Pulldown – Atomos Ninja Blade User Manual

Page 29

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Atomos Ninja Blade – User Manual Edition 1: Feb 2014 27

What is Pulldown?

Many professional and consumer cameras available today do

not send true 1080p24, 1080p23.98, 1080p25, 1080p29.97 or

1080p30 signals down their SDI or HDMI outputs.
Instead they send 1080i59.94 in NTSC regions (eg USA,

Japan), and 1080i50 in PAL regions (eg Europe)
In order to convert the signal from the internal recording format to

1080i5994 or 1080i50, they use a process called 3:2 or 2:2 pulldown.

Camera Setting

Pulldown

Ninja Blade Receives

1080p23.98

3:2

1080i59.94

1080p24

3:2

1080i60

1080p25

2:2

1080i50

1080p29.97

2:2

1080i59.94

1080p30

2:2

1080i60

You will, of course, want the Ninja Blade to record eg 1080p24, not

1080i60 to the disk. In many cases, it is not easy for the Ninja Blade to

detect the pulldown operation in the video, so you will have to set the

correct mode in the Ninja Blade as well as setting it on your camera.
With some cameras, the Ninja Blade can detect and remove the pulldown

automatically, in which case the mode you expect (eg 1080p23.98) will

display on the Ninja Blade and you will not have to do anything further.
If there is no input detected, then toggle the input by pressing the screen

until you see the input you wish to record.

Atomos is adding auto-detection support for more cameras,

please check for firmware updates regularly at www.atomos.com

1080p23.98 or 1080p24

If you have set 1080p23.98 or 1080p24 in your camera and your Ninja

Blade displays 1080i59.94 or 1080i60, then you can easily remove the

pulldown by following these steps:
• Press the

blue

arrow

next to the

video

format

repeatedly

until you see 1080p23.98 (or 1080p24) displayed. You will see that

the

Mon

button is dimmed. Your Ninja Blade needs to analyse the

video for about 1 second, in order to detect the pulldown sequence

and remove it.

• If it is not automatically detected after 1 second, wave your hand from

side to side in front of the lens, or wave the camera from side to side

for a few seconds. The Ninja Blade will detect the pulldown in the

movement, the input video format will show 1080p24 and the Mon/Rec

button will highlight.

3:2 pulldown detection is difficult, if not impossible to detect on

completely still video. This is why you should wave your hand in

front of the lens.

If you lose the input detection – for example you unplug the HDMI

cable or go to Playback mode, you will need to wave your hand or

the camera again, when the signal is restored to the Ninja Blade.

Some cameras use a variant of pulldown removal, for example

Panasonic Advanced pulldown. The Ninja Blade does NOT support

this format, and it will not be detected.

Standard Panasonic pulldown is supported, ensure in the

Panasonic camera settings that pulldown is not set to Advanced.

1080p25, 1080p29.97 or 1080p30

For these modes, simply press the

blue

arrow

repeatedly until your

1080p desired format is displayed. There is no need to wave your hand or

the camera, as 2:2 pulldown removal does not require moving video.

10. Pulldown

1080p23.98

1080p24

1080p24

1080p29.97

1080p30

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