Post Factory Guide To: Digital Cinema Packages

POST FACTORY GUIDE TO: DIGITAL CINEMA PACKAGES

What is a Digital Cinema Package?

When all cinemas showed 35mm film prints, it was pretty easy to show your 35mm film at any cinema, anywhere in the world. If your project was not shot and finished on 35mm, it’s always been a bit harder to show your project in decent quality on the big screen. The options have been: (a) Make a “film out” of your project. This is typically very expensive initially, but from that point on making further 35mm dupes costs the same as traditional prints. (b) Layoff to HDCam or HDCam SR. This is not hugely expensive compared to a film-out, but very few cinemas have the tape decks to play back the tapes and have to hire them in for each screening. Most cinemas have to hire in a tape deck at some expense to play it. Plugging it into the projector in the booth is often tricky, as it is non- standard to their normal operations, so you have to allow for technician time and testing. (c) Some cinemas have standard def DVD players that they can project off but that is not great if your project was High Def to begin with.

But a lot of cinemas these days are projecting on Digital Projectors rather than film, so in theory showing your digitally finished project should be a lot easier than it actually is. As cinemas have been making the switch, a standard for digital delivery had to be agreed on, and the “Digital Cinema Package” is the result of standards agreements. A DCP should be playable in any compatible digital cinema. But until now, making the first DCP of a film has been fairly expensive. Once you have that first copy, making further copies is a lot cheaper than making optical 35mm film prints, so this has been good news for the distributors of many prints to many screens. For limited screenings and the short filmmaker though, the initial cost has so far been a huge hurdle. The Post Factory has changed this by making this service available to filmmakers at an affordable price.

What is a DCP physically?

Physically, it is a set of files, usually delivered on a specially formatted USB hard drive. The files hold a film encoded in a special Jpeg 2000 format, the soundtrack, and a play-list that tells Digital Cinema systems how to play them. (Optionally the film can be encrypted with a Key that distributors can use to control when and where a film is played. This is more complicated to arrange and more expensive to make and manage.)

HOW IT WILL LOOK AND SOUND?

I didn’t shoot my film on the best camera or tape. How will it look when it is in the cinema? It will look no better than how it is now. Nothing magical happens that improves your picture when it is processed for Digital Cinema. In fact, when you see it on a huge projection, you may see a lot more wrong with it than if you have only seen it on a small TV or computer screen. This is why good cinematographers, film technicians and post-production experts earn their keep. Having said that: if you have shot well-lit, exposed and focused pictures on a decent HD or better format, handled the footage well in post and graded on an accurate screen, you should get good results.

If you have badly shot DV, added further compression and arte facts in your post process and not used a reasonably calibrated environment in which to grade, it may look as bad as it is but with all the faults displayed on a bigger canvas. If you have concerns about your picture quality, get advice and get any problems sorted before you give us the finished file for processing. Once it has been made into a DCP thatʼs it. If you decide to make any changes the entire process has to start again from scratch and be charged as a new film.

My film is 16.9? How does that fit on the cinema screen? There are two cinema projections aspects, 2.39 (cinema scope size) and 1.85. 1.85 is very close to 16.9, but a little of the top and bottom of your picture will be cropped to get it to that aspect. It is possible to show 16.9 within this but it is better that you frame when shooting to protect for 1.85 and allow a generous safe area for any captions and titles. Remember, not all cinemas will have their masking curtains set up exactly correctly.

My film is 4.3 aspect? We will have to put it into the 1.85 aspect with pillar box spaces on either side.

I only have a stereo mix. How will it sound? Your best results will be from mixing a surround track in a calibrated surround studio. Cinemas tend to be geared for surround sound, with dialogue coming from a centre speaker with stereo speakers quite widely placed for FX and music. If you only have a stereo mix, this is not too much of a problem, but as the sound will not be coming out of

My film only exists on Digibeta/DVCam as standard def? What can I do? We can digitise/load your film from any standard def format and blow it up in size to fit. However, the picture will not magically get any better in this process. It will still be the resolution you shot it in, just scaled to a much bigger area. If you shot your film in a HD format and have just finished in standard def for cost reasons, you should consider re-doing your post in true HD.

I shot my film on Red/Film at 4K/4K ana and have properly mastered my film as 2K/Scope etc. Can I give you this version rather? Oh yes please! But the chances are that if your post workflow involves finishing in DPX files say, you should be discussing our full DCP service with us to make sure the best possible results are seen on screen.

DUPLICATION AND TESTING

Can I copy my own film, say to send to several festivals? Yes, as long as you can operate and have access to a modern Linux system and make your hard drives EXT3 format before copying all the files to it. It is best to make a clone to ensure that all the files are copied in the same format and layout on the drive. You should also copy the paperwork supplied to assist the cinema when they receive your drive. Else bring the drive back to us and pay a small fee to make a clone. An option is to make the drive NTFS, but that can be less compatible with some cinema servers. We cannot of course be responsible for any errors you make in this process, and remember: hard drives can and often do develop errors or die completely.

I want to check the DCP: can I watch it on my computer? Not with freely available tools. This file package is designed to work with a high performance Digital Cinema Server. The best way to play and check it is in the digital cinema you first wish to have a screening in. If you are booking a cinema for a screening, they may let you have a preview in some down time in a morning, as long as you donʼt take too many people with you. You should allow time to copy the file to the cinema server and play the film through start to finish in case there are any incompatibilities with that particular cinemaʼs system.

There is a reason why there is a huge industry of skilled technicians making films: it is not an easy process to get perfect results: it is the result of years of experience and know-how and talented experts like to be compensated accordingly for their time and equipment. Your best results will be achieved by making use of such people!

However, if you prefer or have to do a lot of the post work yourself, using the tools such as Final Cut Pro available to you, here are some tips.

Resolution: If you are working in Final Cut, try and finish your film in a sequence set for 1920x1080 size, with no interlacing (progressive). Make sure best options are set for any scaling or resizing.

Codecs: No matter what you have shot on (HDV, Red, SD tape), make your sequence using a good finishing codec like Apple Prorez HQ, so you do not add additional compression artefacts when you render effects, captions and dissolves. (Uncompressed is best of course but if your system can handle that you probably donʼt be needing to read this guide...)

Progressive: Cinema is progressive display so de-interlace any interlaced video footage using tools such as Graham Natress plug-ins. Pay for them! They do not cost much.

Captions and credits: Make sure your credit roll is not too fast or it will judder: have a look at a regular film and see how slow it is. Obey the safe area marking for any captions you add.

Colour grading: Calibrate your monitors using the best tools and guides you can and check your gamma settings are correct (this is a minefield in Apple FCP and can make a big difference to how your film will look on the big screen. Work in a controlled environment. Learn how to use the RGB parade meters in the Videoscopes. Try and use a system for finishing that feeds a proper HD video signal (say from a Blackmagic, Aja or Matrox card) into a properly calibrated HD monitor, rather than using a computer monitor. You can hire our HD grading projection room to preview your film on a 3m screen.

Sound: Listen to your sound on good speakers in a quiet environment. Do not judge a mix on headphones. Make sure none of your sound clips at peak level or distorts. This can sound incredibly horrid in a cinema.

If you are mixing yourself, try and think about the following. In a cinema, you are listening in a louder situation than normal and it can be very fatiguing for the cinemagoer if every scene is very loud, compressed and in-your-face. Try and make sure you have a theatrical dynamic range with contrast between quiet and loud.

We hope this answers any queries you have. If you want to find out more please contact [email protected]