Pulldown Pattern
If your sequence has a frame rate (editing timebase) of 23.98 or 24 fps and you want to
output to an NTSC or PAL device via FireWire, you can choose one of five pull-down
insertion patterns. Pull-down insertion is a method of converting film or other
progressively scanned material to an interlaced format playing at a different frame rate.
For detailed information about pull-down patterns, see Volume IV, Appendix C,
“Working with 24p Video.”
The Pulldown Pattern pop-up menu is available in the Playback Control tab of the
System Settings window. Pull-down options appear in the RT pop-up menu only when
your sequence has a frame rate of 23.98 or 24 fps and Final Cut Pro is currently set up
to output to a DV NTSC or PAL FireWire device. Some options may not be available if
your computer does not have sufficient processing power.
The following three pull-down patterns are available when your sequence has a frame
rate of 23.98 fps and you choose 29.97 fps external video output.
 2:3:2:3: This pattern is the most processor-intensive method of introducing
pull-down but outputs NTSC video with the least noticeable temporal artifacts. For
this reason, 2:3:2:3 pull-down is generally considered to have the most acceptable
quality of motion. This pull-down pattern is also referred to as 3:2 pull-down.
 2:3:3:2: Also known as advanced pull-down. This pattern requires less processing to
output than 2:3:2:3 pull-down because 2:3:3:2 pull-down requires recompression or
regeneration of fewer frames, but the perceived motion quality is lower than when
using 2:3:2:3 pull-down.
 2:2:2:4: This pull-down pattern requires less processing, so it is a good choice if you want
to preview video with as many real-time effects as possible. Keep in mind that if you
choose this pull-down pattern, you won’t be able to easily remove the pull-down later.
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Using RT Extreme
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IV
The following two patterns are available when your sequence has a frame rate of 24 fps
and you choose a 25 fps external video output.
 24@25 Pulldown: In this pattern, frames 12 and 24 are pulled down for a duration of
three fields instead of two, creating a subtle stutter each half second. For 25 fps
output, this pattern has the best perceived motion quality.
 24@25 Repeat: This pattern simply repeats every 24th frame once to fit 24 fps footage
into 25 fps. This causes a noticeable stutter every second, but requires less processing
than the 24@25 pull-down pattern because no special interlacing is required.