Am I doing this right?

[Seanzzxx]

Hey kind people, I need someone to basically tell me I am not messing up, and the people around me (including me, let's be honest...) don't have the technological know-how to confirm I am doing this right. Any advice would be MUCH appreciated.

I have a Prores 444 ( with rec.709 color space) file exported through Davinci in 1920x1080. It has black frames at the top and bottom cropping it to 2:1, but the file is 1920x1080. This is the projector (it's at a large cinema), I've been told it's in DCI-P3 color space: https://www.barco.com/en/Products/Proje ... spx#!specs

Do I understand correctly that to get this to a DCP file in the best possible resolution we need to do the following:

- The container is 1:85
- We don't scale or crop the film (Some people have told me to crop the film, some people told me it doesn't matter?)
- The color space we leave at rec.709 and it will be suitable for cinemashowing? Or should we put it on P3?

This is what we have right now , does that look correct? Thank you guys so, so, so much - as you can tell I am pretty stressed.

[carl]

The color space we leave at rec.709 and it will be suitable for cinemashowing? Or should we put it on P3?

Leave it on Rec. 709. That's where you tell DCP-o-matic what colourspace your source file is in. It will take care of the P3 stuff.

For the sizing, what you've done is ok. I think you could set "scale to" to 1.85 which will get rid of the black left and right but this will scale your image slightly which may degrade it a bit.

[Carsten]

Hmm, color space as Carl says. Putting 1920*960 (or letterboxed 1920*1080) into a flat container leaves back bars all around the image. Signal wise, yes, no scaling, but not nice presentation wise. Not on any screen type.

I don't know the scope of the project, but it is easy (just takes some time) to make two versions of it. One without scaling into a flat container, one with scaling to flat into a flat container. Then see in a cinema what you like best. Scaling artifacts most of the time are not immediately visible, just give you a bad feeling. Which in this case is right, you should choose proper image proportions next time you are working for cinema

Will this be screened at select screens only, or is it for wide distribution?

- Carsten

[Seanzzxx]

The movie was shot to be cropped to scope, the reasons why we didn't end up doing this are too many to go into right now. So just so I'm getting this right, scaling the image to 1.85 will enlarge it but not distort it? I thought it would stretch the image out horizontally? Would this on your opinion be preferable to having the black bars? Thanks a lot!

To give some examples:

This is the 1.85:1 aspect container without scaling: http://imgur.com/gEL05pd This is already not really an option anymore, since the director is bothered too much by the empty space on the sides.

This is the version with scaling: http://imgur.com/LnLOPeY The image seems to get slightly distorted here.

This is the version with the image slightly stretched (through cropping) vertically as well, so as to get back to original proportions again: http://imgur.com/OalHPlT

Would this hurt image quality? Would it be preferable over the distorted image? Am I asking too many stupid questions? Thank you guys so much.

EDIT: Oh, if they use Doremi Cinema, what format should our drives be? The operator couldn't tell us for some reason... And it's for a select showing of 3 days at a local cinema!

[Carsten]

You have to understand the difference between 'Scale To' under Content and 'Container' under DCP. Having black bars is not nice (depending on screen type), but having black bars all around the image is the worst possible choice. Scaling to flat width will only leave very small black bars on top and bottom. Your image content (ex-black bars) will go from 1920/960 to 1998/999. You need to crop away the black letterbox bars, though. The same is achieved by using the 'Scale to fit width' under the 'content' drop down menu. It solves the cropping slightly different (automatic), but achieves the same result.

- Carsten

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