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What is the correct way to set frame rate

I noticed another user posted a similar question that hasn't been answered, but it's surprisingly tough to set the frame rate...

1) The "ProjectFPS" on transport control button does nothing

2) Sensor FPS in Clip Input doesn't let you type in it

3) Editorial -> Frame Rate seems like an obvious win. It defaults

to plain 23 which seems odd. I type 23.976 but Maya exports

are all insisting on being 30fps.

If you look at the docs: pftrack_movie_controls.html it says "Typically this is just the project frame-rate" but I don't see anyplace

in the creation of or editing of a project that let's me specify a frame rate.

Are we actual meant to go into formatStandards.xml and delete every frame rate entry except the one we want? That seems a strange workflow for a software that is so amazing in other regards.

4 comments

Comments (4)

Simon

Jun 05

Hello Casey,

The Editorial frame rate edit box is the correct one to use.

The current Maya Ascii export script you have doesn't support 23.976 which is why it's coming into Maya as 30, but it's straightforward to customize your export script with some additional frame rate options, or just edit the exported .ma file and change "-t ntsc" to "-t 23.976fps" when defining Maya's currentUnits.

We have an updated export script coming up in the next version of PFTrack that includes this. Alternatively you can use FBX or another format that Maya supports instead of the Maya Ascii exporter.

The Project FPS and Sensor FPS box are only available when you have metadata from your clip that defines these values (for example, RED RAW).

The default frame rate for a clip is 24, provided it doesn't matching an entry in the formatStandards.xml file and doesn't have any metadata saying otherwise. The format standards work with integer frame rates and a drop-frame flag, so a frame rate of 24 with drop-frame would come in as 23.98. If you want 23.976 specifically then you're best off just entering this in the Editorial options, or making sure your media has this encoded in its metadata.

Regarding the frame rate coming in with just "23", the only time I've seen this happen is with some EXR files that had this baked into their metadata - whatever encoded the file wrote out "23.976" as an integer instead of a float, so if your media has metadata then make sure it's correct. You can check this in the "Raw Metadata" list in the Clip Input node, and relevant entries will be highlighted in blue.

Hope this helps,

Casey Schatz

Jun 05

Replying to

Hi there Simon thank you so much for responding.

Appending that "-t 23.976fps;" did seem to work. It looks as if your Maya export script is from 2011 which is long before Maya introduced 23.976 in version 2019.

It's good to know you'll be updating this in the next version since I'm usually exporting the ascii along with lidar geo hence opening a 50mb text file. It should be noted that your trick works better than opening the file and changing the frame rate which scales the keys and timeline.

As far as 23.976 vs 23.98, there are copious argumentative threads online about whether it's meaningful scientifically or just a verbal shorthand and indeed the consensus seems to be that 23.976 is more precise and .98 is just a rounding up of that which is easier semantically.

But ultimately the software that many of us use says 23.976 specifically: