impressive for the best looking end results.

Alter these settings to 25p if you want PAL, but for NTSC keep at 23.98. If you are lucky enough to just want film out then alter to dead on 24p. Makes your head spin all this!

Here is the video tutorial below. Please do check out the resulting new 24p version of “Sofia’s People” here.

This really is the most impressive results I have had from converting the footage, it took it’s time to do but I believe the effort is worth it! This is not for complete novices, you need to understand what each piece of software does to really understand.

Here is the original post from Denver Riddle:

1. Cut video in 30 fps timeline

2. Create copy of finished edit so you’ll have two clips, one to convert to 24p and one to preserve audio.

2. Open Cinema Tool (part of Final Cut Studio), File, “Open Clip”, choose “Conform”, specify “23.98” to conform to.

Explanation: This keeps the same number of frames in the clip, it only changes the timebase from 30fps to 24fps, essentially creates overcranked footage by 6 frames, (desirable on some shots). As a result this makes the clip longer and slows the audio down which is undesirable where audio is important. At this point you’ve already created a copy of the original clip therefore preserving the original audio which we’ll relink later in Final Cut.

3. Now open the inspector window so we can do some tweaking. Under “Frame Controls” tab, click the button to the right of “Frame Controls:” to enable this feature. Once enabled, select “On” for “Frame Controls:” Underneath the “Retiming Control” section is where we’ll make changes. For “Set Duration to:” click the radio button where it will allow us to put in a duration. NOW THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART, OPEN THE COPY OF THE CLIP WE CREATED THAT STILL HAS THE 30 FPS TIMEBASE AND PUT IT INTO THE FINAL CUT PRO TIMELINE, DELETE THE VIDEO TRACK AND ENSURE THE TIMEBASE OF THE SEQUENCE IS SET TO 23.98, GO TO THE END OF THE AUDIO AND READ THE TIMECODE, THIS WAY WE’RE ENSURING THAT WE’RE RETIMING (SPEEDING BACK UP) THE CLIP SO IT WILL MATCH THE ORIGINAL AUDIO. This number is the timecode you’ll put into the duration field, (example01:08:01:06) then depending on how well you want the footage to look also taking into consideration the time it will require to compress it choose the desired quality under “Rate Conversion:”. I choose, “Best (High quality motion compesnation)” to get superb results, however this increases the compression time.

Important: Make sure that no matter which codec you use that it remains as a 23.98 fps timebase.

4. Now take the treated clip into Final Cut, we’ve already set up the sequence from step 3. Add the clip to video track 1, relink and presto!

I’ve extensively tested this and find it to be the best way to convert 30p to 24p for the time being, or atleast until and hopefully Canon comes up with a firmware to address the issue.