I'm considering purchasing Media Composer, but I'm not exactly clear to what extent Avid supports Sony's pull-down encoded progressive HDV. I use Sony HVR-V1U cameras to shoot 1080i 24A (24pSCNA) footage. Basically it's progressive 23.976p footage encoded in a 1080i stream using interlaced pull-down.

According to the Media Composer specs page it supports "Sony HDV (25Mb/s) 1080@24p/25/50i/59.94i". But the native HDV 1080 project formats listed include only 1080i/59.94 and 1080i/50. No native 1080p/30 or 1080p/24 project support is indicated. Yet project support for several 720p frame rates is clearly stated.

This leads me to wonder: Can Media Composer capture Sony 1080i 24A footage, remove the pull-down, and edit the footage as native 23.976p footage?

Here is the Avid Whitepaper for Sony HDV Camera

http://www.avid.com/resources/briefs/SONY_HDV_FactSheet.pdf?featureID=1078&marketID=1

Thanks for the quick reply. I did look at that white paper. I also checked Avid's Supported Devices paper. The V1U isn't listed, so apparently Avid hasn't tested it. But several other Sony HVR series cameras are on the list, such as the Z7U and the Z5U. Avid lists HDV 1080p23.976 for both of these cameras if capture is done on the fly, saying they are qualified since Media Composer 3.5. I have searched and read forum posts, and this seems to track with the release Avid says started supporting Canon's 24F format.

Sony's (and I presume Canon's) 24p recordings are encoded in a 1080i stream, so until the pull-down is removed it is effectively nothing more than 59.94i footage. If that's all Media Composer supports, why would Avid explicitly list 1080 24p as a natively supported codec for Sony and Canon? Why the explicit listing of 1080p23.976 for Sony cameras in the supported devices paper?

This all adds up to an appearance that things have changed since the 2007 whitepaper, but again, I'm not sure to what extent. There is no timecode with these Canon and Sony 24p captures, and no 1080p23.976 project format, only 59.94i.

It all leaves me with the same question as before: Can Media Composer capture Sony 1080i 24A footage, remove the pull-down, and edit the footage as native 23.976p footage? It's certainly not clear to me what kind of support Media Composer actually has for this format.

Did you ever get an answer to this? My workaround really sucks. I've got footage shot with the V1U in 24pA. I can capture as 29.97, and adjust the motion effect when the clips are cut into a 23.976 sequence, but it cannot handle the 24pA cadence. This is really frustrated. I should be able to capture as DNxHD with the pulldown removed. I shouldn't have to use FCP 7 to capture my footage, then get the ProRes files and import them. I can't even use AMA because it plays out of sync. Ugh!

HDV Capture and Editing in MC is at best flakey. I usually shoot in 720P 28.98.

My work around is I Capture in Edius and import the resultin files into MC as DNxHD 90 10bit mxf that is the best workflow for me.

Antonio Manriquez:

Did you ever get an answer to this?

In a way, yes.

Since the documentation available wasn't clear enough I ended up experimenting with the Media Composer trial to see if I could get the 23.976p footage from my Sony HVR-V1U to work.

Unfortunately, it's been awhile since then, and the memory has faded. However, I'm sure I did manage to get true 23.976p footage from my V1U into Media Composer via one method at least.

But it wasn't a straightforwared method. If I'm right, I had to capture the footage from my V1U using HDVSplit, then run that footage through DVFilm Maker to remove the pulldown. I'm afraid I couldn't tell you at this point the exact settings I used in DVFilm Maker.

It was a workable solution, but hardly as elegant as capturing straight into Media Composer. And because one isn't capturing using Media Composer one loses the ability to archive offline projects that can be later re-captured via Media Composer's built-in batch capture. But given that hard drives are such an inexpensive archiving medium that may no longer be an issue.

I didn't end up going with Media Composer, as one or two other issues arose that proved to be a deal breaker for me.

I'm sorry I don't have a better solution for you. It surely would be nice if certain NLE publishers put some effort into truly supporting the Sony V1U. *cough* Looking at you, Avid and Adobe *cough*

Antonio, I found the following thread that might help you remove the pulldown from Sony V1U 24p footage inside of Media Composer: http://community.avid.com/forums/p/40974/585683.aspx