Which App Is Best To Remove Telecine Pulldown In 2026?

  If you have to deal with pulldown removal in 2026, there is one app that does it best.

 It's not Final Cut Pro, it's not Apple Compressor, it's not Premiere, nor Adobe Media Encoder, it's not Avid Media Composer, it's not After Effects.

 For those of you who do not know what that's about, pulldown is a trick used when transferring film to tape, in the old days of telecine transfers.

 In order to see films that are 24 progressive frames per second on Television which used to be 30 interlaced (or 60 (1/2 frame "fields") per seconds, the telecine process repeated some frames in a predetermined sequence, usually in a 3-2 pattern.

 If you want to know more about telecine, read this great entry Telecine Explained.

 For example the film sequence of 24 frames:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24

Was transferred as follow in a 60 frames sequence:

1,1,1,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,5,5,5,6,6,7,7,7,8,8,9,9,9,10,10,11,11,11,12,12,13,13,13,14,14,15,15,15,16,16,17,17,17,18,18,19,19,19,20,20,21,21,21,22,22,23,23,23,24,24

 Now since the complete frame consists of 2 interlaced fields, the TV had some frames composed of identical fields / image, and other frames composed of different fields / image.

 In our example, TV frame 1 is composed of film frames 1,1 - identical. But TV frame 2 is composed of film frames 1,2 - different. TV frame 3 is film 2,3 - different, and TV frame 4 is film frames 3, 3 - identical.

 When you want to go from the telecine 30fps interlaced back to the 24fps progressive, you have to perform pulldown removal = removing the duplicated fields, AND reassembling the complete film frames in the proper order.

 The software (or yourself if operating manually) has to recognize the proper sequence, pull and reassemble the proper fields into frames. Which is easily said, but because of the nature of video can be a headache.

 For example you might not have a (3-2) 1,1,1,2,2,3,3,3,4,4 sequence, and instead have a (2-3) 1,1,2,2,2,3,3,4,4,4 one. If the software expects duplicated fields in a 3,2,3,2 sequence and instead gets a 2,3,2,3 sequence it will fail. Or the sequence might start on a random field, and then it's not 3-2 nor 2-3, but some bastardized version thereof.

 In addition, there are other flavors / combinations of pulldown sequences that might or might not be recognized properly.

 After Effects has the most extensive pattern recognition and manual override for removing pull-down, but it is nevertheless prone to failure.

 Back in the days of Final Cut Pro Legacy (Classic Versions 1-7), and Final Cut Studio (R.I.P), we had Cinema Tools! That was the perfect app to remove pulldown. And it did that instantly, writing the resulting file in a matter of seconds. Alas, unless you kept a old Mac running an old OS with the old tools installed, no more Cinema Tools for us post pros.

 In 2026 the one app that does a great job is... DaVinci Resolve! Click "Remove Pulldown" in the clip attributes, drop your 29,97 interlaced clip into a 24 progressive timeline, done. Render clean, error free, un-telecined file.

 These are the settings in DVR 20.3:

 Now this is for a single one go telecine transfer where the sequence won't change. If dealing with a telecine, or multiple telecine files that have been edited into a single movie resulting in the sequences being broken multiple times because the cuts have been made randomly, then I don't know how it would behave. I assume it will fail, but I would have to test that theory for myself. That's for another day.

 If you have a favorite way to deal with removing pulldown, let me know in the comments.