Getting your movie ready for DCP

Getting your movie ready for DCP

Congrats you have come this far in making your movie and you are only few more steps away from watching them on big screens. 

A. Video

B. Audio

A. Video

For DCP, the movie needs to be of resolution 2048 x 858 for scope and 1998 x 1080 for flat. Assuming you have your video's resolution as 1920 x 1080, you need to modify its size to one of the above formats. Real Image in Chennai accepts only DPX Log files. I used After Effects to do this conversion and it was real simple.

If you have not conformed your video to 24 fps then read this article to convert your movie from 23.976 fps to 24 fps. 

Software Required

Adobe After Effects 

Steps

1. Create a Composition with the following settings. Hopefully you have already converted your movie from 23.976 to 24p.
   
   
   

   
   

2. 2. Import the movie clip to the timeline and obviously the width of the movie and the comp is different so you need to modify the clip's width as show in the image below.Transform → Fit to Comp Width

3. When you add this to Render Queue modify the Output Settings

And under the Color Management → Cineon Settings enable the “Logarithmic Conversion” and remember to choose an output directory with enough space on your disk and then render.

Note: Now after the DPX log files are created you can try and import the DPX log sequence into your After Effects timeline. Don't get panic when you see the images are washed out. The Log files are washed out and if you want to see the true color apply the "Cineon Effects" and you will see the true color.

B. Audio

Now that the video conversion is over, audio is lot simpler but it requires couple of softwares to get the work done. Refer to this article for other ways to convert.

Using Logic Pro

1. Create a logic project and set the Frame Rate under Synchronization tab to 24 fps. Import the movie that you converted from 23.976 fps to 24p whose audio will be in 48048 Hz. 

2. Open the movie

      File - Open Movie

3. Export Audio from Video

      File - Import Audio from Movie

4. Bounce

       File - Bounce 

      

Now you are all set and your movie (both audio and video) is ready for DCP. 

Converting audio from 23.976 fps to True 24 fps

We've often had problems getting the Audio ready for the final DCP output. This one took us a while to figure out, because we had to redo this after our submission for DCP syncing which didn't work out the first time. This is sort of a late post that we had compiled a while back.

Converting audio from 23.976 to True 24 fps (48000 Hz to 48048 Hz) 

Method 1: Using Wave Agent
Method 2: Using Logic Pro

Method 1: Using Wave Agent

Note: Do not try to verify audio sync in FCP or any other video editing software, always CHECK using Pro-Tools or Logic for True 24fps audio sync

Import the audio file (preferably make a copy of the original audio) you want to convert into the WaveAgent. After importing convert the audio, modify the Sample Rate to 48048 and Frame Rate to 24 ND. 

Fixing the sample rate from 48048 to 48000 using Barba Batch

1. Add the audio file that needs to be fixed from 48048 to 48000 Hz.

2. Click on the Conversion tab and select "Wave (.wav), 48000.00 Hz, interleaved

3. Click on Output tab and choose an output directory and click START.

Method 2:  Using Logic Pro

1. Create a logic project and set the Frame Rate under Synchronization tab to 24 fps. Import the movie that you converted from 23.976 fps to 24p whose audio will be in 48048 Hz. 

2. Open the movie

      File - Open Movie

3. Export Audio from Video

      File - Import Audio from Movie

4. Bounce

       File - Bounce

      
If you think there's a better workflow, please share it with us. We are pretty positive there must be, but...