Christopher Lowden
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PART 1
DIGITAL CINEMA PACKAGE - HOW I, A COMPUTER NEOPHYTE, MADE AN OPEN SOURCE DCP ON MY MAC.
Intro:
Firstly, I would like to thank Chris Perry at bitfilms. What I will describe below is a mac version of his linux workflow and of what is written was by him.
http://bitfilms.blogspot.com/
Secondly, I would like to thank, amongst many, Fabien Illide, Terrence Meiczinger, Agustin Goya,John Hurst at Cinecert and Wolfgang Woehl
http://wiki.github.com/wolfgangw/digital_cinema_tools/
Thirdly, all those that contributed to the Digital Cinema Package thread, in particular Leerafel
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=33118
I suggest you read all of the above sites info before starting.
Without their work and the work of many others (plus some cash from the European Union), none of this would be possible. Many thanks
This document is not a manual, but more a 'how a managed it'. It is a starting point and I hope that my peers who are far more qualified than myself can contribute to a more definitive version.
DISCLAIMER: I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS DESCRIBED BELOW . ALSO, I AM NOT A UNIX PRO, SO I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TELL YOU WHY IT IS NOT WORKING FOR YOU. I AM A FILM EDITOR.
Preamble:
1. What I describe below is how I did it. This is not necessarily how it should be done. You must be prepared to work your own version as I am sure that it will not work for you first time round.
2. You should read what is written on Chris Perry's blog
http://bitfilms.blogspot.com/
and also all the elements at
http://wiki.github.com/wolfgangw/digital_cinema_tools/
YOU MUST HAVE A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF MAC TERMINAL COMMANDS AND APPRECIATE HOW THE TERMINAL WORKS. There are loads of web pages explaining basic unix commands. It took me a few days and alot of hasseling others to understand how to use the basic commands needed for this tutorial.
Basic commands needed for this tutorial are:
sudo su
cd
cd ..
ls
./
*
make
DO NOT CONTINUE UNTIL YOU HAVE MASTERED THESE SIMPLE COMMANDS.
The work on this tutorial was done on a macintel 2.66ghz OS 10.5.8. This tutorial will probably not work on a PowerPC and may not on 10.6 or 10.4. You can always try, though. TRYING IS THE ESSENCE OF THIS TUTORIAL.
Before you start:
To help you in this endeavour, I suggest that:
1. You have mastered the very basic unix commands. Check out;
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/
2. You have a very large, empty hard drive (for a 30min film I used up 1 terrabyte of HD with all the file that are created.)
3. Loads of time and patience.
4. A very clean OS. I suggest you install a virgin OS on your dedicated DCP work disk. An old OS full of dodgy apps off the web may not help.
5. Your film must be finished and that you have a 5.1 mix (You can do this with stereo elements but you will probably end up having to duplicate the stereo tracks into the 6 tracks needed for a standard cinema theatre).
6. You must have Xcode installed. It can be found either on your OS DVD install or at
http://developer.apple.com/technologies/xcode.html
You must install the version that corresponds to your OS.
7. I suggest that you install a free utility called ONYX
http://www.titanium.free.fr/
if you wish to see all the hidden files that you will be manipulating.
8. Make friends with your local projectionist who has a digital projector and a server. I have found that projectionists are very curious about all this and so very approachable.
9. Macports: some much more talented persons than myself, were able to short curcuit some ofthe installation procedures described below using macport. Macport is well documented on the web and the Porticus application
http://porticus.alittledrop.com/
is simple to use and open you up to loads of opensource apps that are very interesting. That said, I never managed to get any of the apps described below to install properly, hence this document.
10. Be aware that a DCP is based on ISO standards, therefore the rules are very strict concerning how it is formatted. Be prepared to spend loads of time getting your film up to these standards.
How to create a Dolby 5.1 from a stereo file.
Using Soundtrack Pro that comes with FCP, you can make a very simple 5.1 mix from stereo elements. The discussion below explains how.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11437878�
I'll give you some general "rules of thumb" whatever that means. The thing you have to be careful about is what happens when the tracks get downmixed, which they will at some point and you will have no control over that. So you have to be careful about just duplicating tracks and putting them both front and rear, or putting dialog in all the channels, etc.,
1. Dialog goes C channel only
2. Music goes L-R, if you want some surround put a slight delay or reverb of the music in the surrounds. A good upmix plug-in can be used for this.
3. Hard sfx and foley generally go in the C channel, other sfx L-R, and passbys or special effects can go in the surrounds.
4. Backgrounds. If like most people you're working with stereo backgrounds what one generally does is put one or more bgs in the front and a couple of different ones in the rears. You can collapse them a bit toward center if they sound too wide.
This is all pretty general, and you do have to monitor it properly. Try to avoid the beginners mistake of using the surrounds too much, they are they for support the screen is in the front that's where the sound comes from.
DIGITAL CINEMA PACKAGE - HOW I, A COMPUTER NEOPHYTE, MADE AN OPEN SOURCE DCP ON MY MAC.
Intro:
Firstly, I would like to thank Chris Perry at bitfilms. What I will describe below is a mac version of his linux workflow and of what is written was by him.
http://bitfilms.blogspot.com/
Secondly, I would like to thank, amongst many, Fabien Illide, Terrence Meiczinger, Agustin Goya,John Hurst at Cinecert and Wolfgang Woehl
http://wiki.github.com/wolfgangw/digital_cinema_tools/
Thirdly, all those that contributed to the Digital Cinema Package thread, in particular Leerafel
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=33118
I suggest you read all of the above sites info before starting.
Without their work and the work of many others (plus some cash from the European Union), none of this would be possible. Many thanks
This document is not a manual, but more a 'how a managed it'. It is a starting point and I hope that my peers who are far more qualified than myself can contribute to a more definitive version.
DISCLAIMER: I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS DESCRIBED BELOW . ALSO, I AM NOT A UNIX PRO, SO I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TELL YOU WHY IT IS NOT WORKING FOR YOU. I AM A FILM EDITOR.
Preamble:
1. What I describe below is how I did it. This is not necessarily how it should be done. You must be prepared to work your own version as I am sure that it will not work for you first time round.
2. You should read what is written on Chris Perry's blog
http://bitfilms.blogspot.com/
and also all the elements at
http://wiki.github.com/wolfgangw/digital_cinema_tools/
YOU MUST HAVE A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF MAC TERMINAL COMMANDS AND APPRECIATE HOW THE TERMINAL WORKS. There are loads of web pages explaining basic unix commands. It took me a few days and alot of hasseling others to understand how to use the basic commands needed for this tutorial.
Basic commands needed for this tutorial are:
sudo su
cd
cd ..
ls
./
*
make
DO NOT CONTINUE UNTIL YOU HAVE MASTERED THESE SIMPLE COMMANDS.
The work on this tutorial was done on a macintel 2.66ghz OS 10.5.8. This tutorial will probably not work on a PowerPC and may not on 10.6 or 10.4. You can always try, though. TRYING IS THE ESSENCE OF THIS TUTORIAL.
Before you start:
To help you in this endeavour, I suggest that:
1. You have mastered the very basic unix commands. Check out;
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/
2. You have a very large, empty hard drive (for a 30min film I used up 1 terrabyte of HD with all the file that are created.)
3. Loads of time and patience.
4. A very clean OS. I suggest you install a virgin OS on your dedicated DCP work disk. An old OS full of dodgy apps off the web may not help.
5. Your film must be finished and that you have a 5.1 mix (You can do this with stereo elements but you will probably end up having to duplicate the stereo tracks into the 6 tracks needed for a standard cinema theatre).
6. You must have Xcode installed. It can be found either on your OS DVD install or at
http://developer.apple.com/technologies/xcode.html
You must install the version that corresponds to your OS.
7. I suggest that you install a free utility called ONYX
http://www.titanium.free.fr/
if you wish to see all the hidden files that you will be manipulating.
8. Make friends with your local projectionist who has a digital projector and a server. I have found that projectionists are very curious about all this and so very approachable.
9. Macports: some much more talented persons than myself, were able to short curcuit some ofthe installation procedures described below using macport. Macport is well documented on the web and the Porticus application
http://porticus.alittledrop.com/
is simple to use and open you up to loads of opensource apps that are very interesting. That said, I never managed to get any of the apps described below to install properly, hence this document.
10. Be aware that a DCP is based on ISO standards, therefore the rules are very strict concerning how it is formatted. Be prepared to spend loads of time getting your film up to these standards.
How to create a Dolby 5.1 from a stereo file.
Using Soundtrack Pro that comes with FCP, you can make a very simple 5.1 mix from stereo elements. The discussion below explains how.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11437878�
I'll give you some general "rules of thumb" whatever that means. The thing you have to be careful about is what happens when the tracks get downmixed, which they will at some point and you will have no control over that. So you have to be careful about just duplicating tracks and putting them both front and rear, or putting dialog in all the channels, etc.,
1. Dialog goes C channel only
2. Music goes L-R, if you want some surround put a slight delay or reverb of the music in the surrounds. A good upmix plug-in can be used for this.
3. Hard sfx and foley generally go in the C channel, other sfx L-R, and passbys or special effects can go in the surrounds.
4. Backgrounds. If like most people you're working with stereo backgrounds what one generally does is put one or more bgs in the front and a couple of different ones in the rears. You can collapse them a bit toward center if they sound too wide.
This is all pretty general, and you do have to monitor it properly. Try to avoid the beginners mistake of using the surrounds too much, they are they for support the screen is in the front that's where the sound comes from.
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