{"id":385,"date":"2012-05-04T15:06:39","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T22:06:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/?p=385"},"modified":"2012-05-04T15:06:39","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T22:06:39","slug":"di-finishing-for-act-of-valor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2012\/05\/04\/di-finishing-for-act-of-valor\/","title":{"rendered":"DI Finishing for Act of Valor"},"content":{"rendered":"

The biggest challenge we faced in the DI<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0finishing process for Act of Valor<\/a>, was preparing for three different aspect ratios for our deliverable, without sacrificing resolution.\u00c2\u00a0 All of our footage was shot 1.78 (16×9) and we were required to deliver 2.39, 178, and 1.33 versions of the film.\u00c2\u00a0 The normal way to do this is to letterbox and reposition for finishing in 2.39, and then use that master to make the final 1.78 and 1.33 copies by cropping out the excess on the sides.\u00c2\u00a0 The problem is that you lose a nearly half of your image resolution in that process, which we couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t afford to do with the 5D<\/a> source material, if we wanted a crisp looking 16×9 version for Blu-Ray and other 1080p distribution.<\/p>\n

Our solution was to do our entire post process on the full 16×9 image, with software letterboxing applied for monitoring.\u00c2\u00a0 This allowed us to maintain the full scope of our image throughout the post process, but required some creative project management.\u00c2\u00a0 All reframing had to be deferred until after we split out the versions for different aspect ratios.\u00c2\u00a0 That meant that all titles had to be applied after that point as well, so they wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get repositioned out of sight in 2.39.\u00c2\u00a0 And any changes we made to the movie after we split into different versions would need to be made to each version, and carefully tracked.
\n
\nUsing Premiere Pro CS5.5<\/a> to do the final online of the movie provided us with an unusual solution.\u00c2\u00a0 We kept the full aspect ratio footage in a source sequence, which is where we would usually add changes and VFX shots.\u00c2\u00a0 As we further processed the footage, new versions would stack up in this sequence. (Original shot, Twixtor render, colored-corrected export, etc.)\u00c2\u00a0 We would export from this sequence to send footage to color correction, or our texture and density passes.<\/p>\n

Using a separate master sequence, with that source sequence as the main source clip on the timeline, I sliced up that instance based on timing from an imported offline EDL<\/a>. (PageDown, CRTL+K, repeat)\u00c2\u00a0 Next I duplicated that sequence of clips across three layers, one for each aspect ratio.\u00c2\u00a0 I then\u00c2\u00a0went through one layer at a time, and used the motion effect to zoom in or shift any shot that needed adjustment for that aspect ratio. This was usually vertical shift for 2.39, zoom for 1.78, and horizontal shift for 1.33, but varied greatly for different shots.\u00c2\u00a0 For the 239 version, I brought in\u00c2\u00a0an Avid<\/a> export as a guide-track, with a garbage matte to split the screen, so I could easily match the reframing Scott had done in the Avid.\u00c2\u00a0 For the other two aspect ratios, the focus was on cropping out anything that didn’t belong in the shot, and I reframed based on what I knew Scott’s intent was for the shots.\u00c2\u00a0 We also added the subtitles and other overlays on higher layers on this master sequence.\u00c2\u00a0 All preview outputs for review, and the final DPXs, were exported from this sequence.<\/p>\n

When it came time to prepare slightly altered cuts for certain markets, we were able to do that by further using the existing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153master\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sequences as source in new timelines.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It was easy to trim out sections, and\u00c2\u00a0usually the new clips were added to an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153additional source\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sequence, which was then cut into the new timeline with a separate layer for each aspect ratio.\u00c2\u00a0 So as long as the correct aspect ratio layers were selected in BOTH the “master” sequence and the new altered timeline, it all synced up perfectly.<\/p>\n

This allowed every change\u00c2\u00a0in the movie to be easily propagated across all versions automatically, which both saved time and prevented mistakes.\u00c2\u00a0 I was able to do simple dust busting fixes in Photoshop, even at the last minute, and as long as my changes were made in the source sequence, it would be corrected in every aspect ratio, of every version of the cut.<\/p>\n

With this framework in place, we exported the source sequences to be processed in Cinnafilm\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/a> Dark Energy<\/a> software.\u00c2\u00a0 We used their tools to de-noise<\/a> the H.264<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0based\u00c2\u00a0footage\u00c2\u00a0from the 5D, and add back in a level of synthetic film grain, to better match with the\u00c2\u00a0footage that had been shot on film.\u00c2\u00a0 Shane and Scott worked with our texture artist Monte Contractor to dial in the look they wanted, especially for the darker scenes, (where you find the most noise) which was then applied in varying degrees to the rest of the movie.\u00c2\u00a0 Once that process was completed, the exported DPXs were just added as a new layer to the source sequence, and were ready to use in any version we needed.\u00c2\u00a0 The same was true for when we had a separate film density pass done\u00c2\u00a0near the end of our finishing\u00c2\u00a0process.<\/p>\n

Once all of our preparations were done, I just selected all the correct layers for a given aspect ratio\u00c2\u00a0across all the sequences, and\u00c2\u00a0queued up\u00c2\u00a0all of the\u00c2\u00a0DPX exports\u00c2\u00a0for that version of the movie in Adobe Media Encoder.\u00c2\u00a0 Once they were going, I would\u00c2\u00a0select the layers\u00c2\u00a0for a different aspect ratio, and get that queued.\u00c2\u00a0 We exported DPXs directly to external USB3 drives, to save time and space, with so many versions to deliver, at 1.5TB each.\u00c2\u00a0 I then used those DPXs as source for\u00c2\u00a0Cineform<\/a> compressed\u00c2\u00a0AVI files,\u00c2\u00a0created by batching Cineform’s DPX2CF.exe<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0tool.\u00c2\u00a0 This allowed us to keep a\u00c2\u00a0compressed version\u00c2\u00a0of our exports\u00c2\u00a0on site, and\u00c2\u00a0gave us the ability\u00c2\u00a0to verify that there were no render errors, since the outgoing DPXs were the source for\u00c2\u00a0our compressed\u00c2\u00a0AVIs.\u00c2\u00a0 I was able to do all of the final exports in a single weekend to three 3TB external drives, and schedule the read-back\u00c2\u00a0conversions to happen when other drives were being written to by Media Encoder, since the individual USB3\u00c2\u00a0drives were\u00c2\u00a0technically the bottleneck.\u00c2\u00a0 Once Laser Pacific<\/a> had all of our master DPXs, they created the DCP,\u00c2\u00a0did the\u00c2\u00a0HDCam-SR laybacks, and printed it out to film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The biggest challenge we faced in the DI\u00c2\u00a0finishing process for Act of Valor, was preparing for three different aspect ratios for our deliverable, without sacrificing resolution.\u00c2\u00a0 All of our footage was shot 1.78 (16×9) and we were required to deliver 2.39, 178, and 1.33 versions of the film.\u00c2\u00a0 The normal way to do this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[16,48,43,44,15,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}