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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

VERY nervous. . . please help: Outputting final film version for final deliverables.

Stephen Pruitt said:
so you are saying that Prores 4444 is not the same thing as 10-bit uncompressed? How would one output a 10-bit uncompressed file from our FCP/DNxHD file?
Click to expand...

A DPX sequence for the whole movie would end up being about 2TB to 4TB depending on the film length and OS used. So you will need one or two 2TB disks to store the frame image files on as a set with numbered filenames. If you need to break the film to fit on two disks, you need to be able to have the numbers continue on the second disk I would think where you left off on the first disk.

For filmout I would do it by the reel since you can only max. 22 minutes of film in the film recorder.

Is Prores4444 just a single file? If so it would be a very large file for the whole film, so if your disk is not big enough you need to span disks as well, but since its a data stream you cannot just break it. One safe way to break large files might be to use a zip program to cut it into parts small enough to put on a set of disks, the later the user can put the parts back together on their RAID array using un-zip. I have been dealing with some huge uncompressed files that way, by ftp you can waste quite a bit of time if the xfer will not restart on big files, but if you break them into say 10MB numbered parts, the Xfer can restart and just need to re-transmit the 10MB that got messed up. I've been using 7-zip as its free and breaks up large files, but I have not tried it yet on anything as large as 2TB so far...

In making the DPX frames you need to know the pixel format and if you need the sound track area, that is 2048 wide 1556 high but with the image width 1828. 709 64 to 940 or Cineon (tm) 95-685 limits. If you go from 709 to Cineon (tm) you should not need softclip since the highlights should be under 685 level.


It sounds like you need to talk to the people more and find out exactly how they want things.

Also is the issue of the sound, if they want 24.000fps for DCP/filmout or is the sound at 23.976fps, since you sound may be two hours long you need the frame rate right for it to play the right length.

It can take days to convert all the files depending on your system since its 24*60*88=126720 DPX frames or more, each one 2048x1556x4=12.8MB each, so

12.8*126720=1.63TB for the data, but files take more disk space than their data so I'm not sure that would fit on a 2TB drive or not.

You can open each DPX frame and look at it, and its data should be stable since Cineon (tm) DPX are a well supported "standard" format for images,

http://www.celco.com/FormatResolutionTableKodakCineon.asp

I'm finishing up 10bpc and 16bpc DPX support for my DI system since it will interface to just about any workflow in a more or less predictable way.
 
Well, first of all, we don't have $5000 to throw at this. No question about that. Second, it isn't going to a film out. This is a straight to DVD release. To Jake's comment, we did try to do things properly, hiring a very experienced Scratch colorist, but decided we had to make a lot of edits to get the film down in length.

The gentleman at Vanguard said they were expecting a 100 or so gigabyte file, so it doesn't look like it could be a DPX they are asking for. I'll know more tomorrow.

Anyway, looks like I'm just going to have a stroke.

:-(

Stephen
 
Stephen...

Forget all the scarey stuff. this is easy shit man.

Now trust me, I have done this many times.
A PRO RES EXPORT to cinema screen is more than enough (irrespective of what some people are saying).

We send 4444 & even 422 PRO RES to film outs quite often and they look as good (and some times better) as the 200 million dollar movie playing straight after it. You cannot see any difference. Even the guys that we hire to pump out film prints over the last 10 years say it's the cleanest and richest they have ever seen. (they don't have a clue what we have shot it on)
So don't worry about codecs. People hang shit on PRO RES because they can. but the fact is this, PRO RES is way way way better than it should be. We work uncompressed here as well as PRO RES work flows. Even smashing really heavy luminance and chroma keys out of it, no one here can see the difference.
So once again Don't get hung up on compression to much. nobody watching a 2k print or a blue ray will ever see the difference. OK!

Now reading your last post, your movie is only going to DVD and BLURAY.. well seriously man, now really don't worry. PRORES looks incredible on blue ray. This exact second i'm switching in my cinema right now between AVATAR BLU RAY disc (the best blur ray movie ever made) and a BLURAY disc I just burnt of some footage I have just graded in FCP. I cannot see any difference in color saturation, sharpness. blacks... nothing! So don't worry about that either. I just flipped them both onto a 52inche LED monitor, Both the same. PERFECT!

I wish I had a studio there in your home town, I'd just fix this for you for free!!!!. Seriously dude. Just find somebody with an AVID, throw all your AVID footage into it, throw whats left of your PRO RES into the same time line. AVID will take PRORES and convert it.
put your audio under it. line it all up. make sure it's sound synced. Then render it out on the time line then export out as one big tiff.mov or animation.mov file. (don't worry about GAMMA, thats easily fixed) don't worry about 10bit. as you have finished grading, your not going to see the difference on a blue ray disc at all from a 10bit or 8 bit file. Trust me.

Now... If you cannot get your hands on a AVID MC to do this, try opening the AVID files in QUICKTIME PRO and converting them to an ANIMATION.mov through file/EXPORT. or try throwing them directly into FCP and do the same. ( don't worry about gamma shift at this point)

Now if all you have to do is make a 4444 PRO RES movie, just throw that ANIMATION file. or uncompressed tiff.mov back into finalcutPRO and render it out as a HD 4444 PRO RES mov.
Play it, check it... If the gamma is out, don't worry, just do a global lift in the sections that are low or high (using 3way colour corrector ) will take you about 1 second to do this. then export it out again.

DONE and dusted. Send it to your BLURAY MAN and sell sell sell!

OK... Just did a test here now. It worked fine. But you will have to lift the gamma a touch globally. not a big deal.

You may not have seen this, But this whole job was done on FCP and AE on my lap top in my hotel room. Graded, edited, VFX, the lot. And then went to (print) cinema 4 days later. look better than the film playing after it.
http://www.zoomfilmtv.com.au/ftp/Toia_latest/Toia_Zoom_GGi_1280.mov

So don't think you need big expensive suites to knock out top shelf quality.
enjoy. :) And stop fucking stressing! My kids 14 years old and does this stuff every day, you'll be fine mate. :). It's child's play.

Take a breath. digest and push it out the door.
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
Mr. Fetchko. . . so you are saying that Prores 4444 is not the same thing as 10-bit uncompressed? How would one output a 10-bit uncompressed file from our FCP/DNxHD file?
Click to expand...

1. Install DNxHD codec from Avid website (it's free!) - or heck, just download the free 30-day trial of Avid
2. Load your Quicktime into Compressor
3. Output Quicktime (Set "Compression Type" to "Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2"

But really I think they want a ProRes file. In that case just change Step 3 to ProRes 4444. Try setting Gamma to Auto and see how that looks.

Anyway, don't stress too much. I'm sure when you hear back from the guy he will give you good answers? If he works in ProRes HE HAS DEALT WITH GAMMA ISSUES.

If you're worried, why don't you provide them a reference for brightness and color?

Send over a JPEG, saying "this is how bright the ProRes file looks on our system at 00:30:00:00. If it is being interpreted much brighter or darker on your system, let us know."
Or make your own DVD.
Or send over a Quicktime in Photo-JPEG format as well (that usually doesn't give me problems).

Last time we did an important DVD (which was like 5 years ago) we did a hardware encode. You can adjust gamma on the spot. While sitting in a good room with realtime preview of how it will look on a calibrated monitor.

Anyway, why don't you do this?
1. Grab a 10sec chunk of your film (you can just copy and paste it into a new Quicktime)
2. Save as a Quicktime
3. Output ProRes 4444 from Compressor
4. Send it to us on the forum and post a screenshot of how it looks or a JPEG from the timeline - we'll look at it on our computers and tell you if it looks OK

Seriously, dude. You finished your feature. WELL DONE! No time to get a heart attack now! That'd just suck.

Mark Toia said:
Stephen...

Forget all the scarey stuff. this is easy shit man.

Now trust me, I have done this many times.
A PRO RES EXPORT to cinema screen is more than enough (irrespective of what some people are saying).
Click to expand...

Mark Toia said:
OK... Just did a test here now. It worked fine. But you will have to lift the gamma a touch globally. not a big deal.
Click to expand...

Do you see the contradiction here?

Yes, it's easy to do (Apple style). No, it's harder than it should be to get 100% right (again, Apple style).

Mark, I agree with you TOTALLY on ProRes looking beautiful on filmout and BluRay. Also 100% that Stephen should not stress too much. I graded a feature for my friend - ended up going ProRes to HDCAM tape and BluRay - won best international film at Santa Barbara Film Fest etc. I DID have gamma issues because Adobe's tools (BluRay encoder, After Effects, etc) and Apple's tools (FCP) did have some pretty different opinions on how bright my ProRes files were. Why on earth did Apple screw this up? When Avid got the same thing right years before - with a FREE codec they were giving the source code away for years before ProRes?

I really wish we could just bypass all gamma correction on ProRes. But actually I have had more consistent results using Automatic. What setting do you use?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Mark Toia said:
. This exact second i'm switching in my cinema right now between AVATAR BLU RAY disc (the best blur ray movie ever made) and a BLURAY disc I just burnt of some footage I have just graded in FCP. I cannot see any difference in color saturation, sharpness. blacks... nothing! So don't worry about that either. I just flipped them both onto a 52inche LED monitor, Both the same. PERFECT!
Click to expand...

mark what do you use to encode your blu ray ?

thanks
g
 
Well, I dont know where/when did this thread become and pros/cons about ProRes as a deliverables codec...

Prores 4:4:4 is indeed good enough for almost everything, specially after its graded and such.

No matter if you are going to dvd/youtube/film, my recommendation stands, and only in hindsight will it look reasonable, heck, even prophetical :-)

Best of Luck with everything Stephen, if you need help, just ask!
 
Hey Stephen, do you have access to After Effects? You ARE gonna have to transcode from your DnXHd, but if it's the full 10 bit flavor of dnx, you should be OK for distribution. Is this gonna be projected or mainly be a blu ray dvd kind of thing? If it's optical distro only, you really will be fine.

what I would do to avoid any kind of gamma or color shifts, and I have experienced it time to time going from dnxhd to pro res, i'd just bring the file into AE, output it as 10 bit dpx, and bring it back in, line up the audio and just export it out as whatever you need. If it looks fine going into AE, it will come out the same way. I find AE encoding stays to be one of the truest to your original. that and compressor, but again the dnxhd to pro res direct conversion could be a problem. I'd test it out with a 1 min portion just to see before you waste a lot of time. But I have a good feeling it will work out.

this way you'll also have DPX if it ever goes to DCP. No worries man, these thing happen, and next big project just remember to demand a uncompressed quality version of your finished product, and if you are gonna spend a lot of money on the finish, make sure the film is actually finished! unless you can afford the round trip back! the re conform would have been easy, but also expensive.

best of luck to you, and SERIOUSLY, no worries. It's not as big of a deal as you think. Get it out there, and sell the sh&* out of it!
 
Agree.. :)


Bruce Allen said:
1. Install DNxHD codec from Avid website (it's free!) - or heck, just download the free 30-day trial of Avid
2. Load your Quicktime into Compressor
3. Output Quicktime (Set "Compression Type" to "Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2"

But really I think they want a ProRes file. In that case just change Step 3 to ProRes 4444. Try setting Gamma to Auto and see how that looks.

Anyway, don't stress too much. I'm sure when you hear back from the guy he will give you good answers? If he works in ProRes HE HAS DEALT WITH GAMMA ISSUES.

If you're worried, why don't you provide them a reference for brightness and color?

Send over a JPEG, saying "this is how bright the ProRes file looks on our system at 00:30:00:00. If it is being interpreted much brighter or darker on your system, let us know."
Or make your own DVD.
Or send over a Quicktime in Photo-JPEG format as well (that usually doesn't give me problems).

Last time we did an important DVD (which was like 5 years ago) we did a hardware encode. You can adjust gamma on the spot. While sitting in a good room with realtime preview of how it will look on a calibrated monitor.

Anyway, why don't you do this?
1. Grab a 10sec chunk of your film (you can just copy and paste it into a new Quicktime)
2. Save as a Quicktime
3. Output ProRes 4444 from Compressor
4. Send it to us on the forum and post a screenshot of how it looks or a JPEG from the timeline - we'll look at it on our computers and tell you if it looks OK

Seriously, dude. You finished your feature. WELL DONE! No time to get a heart attack now! That'd just suck.





Do you see the contradiction here?

Yes, it's easy to do (Apple style). No, it's harder than it should be to get 100% right (again, Apple style).

Mark, I agree with you TOTALLY on ProRes looking beautiful on filmout and BluRay. Also 100% that Stephen should not stress too much. I graded a feature for my friend - ended up going ProRes to HDCAM tape and BluRay - won best international film at Santa Barbara Film Fest etc. I DID have gamma issues because Adobe's tools (BluRay encoder, After Effects, etc) and Apple's tools (FCP) did have some pretty different opinions on how bright my ProRes files were. Why on earth did Apple screw this up? When Avid got the same thing right years before - with a FREE codec they were giving the source code away for years before ProRes?

I really wish we could just bypass all gamma correction on ProRes. But actually I have had more consistent results using Automatic. What setting do you use?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
Click to expand...
 
Mark Toia said:
Now... If you cannot get your hands on a AVID MC to do this, try opening the AVID files in QUICKTIME PRO and converting them to an ANIMATION.mov through file/EXPORT. or try throwing them directly into FCP and do the same. ( don't worry about gamma shift at this point)

Now if all you have to do is make a 4444 PRO RES movie, just throw that ANIMATION file. or uncompressed tiff.mov back into finalcutPRO and render it out as a HD 4444 PRO RES mov.
Click to expand...

While I fully agree with you on ProRes – I've seen our stuff as film-out from ProRes on a very big screen – I completely disagree on the Animation route! The Animation codec is RGB and 8 bit only, it'll wreck the image. Not only gamma, but all kinds of issues. It's all but a very old codec…
 
Maybe your doing something wrong... ? It's just an another uncompressed format. We see not a scratch of difference between that, tiffs, tga's... 8bit, 10 bit... Also once you have finished grading your stuff, 8 bit is fine. No need to get hung up on 10bit viewing.
 
Frank has good advice up there, Stephen. You should listen to him.

My advice would be to put the files on a drive and hand-deliver them to your distributor, then ask if they can either show you the session on a monitor or at least send you a check disk in a day or two.

ProRes 444 looks fine, even for Blu-ray. I just worked on a $3,000,000 pilot that delivered today in Avid DNxHD 220, to CBS. If CBS will air it, then I'd say that's good enough for broadcast as well.

The files won't be anywhere near 2TB if they're just 1920x1080 HD. I think it's maybe 500GB per hour, tops (and that would be uncompressed 10-bit DPX).

You need a post supervisor to help you with this and save you time and money. Make sure you follow the distributor's specs to the letter, particularly for head format, tones, slates, channel assignments, peak levels, textless elements, and so on.
 
Mark Toia said:
This exact second i'm switching in my cinema right now between AVATAR BLU RAY disc (the best blur ray movie ever made) and a BLURAY disc I just burnt of some footage I have just graded in FCP. I cannot see any difference in color saturation, sharpness. blacks... nothing! So don't worry about that either. I just flipped them both onto a 52inche LED monitor, Both the same. PERFECT!
Click to expand...

Mark what do you use to encode blu ray?

thanks

g
 
oooh... sorry mate, I don't do many BLURAYS. I just knock them out via toast or through FCP. nouthing technical.
What ever those programs use to encode I supose. Sorry mate, im a dummy with blue ray or DVD's . I just drop them in they do there thing. they pop out and they work? .

Sorry. ask me something else,
 
@ Gabriele: The Blu-ray encoding in FCP is not bad actually, even if the format is generally neglected by Apple. If you'd like to have an alternative, give Adobe Media Encoder a try.

@ Mark: Are we really both talking about the Animation codec? Even the conversion from YUV to RGB as Apple does it is giving me subtle color shifts.
 
For high end projectors, you want the 10 bit highest quality file possible, to reduce banding and other artifacts that may show up if it's a 10 bit+ projector. lots of reasons to have the highest quality file possible for project.

blu ray, I've encoded and burned with media encoder/encore cs5. GREAT results. super high quality h264, as true to the original as a h264 can get. highly recommend it. 2 pass vbr, i set target BR to 30, and max to 35. it looks awesome.
 
You want a 10Bit master ALWAYS. Thats part of future proofing your product. Recently I had a client have his material rejected due to banding caused by 8 bit, Funny thing it was the itunes store that rejected the video on QC basis.

It -SEEMS- to me that QC is becoming more and more widespread. Maybe someone with more experience can chime in?


Hey Stephen, how are you doing? No stroke yet? Did you hear back from the guy asking for the uncompressed prores?
 
Frank Cueto said:
You want a 10Bit master ALWAYS. Thats part of future proofing your product. Recently I had a client have his material rejected due to banding caused by 8 bit, Funny thing it was the itunes store that rejected the video on QC basis.
Click to expand...
I'm surprised the iTunes Store would do this. People forget, there was 8-bit standard-def video for decades prior to HD. And Blu-ray is still 8-bit. I'm still skeptical that any consumer monitors can do true 10-bit. Having said that, no question I'd much rather deal with real 10-bit 444 material in post, preferably uncompressed.

I've done some projects where Canon EOS still camera footage was intercut with a broadcast camera, and I ran into some bit-depth issues in sky shots. We wound up pulling a key and doing a defocus to kind of "smear" the banding to help disguise it. Nobody noticed and it sailed right through QC. Same thing with some clipped images that I couldn't coax any detail out of. Good color-correction can serve as a bandaid on problem areas like this; it's not ideal, but it helps.

I think the earlier comments for Stephen to output the entire project to HDCam-SR are pretty valid. I can't think of a video distributor that can't accept this tape format for delivery. At least this way, you can play the tape on a broadcast Rec-709 monitor and know whether or not it's kosher, with no questions on gamma, file format, or other issues.
 
Marc Wielage said:
People forget, there was 8-bit standard-def video for decades prior to HD.
Click to expand...

Even if you are going to 8 bits in the end use its good to use at least 10bpc if not 16bpc to reduce scaling errors as conversion to the 16-235 limits from 0-255 makes for scaling errors, worse if you go the other way around since you get histogram gaps.

Quality control for digital broadcast? How much worse could anyone make in the first place?

Any gamma or brightness or contrast adjustment on 8 bit data will increase banding and scaling errors, you cannot grade 8 bit data that is noiseless without introducing histogram gaps, and images are de-noised for compression. The only time you can get away with 8 bit source images is if the they will be reduced in size since that adds bits when the internal data size used is larger and you average data between pixels that have some noise around their data value that falls between the 8 bit steps, such as going from 4K uncompressed film scan down to DVD size in one step 8bit to 8bit.

TV sets low pass the chroma, so average pixels together in some ways.
 
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