Is there a way to pre-render the video?

Anything and everything to do with DCP-o-matic.
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Energy
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Dec 17, 2019 9:49 am

Is there a way to pre-render the video?

Post by Energy »

Hi all -

So getting my first feature in a cinema and been given the task of creating the DCP. The problem is that things are time sensitive. I have an MXF of the film and it's estimating 22 hours for DCP-o-matic to create the film (just too long). I can also resort to Adobe Premiere which seems to handle the render time at 8 hours... something that's much more manageable, but the flexibility of DCP-o-matic and the options seem much greater.

At the moment the film is in a state where the footage is ready to go, but I'm waiting for the final 5.1 mix. If I render the footage in Premiere in a specific format can I get DCP-O-Matic to just mux the film with the audio. Skipping (or doing very little) encoding?

I have a macbook pro or a large windows pc (that's much more powerful than the MBP) but both seem to be doing similar in the performance speed on premiere and DCP-o-matic. Ideas?

Thanks!
carl
Site Admin
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Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 2:53 pm

Re: Is there a way to pre-render the video?

Post by carl »

You should be able to make a project containing just your video file, then make a DCP from that. DCP-o-matic will add silence. Then add the 5.1 mix in when it's ready, make the DCP again and it should go quick(-ish), reusing the old video.
Energy
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Dec 17, 2019 9:49 am

Re: Is there a way to pre-render the video?

Post by Energy »

I'm blind & stupid - I didn't even see there was an 'add DCP' option under the add video.

Just did a demo with the trailer of the film. It was taking 15 minutes to do the 1 minute 10 on my MBP. That's dropped down to 48 seconds on the second pass with the audio added in separately. That's a good send carl.

Truly thank you. Weight lifted!
Carsten
Posts: 2648
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 9:11 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Is there a way to pre-render the video?

Post by Carsten »

Make sure the audio you get is properly timed to the same master. You can, however trim and shift audio vs. video in DCP-o-matic before the encoding if necessary.

DCP-o-matic will not only accept a full DCP, but also the bare MXF video file from your prerendered DCP for encode-free reutilization.
That way, you do not need to bother about the silent audio track from the full DCP in the final project (even though it's simple to mute it).

The very final stage of the conversion will still take a while, because, even if DCP-o-matic reuses the image data without recompression, it will still compute the hash value, and that needs a while on it's own. But still, it will go much faster.

- Carsten
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