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to the big screen
how do you get the feature film movie from fcp to the theater screen, with the quality of picture it is in fcp?
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20 Replies
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I assume you are talking about HD Content? Your question wasn’t very specific. For festivals, most people lay HD content back to HDCAM SR and have it projected from a video projector fed by the tape deck. Another way is to have it scanned back to film and have it projected from a film projector.
Tell us more about your source material and where it will be projected.
Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
shot it on p2 HVX200, edited on final cut pro, compressed to dvd studio pro and lost so much picture quality. i have the opportunity of showing the movie in a theater, saw it today there as a test run, and i was not pleased. why do the images look so perfect in final cut pro and then so not perfect when i play the dvd from dvd studio pro. oh, and i’m almost out of money for this, how expensive is it to get a film print?
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Digital Theaters are playing from servers.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group -
yeah but I don’t have that option here. what does scanning back to film mean? is it expensive
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If the cost of laying back to HDCAM SR is too much, then printing out to film is right out. It’s not cheap.
Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
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If the theater is using a digital projector of some kind (they must be doing this) you might consider playing off an Apple TV at 720p.
The apple tv ($200) is probably about the same cost as a HDCAM dub.
T.
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[Martha Wilson] “how expensive is it to get a film print?”
Typically somewhere between $20-30,000, depending on the length of your film. Plus the cost of upconverting, color correction, etc.
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/ -
There are many variables here.
how you monitored your Edit. computer monitor, large accurate plasma, accurate HDSDI monitor?
You have a product after FCP with properties suitable for screening on a screen that projects light outward through whatever material glass, plastic either from a CRT or LCD and it works in that color gamut.
Now you want to project light carrying your image and bounce it of a reflective surface at a distance.
This is a whole different situation. typically there are a whole different set of look up tables (little data bases) that emulate what the picture will look like in other environments theater projection just one of them. to get all this right is a lot of money. the equipment is expensive more importantly the skilled operator is expensive. It’s a good time to learn about the processes required for this.
Most people will understand the situation and if you are in a festival most everybody else will be subject to the same situation.
If the story is compelling, the edit compliments that story and the audio enhances the emotion of the story, someone else will pay for that expensive stuff to get a theatrical release , or if released on DVD and authored using hardware tools, you’ll be looking at it pretty close to the way you now see it in FCPDoug Beal
Editor / Engineer
Rock Creative Images
Nashville TN -
The Apple TV would work but I do not suggest any of my clients ever use an Apple TV for playback. For a higher quality playback device I use a MacBook Pro with either QuickTime or Playback Pro; This will provide us with a much more suitable product for professional workflow. Better interface, 1080p vs 720p, DVI vs HDMI, etc.
There are many open workflow questions that are not presented or answered here so I’ll keep this as short as possible:
The quality of your film presentation depends on the quality of your source media (you know this). What really matters is the playback device for your film and the compression or transfer method you use to get it to your playback device. If it is truly a digital cinema environment with DCI standards then you’ll need to create an .MXF wrapped file to load into the Digital Cinema Server. Digital Cinema projectors have a native resolution of 2048 x 1080.
You’re best bet for maintaining image quality is not to up or down rez your material but leave the frame size the same as your native sequence. You’re playback device will do a better job scaling the video then using software based methods. If you are working with standard def material you will want to consider converting your NTSC frame size to a square pixel format for digital playback so your film does not inadvertently display at the wrong aspect ratio. You will most likely want to de-interlace your media at some point as well.
You need to find out the best method of presenting your digital file to the venue. DVD is a great distribution format but these days it is not the best way to present your media. HDCam SR is excellent but it usually goes for $1,500 to $2,000 per day rental rate. The Mac is great for high def playback but if the venue doesn’t have any options for DVI then we need additional interface equipment or a different solution for playback.
Let me know if you have questions.
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Brian Alexander
Video Engineer/Digital Media Specialist
PixelManagement@gmail.com -
[Brian Alexander] “The Apple TV would work but I do not suggest any of my clients ever use an Apple TV for playback. For a higher quality playback device I use a MacBook Pro with either QuickTime or Playback Pro; This will provide us with a much more suitable product for professional workflow. Better interface, 1080p vs 720p, DVI vs HDMI, etc. “
Quite honestly, I would recommend an Apple TV over a MacBook Pro. The box is designed for video playback, has all the necessary video connectivity built in and the picture quality is outstanding when you compress the video properly for that box. A MacBook Pro will choke on a very high quality video such as ProRes 1080p or even 1080i. So you’re going to have to compress to H.264 for playback anyway unless you’re running an external RAID with an AJA Io HD box.
If done right, Apple TV is the same quality as BluRay disc.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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