Cubase and Video Frame Rates : Why You Need to Convert to 24fps or Higher 

Cubase is a very important software for the film and media composer and music producer. It boasts advanced facilities for scoring, syncing and mixing to picture — across all mediums — thus making it one of the favorites DAWs used by professionals. But here is one little thing that often screws up with users when working with video in Cubase – it does not support videos with less than 24 frame-per-second rate (FPS).

Which can get really annoying if you’ve been given video files in a format that Cubase doesn’t support natively. If you normally get 23.98fps as the base footage then have to convert them prior working on your project in Cubase. Why does this happen: we are going to see in this blog and the solutions of how you can over come from that.

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Cubase Frame Rate Limitation

Cubase has great video support, but there’s a catch: Videos need to be 24fps or above in order to properly import and playback. However, even a commonly used frame rate such as 23.976 fps for film and television or 15fps (used in various screen captures or animations) won’t be accepted by Cubase if the video is of that timing. Comey was wrong in dismissive language, but he was essentially correct here; you just won’t get an error message or bad parsing of the video — it simply will not display properly.

The reason for this limitation is how Cubase renders a video for synchronization. Whenever you work with videos having framerates below 24fps, timecode isn’t standard, and this can create a slew of problems when syncing your music or audio to picture.

### Why Frame Rates Matter

Timing is EVERYTHING when you’re scoring music to film. For the uninitiated, the frame rate of a video is how many frames (images) are shown on your screen in one second. Today, most common video formats are at standardized frame rates of 24fps, 25fps (for PAL regions) or 30fps (for NTSC regions). If less than 24fps, you might find (depending on the shot) syncing audio or music to precise visual cues such as hit points, scene transitions or dialogue problematic.

For instance:

24fps : Most cinematic productions run at this framerate.

23.98fps (AKA 23.976fps): Often used in American professional filmmaking

30fps: Mainly used for broadcast television in the NTSC region

For example, 15fps or lower: This frame rate is commonly found in older/demoscene video formats (before 1990s). Very slow, animatic; old web animations; low frames per second screen captures.

Cubase is meant to handle all sorts of professional workflows but it tops out at 24fps, so if your frame-rate is lower you’ll need to convert it—not a big deal. This can be irritating if you are given a 23.98fps video, but there is actually a fairly straight forward ways to fix the problem.

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How to Convert Frame Rates So They Match?

To handle this issue, you have to convert your video file to 24fps or more before adding it to Cubase. The simple steps you can achieve using free and paid solutions:

Use a Video Converter

Many video converters can also change the frame rate of your video:

HandBrake (Free): HandBrake is an open-source video transcoder that supports a variety of formats. It can be a great choice for you to convert videos up to 24fps with good quality.

Adobe Media Encoder (Paid): If you are an Adobe CC user, then it comes as a package for converting videos. More customization and better quality than many free converters.

DaVinci Resolve (Free and Paid) :DaVinci Resolve also available with free and paid version good for video editing. Resolve even offers professional-level control over frame rates, formats and quality.

Best Practices for Video Conversion

Because when you convert a video to a higher frame rate like 24fps, you are telling your video editor to add or remove frames. If not applied properly this method is called frame interpolation and it may introduce some little visual artifacts. Here are some tips:

Always “Check Sync Post-Conversion” – After converting, always check to ensure sound and vision are still in sync (if you have any). And sometimes you’ll have to mess with the audio sync by hand.

Avoid Degradation: Frame rate changes sometimes result in a degradation of video quality – unless you are using free tools. Whenever you can, make sure to keep the same resolution and bit rate of the video in your Export settings.

Backup Original File : It is always a good practice to back up the original video file in case anything goes wrong with the conversion.

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Conclusion

You may find this frustrating coming from a video editing world where frame rates lower than 24fps are dead, but it is obviously needed for playback timing purposes. This limitation can be worked around using tools that convert video to 60fps e.g. HandBrake, Adobe Media Encoder or DaVinci Resolve.

Consistent to mixing the Film Score or Sound Design for video, ensure that your video files are compatible with Cubase from the beginning of your project and not just as a workaround.