Pulldown – Atomos Samurai Blade User Manual

Page 29

Atomos Samurai Blade – User Manual Edition 1: June 2013 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

Samurai 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 Samurai Blade to record eg 1080p24, not
1080i60 to the disk. In many cases, it is not easy for the Samurai Blade
to detect the pulldown operation in the video, so you will have to set the
correct mode in the Samurai Blade as well as setting it on your camera.

With some cameras, the Samurai Blade can detect and remove
the pulldown automatically, in which case the mode you expect (eg
1080p23.98) will display on the Samurai 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 Samurai
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 Samurai 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 Samurai 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 SDI cable

or go to Playback mode, you will need to wave your hand or the
camera again, when the signal is restored to the Samurai Blade.

Some cameras use a variant of pulldown removal, for example

Panasonic Advanced pulldown. The Samurai 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

1080p25

1080p30

1080p29.97