Non-matching aspects within content areas...

[Ryan Gallagher]

Consider this a feature request?

The one thing I constantly do with DOM, that is not as intuitive as it could be, is resize pre-show content from one provided aspect to match the cinema masking aspect of a feature, as we have movable top/sides (but none of it automated), and always mask to the feature.

It is doable of course, if you do the math combined with using the crop tool as needed to true up your content outline. But it can be a slog depending on the aspect target.

Example:
178 mp4s or F178 DCPs provided for pre-roll. But film is neither 185 or 239. Any of the aspects listed as non-standard advanced containers in the DOM make it relatively simple because our projectors handle those containers fine. Where you get into trouble is with the ones not listed, such as F200 or F220, or god forbid S220.

A more egregious Example (fresh memory):
Pre-roll content provided as 240 within a 178 matted prores file. *face palm*.

We often find ourselves spinning the following common "resized" pre-roll versions using DOM regardless of how it was provided:

Easy:
- within a Flat container
- within a Scope container
Easy (provided custom containers work):
- within a 235 container (or S235 content area)
- within a 178 container (or F178 content area)
- within a 166 container (or F166 content area)
- within a 138 container (or F138 content area)
- within a 133 container (or F133 content area)
Hard:
- within a F200 content area (this is the crux one currently, not made easy by using a custom container, and comes up ALOT).
- within a F220 content area (we don't do this one on the regular, but it does come up).
- any other weirdness, such as F100 etc.

I realize there are lots of ways to skin this cat. But in festival mode these things often come up on the fly and considering the time available DOM is our go-to tool for fixing it. I made a handy calculator for doing the DOM scale math on the aspects we can't cheat via the custom container, and we have a cheat-sheet posted for those less comfortable with the calculator. But in a perfect world DOM would make this a no-stress event.

The downside of properly masking for the film! Thanks for considering.

[carl]

So: you have a feature which is F200, i.e. 1998x999. Then you have a pre-show which is 1.33:1, and you want it to be unstretched, uncropped, but instead to fit in the 1998x999 frame?

I guess using "custom scale" to 2:1 is no good, because it stretches the content. How about another option in that dialog: "Fit to DCP container without scale" or whatever, so you click "custom", "Edit...", enter 2 in the box. Would that work?

Or is there a better "ideal" workflow? (assuming anything were possible).

[Ryan Gallagher]

Hey Carl. Thanks for hearing it out!

Your example is correct, although 1.33 preshow would be rare unless maybe we were showing a short ahead of a F200 film. It's usually 178 or 185 preshow, sometimes a separate 239 preshow is also provided. But yes should work universally from any content to any target ratios. Shoving other preshows into a 133 feature masking is the more common 133 task.

I think you are fully grocking the task, just expounding:

So I think "Fit to DCP Container without Scale" is effectively what it already does when you drop in content to any existing container. The catch is that we aren't allowed to set a custom 200 or 220 container.

Barring just adding more custom containers, I think within the custom dialog if there were just a way to tell it to "scale to within" (within a ratio additionally constricted by the container) rather than stretch to a custom ratio, and if it would center that scaled result in whatever container we happen to be utilizing (as if it was all content and not partially matted), that would perhaps be the golden ticket to avoiding the math/lookups.

A still useful but slightly less direct route would be to allow us to "link" the horizontal and vertical values in the custom scale dialog. If we knew 999 was our vertical target that would be all we need to know, horizontal would follow changes.

I'm not sure that works in all situations, but at least talking about it makes sense.

The "shortcut" method would be to just add a couple more custom containers, but may not work on all projectors, and doesn't allow for the really oddball non-normal ratios.

My current workflow is this, for a 178 preroll into F200 film masking, as an example:

- Start a FLAT project
- Import media.
- Custom "Scale"
- Input the translation math for the H and V values that correspond to the 999 height restriction (1776 x 999 in this case)
- Give it a custom name and denote F200, cause default naming is not indicative of the 200 property, SMPTE will still cite the container and content ratio regardless of scaling to within a 3rd target.
- Make DCP and try it on the masked screen.

We lack ILS motor for our zoom. If we had that there would probably be a projector channel centric way to do it too, but no one has room in their channel list for all the variations possible, so we tend to just make or re-make targeted DCPs. We use the crap out of this for festivals with 2.00 aspect, for our classic series our 70mm 2.20 aspect is the more likely to crop up.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Additionally... Whatever you conjure up for us to try, it should still honor content-crops ahead of the content scaling... for if they provided pre-roll with black matting burned in.
Thanks!