ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

6 years, 5 months ago - Nathan Hannawin

Hi Grace,

I have used DCP-o-matic before and it worked fine (plus its free!). I suggest speaking to the projectionist beforehand if possible as many places are happy to screen a h264 from VLC which saves a lot of time.

https://dcpomatic.com/

I can't remember the hard drive usage exactly, but I think mine worked out at something like 100gb for a 90-minute film. On my PC it was definitely an overnight job and probably took about 10 hours. This was in 2k, so if you are creating it 4k it will be a lot more

Hope that helps

6 years, 5 months ago - Alwyne Kennedy

2K or 4K?

2K can be done in Premiere Pro with the free Wraptor 2K Plugin that is packaged with Premiere. If 4K, you can rent the 4K version for a month. I paid around £100 for the 4K month's rental. Or you can buy it outright.

As for hard drive space required, the answer is not much. My 4K DCP package of a 28 minute film takes up only 14GB.

I rented the 4K version for a month for my film, and afterwards I offered to do cheap conversions for people on Shooters... but I had no takers. My rental period has now expired.

You can see that offer thread, which includes the Curzon Cinema's DCP requirements guide, here:

https://shootingpeople.org/ask/view/12f7356b4d5c76787e8cf80c

You should definitely read that thread. And you should also check with the cinema you will be using to find out what their particular requirements are.

NOTE: If the cinema has 5.1 sound, and you supply only a stereo mix, the sound in the cinema will be weak. But there's a quick and easy way to avoid that. I had mixed my film in stereo, and when I went to a rehearsal screening of it, I painfully realised it needed to be in 5.1 to have proper cinema oomph. Because it was in stereo only, it was only using the left and right speaker. The all important and powerful centre and low frequency speakers weren't being employed. With only a couple of days before the proper screening, there wasn't time for me to re-mix in 5.1 from scratch. Besides, I didn't even have a 5.1 audio monitoring set-up. So I googled a bit and found a plugin called Halo Upmix - https://nugenaudio.com/haloupmix/

Halo Upmix saved the day. It has a graphical display that shows how the sound is being intelligently split between the 5.1 speakers, as it up-mixed. All I did was to select a preset and let it do its thing, although afterwards I had to keyframe down the levels in a few places where it clipped on some of the channels.

When I heard the 5.1 mix in the cinema, I was amazed. All the proper oomph was there. Obviously, it didn't do anything artistic like have footsteps go from one corner of the room to the other, but it did have the vocals coming from the centre, and existing stereo separation of other sounds was preserved. And low frequencies were sent to the low speaker. Better still, Halo Upmix was available on a fully-functioning free trial. I think it is still available on a free trial. So it cost me nothing to get my outstanding last-minute 5.1 mix.

6 years, 5 months ago - Derek Boyes

You can create your 2k DCP in the free version of Davinci Resolve. (Not all film festivals have 4k projection and a 4k DCP downgraded to 2k can look terrible, where as a 2k upgraded to 4k looks sweet). You then format your dive via a $25 month's subscription to: https://www.cinematiq.com/dcptransfer/

Here are some other useful links:
DCP Size calculator: https://toolstud.io/video/dcpsize.php?bitrate=200&resolution=2048x858&framerate=24&3d=2D&channels=6&samplerate=48&duration=15&duration_unit=minutes
http://noamkroll.com/how-to-make-any-dcp-for-25-with-davinci-resolve-15-kakadu-cinematiq/
https://www.shortfilm.de/en/best-practice-digitale-vorfuehrkopien-fuer-festivals-und-kinos/

6 years, 5 months ago - Karel Bata

The downside of creating a DCP from Premiere or the like is that you can't make changes after. Suppose you wanted to add a credit, or substitute a different soundtrack? Or (happened to me) there's a flash frame of something you missed. It was 3D and one eye cut a frame later than the other. Grrr. Have you the time to render out the whole lot again?

In my 3D example all I had to do was go into the relevant j2k folder, swap out a frame, and re-do the final stage of the DCP in OpenDCP. Twenty minutes total.

OpenDCP is free. http://www.opendcp.org/
https://vimeo.com/69174836
http://www.jamesmilnersmyth.com/prepare-project-dcp-digital-cinema-package/

To ship shorts to fests I use USB thumbdrives, FAT32 formatted (Ex-FAT on my Mac - but wisest to just leave the formatting as it comes).
Or use http://mega.nz/

6 years, 5 months ago - Sam Brewster

dcp-o-matic is free and worked fine for me (although sounds like a cheesy adware app)

6 years, 5 months ago - Grace Alwyn Ashworth

Thank you so much for all the really helpful responses!

I'm quite lucky that I have a good friend who works as a projectionist at an indie cinema near me so she'll be able to test out any DCPs I create for me.

I think I'll have a bash at DCP-o-matic first and see where I end up.

Thanks,

Grace