Bd/dvd -> ??? -> dcp

[jeffreyt2000]

Hello,
I am a newbie here and have been researching for a couple of days, but have not really found a clear description of what I am trying to do.

We are working on a student/fun project where we are taking 10 short clips from a mix of 4 Blue-Ray and 6 DVD’s (all which I own), incorporating with some original video/photography, and then creating DCP for display at a local theater with digital cinema. We will have access to the theater in advance to test DCP data sets for compatibility.

The tools we currently have are Pavtube Bytecopy, Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate , Leawo BD Ripper, and Adobe Premiere CC 2014 (with Wraptor DCP) - I can get others if needed, btu think these may be sufficient. I am going to spend the weekend ripping, converting, merging, and outputting and am looking for advice on the right formats to start with when ripping. Since this will be shown in a small theater (with instructors and students present) and the content includes music, I would like the highest quality video and sound possible. Disk space is not an issue.

So my main question is – what are the best formats to use when pulling the clips from the DVD/BD for importing into Premiere Pro where I will combine the elements and output to DCP?

Pavtube Bytecopy supports multi-track audio to .mkv, mp4, mov as well as other HD formats. I was thinking mkv, but don’t think Premiere supports that and would rather avoid an extra conversion step. It can also encode the video with h264 codec to 24 fps to simplify the later creation of DCP (which I believe is at 24 fps).

Sources:
- DVD – mpeg2video (720x480), AC3 2 channel
- DVD – mpeg2video (720x480), AC3 6 channel
- BD – vc1 (1920x1080), dtshd-m 6 channel
- BD – h264(1920x1080), dtshd-m 6 channel

Feedback appreciated on:
- Format to rip to (mkv, mp4, etc)
- Video coding – planning on source (original) bitrate and size with h264 codec and 24fps
- Audio coding – planning on ac3, 256K bitrate, 48k sample rate, and 5.1 channels

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Jeff

[newpball]

First thing: I optimistically assume this is a fully educational project and rights issues are already fully addressed and lock stock and barrel. I am sure some vigilantes on this forum will take ample time interrupting this interesting topic with "throwing the book at you".

Best option
Talk to the operator in the theater. Make him your friend. Give him his favorite Starbucks drink and he will likely help you solve all your problems.

Worst option
Don't talk to the operator in the theater and do everything in hot air and provide the video 10 minutes before the show.

Editor
An editor is just a tool, as long as it can handle a good editing codec just use what you are comfortable with.

Quality
Get all your (potential) clips transcoded to the editing codec of your choice with a uniform framerate (likely 24p but check the with the technician) and colorspace before you throw everything in the editor. And H.264 is NOT an editing codec, use something wavelet based.

Sound
5.1. 24 bit is probably going to be your 'easy' option. Also here convert to a uniform format and similar levels before you throw things in the editor.

Premiere Pro
Wraptor may be your friend.

Again, if you do not talk with the theater technician beforehand and you have not done this before your project is destined to become an epic failure.

[jeffreyt2000]

Thanks newpall,

Yes - educational project for private viewing and we are covered. We hope it will later turn into a 1 hour documentary subject down the road - at that time all full rights will need to be obtained. As a photographer and SW developer (and one of my products was cracked and can be purchased in China for $5 without my approval), I am very conscious of proper rights and compensation issues.

Theater operator - agree - have already bought him and the manager several coffees much better than Starbucks . Have both their cell numbers and email addresses (as well as the theater owner) - and they are fully aware of everything we are doing and fully supportive. As I mentioned, I have access through them to the theater and projection equipment most days of the week if needed (1 hour before 1st show). So set there. My intent is to create several test DCP datasets over the weekend to bring to the theater early next week. If that goes well, then I will complete the project in the format that seems to work best (or work at all).

It is the next step for which I need advice - what format should I extract to that will maintain a high level of quality and work well in Premiere Pro CC. There is a plethora of choices ranging from multi-track lossless-mkv/mp4/mov to wmp/mpeg-2/mov for NLE (geared to Premiere Pro).

I know these may be basic questions. I am very experienced with digital photography formats, editing, etc with years of experience with that (and Adobe products). Video and sound are new to me.

I intend to get all the snippets of video into the same codec, framerate, etc prior to bringing into Premiere. I just need to know what to format/codec to target before I spend multiple hours loading, trimming, etc. Disk space and processing time are not really an issue - but final quality and ease of working with for a novice are.

Thanks

[newpball]

I intend to get all the snippets of video into the same codec, framerate, etc prior to bringing into Premiere. I just need to know what to format/codec to target before I spend multiple hours loading, trimming, etc. Disk space and processing time are not really an issue - but final quality and ease of working with for a novice are.

It's a bit like arguing Nikon vs Canon for photo cameras.

For PP I would recommend DNxHD, personally I love Cineform but I get constant crashes with Cineform on the latest version of PP so beware!

Also make sure that if you have to convert framerates you do it with quality, e.g. Twixtor or at the least go through After Effects blending.

DVD uses Rec.601 while HD uses Rec.709 so you would have to convert that and then of course DCP uses again another format (brilliant engineers can 'explain' why we need the zoo).

Also make sure you use perfect 24p not 23.98!

[Cornucopia]

A DCP expects exactly 24Fps, 2k (2048x1080, of which 1998x1080 is used for Cine Flat) for the visual and 24bit, 48kHz LPCM (WAV) for the audio (there are other options, but they won't be optimal for your material).

I would recommend that you conform ALL your material to that level, using uncompressed/losslessly-compressed formats, PRIOR to ingest into Premiere.

For that, I would absolutely NOT use PAVTube, etc. as those are geared towards recompression to very lossy versions.
Instead, RIP your DVD & BD assets losslessly to native VOB (in the case of DVD) and M2TS (in the case of BD) filesets. Then, use AVISynth or ffmpeg, or similar method to convert to lossless versions (DNxHD & Cineform & ProRes & Edius HQX are possible and work smoothly, but they are slightly lossy FYI). Lossless codecs such as UTvideo, MagicYUV, Lagarith, HuffYUV, etc will be larger still (and so you will need larger capacity drives and swifter bandwidth), but they will incur NO additional loss throughout the process by virtue of theircompression. All loss would happen with resize interpolations, colorspace changes (preliminary YUV4:2:0->YUV4:2:2/4:4:4/RGB24 & final ->XYZ) and with the JP2k lossy compression.

Your Final container needs to be 2048x1080, but with active picture for "Cine Flat" using 1998x1080. I would recommend you upsize, using probably a Spline or Sinc resizer, from 720x480 to 1440x1080 (for 4:3 DAR pictures) or 1920x1080 (for 16:9 DAR pictures), taking into account the complications that would arise if your sources were interlaced (assuming ultimately film-based, hopefully not interlaced). Then, you won't resize your HD material, but you would pad both (with black) to the 2048x1080 container dimension. Upon setup of your DCP, you would instruct it to be Cine Flat and it would only project the 1998x1080 active picture portion. So your 1920x1080 has 39 pixels pillarboxing on each side (not too noticeable) and your 1440 would have more, as would be expected, but that's all. You cannot avoid upsizing your SD material if you intend it to be included in a DCP, but this at least will avoid upscaling your HD material.

Re: framerate, your DVDs would likely be 29.97, but hopefully they are in actuality 23.976 with flags. If so, you can use DGIndex/DGDecode to IVTC to get back to that original 23.976 in your AVISynth script (my recommendation). Then, you can do an "AssumeFPS ("film") to get to true 24fps. Note you will have to do a +0.1% time/speed adjustment in your corresponding audio file to remain in sync. This can be done with a resample ahead of time or a resample in the NLE or a resample ad DCP export time. I recommend ahead of time. The BD video would likely either be at 23.976 native already (requiring NO ITVC, but still requiring the AssumeFPS and the accompanying audio speedup) or true native 24 (which can be directly imported with no adjustment to V or A). If you have non-film footage on those DVD/BDs, the process begins to get much more complicated. Note: I do not recommend going through Twixtor or AE for simple IVTC nor AssumeFPS pullup, only for those complicated other (interlaced?) framerates. And even then, AVISynth may be the best quality choice.

Those LL codecs I mentioned are mainly for use with AVI containers. If you intend to go the MOV container route, use either Animation(only @100%) or MagicYUV or UTvideo. The latter 2 have components both for AVI (Windows) and for MOV (Win or Mac). Similarly, if you go the slightly lossy route, you have to choose which container to use: DNxHD only works in MXF and MOV containers, ProRes "officially" only encodes in MOV containers on Macs but plays back on both Mac+Win (unofficial encoders can do it though). Cineform and Edius HQX are currently the only totally cross-platform mezzanine codecs. AFA colorspace, some of those accept YUV in various flavors, some only RGB. You will have to judge which works best for you. There is no way to convert directly from YUV4:2:0 sources to XYZ final with just one stage of conversion (as no reasonably priced editing/converting apps work in XYZ mode), so your best bet is the 2 stages previously mentioned.

I would recommend that you decode your AC3/MP2/DTS audio files to LPCM (WAV) at 16bit/48kHz (for however many channels you've got). Then load those (or time-corrected/resampled versions of those) into your editor (which was set for 24bit/48kHz/??channels). Then export to 24bit, 48kHz. You won't get any improvement in quality by using 24bit source masters if they aren't already in that format (not very likely), but you will gain benefit from 24bit mixing/editing environment (due to better LSB math) and that will retain as much as possible when going to your DCP final.

Similar to the other upsizing/upscaling issues for video, you may have to wrangle how to upmix your material if you intend a multichannel master. Conversely, you may have to downmix your multichannel source(s) if you intend a stereo master.

newpball's suggestion of Wraptor for PP is a good one, but it isn't real cheap. You can RENT it for 30days for $60. Hopefully you would have already done ALL the editing by then and just need to do an export so you usage time would fit within that period (depends on whether you made everything fully DCI-compliant or not). If you can't fit that time, 1 year rental is $360 and purchase is $699.
Alternately, you could use OpenDCP (FOSS software). It may not be quite as compliant or bulletproof as Wraptor, but it has already a proven track record, so would likely be fully usable for your needs (especially if you've followed my suggestion and created compliant rendered master files).

HTH,
Scott

[jeffreyt2000]

Thanks again Newpall and thanks Scott,

Tried the DNxHD in MOV container route and the files are crashing PP. I will be looking into that tonight (updating codecs, etc.) since we ran out of time over the weekend - real life gets in the way sometimes of these side projects. But we used PavTube to rip directly from the source to Avid DNxHD - so that might also be part of the problem based on Scott's feedback (read reply after the weekend activities).
- vid: 440K bitrate, 24fps,
- aud: pcn, 16bit/48kHz

I also met with the team and the theater and we are reevaluating our options. DCP may not be required so we may try to simply the initial phase and worry about DCP later. We have the option of creating a BD which might be easier at the cost of slightly lower quality.

We will review the latest feedback from Scott and reexamine what we are usng and how we are approaching this initial project.

Any further feedback is graciously accepted.

[newpball]

I also met with the team and the theater and we are reevaluating our options. DCP may not be required so we may try to simply the initial phase and worry about DCP later. We have the option of creating a BD which might be easier at the cost of slightly lower quality.

Aim for both, reserve the BD for plan B.