need to make Blu-ray for big screen screening ASAP

[David Roth weiss]

Either go to a facility that does BluRays all the time, or create a great SD DVD yourself. SD DVDs can look superb when projected, and the audience seldom knows the difference.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Warren Eig]

If you own Encore that will work. We do this all the time in CS5.

Warren Eig
O 310-470-0905

email: warren@babyboompictures.com
website: https://www.babyboompictures.com

https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/AFX.html
https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/KnitWits_Movie.html
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0251670/

EDITING REEL: https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/Editing_Reel.html
TITLE DESIGN: https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/Titles_Reel.html

[Johnny Smith]

Bringing Mac Pro instead of Blu-Ray now.
We’ll use VGA (15 pin ) or DVI out and the christie projector will act as a 2nd monitor.

Anyone have any experience or suggestions with this?
Should I be making uncompressed 1920 x 1080 quicktime or use a codec or just fcp’s sequence?

(David, we shot on 35mm and spent thousands on telecine to master on HDcamSR
Makes no sense to project sd footage).

[Mark Raudonis]

Johnny,

I would NEVER consider playing back directly from your computer for an audience screening! There’s just too much that can go wrong. Making a BLU Ray is really the way to go here.

If you don’t know how to do it, PAY someone to do it for you. Do you really want to spend your premiere
night up in the projection booth trying to figure out what went wrong?

Mark

[Johnny Smith]

Mark, what could possibly go wrong and how long does it take to make a blu-ray disc?

[John Pale]

I know everyone seems to be throwing ideas at you….but you should give the simplest at least a try.

First of all, you need a BluRay burner, if you don’t already have one. They are cheap now and easy to install in a Mac Pro. Hopefully you are running FCS 3.

Second, just export a Quicktime of your film from FCP (self contained or reference…not Quicktime Conversion.)

Open Compressor and select New Batch From Template (if the template dialog is not set auto open on launch). Click “Create BluRay”. Drag your Quicktime to the Batch Window. Compressor makes a pretty bare bones Blu-Ray disc…the default is a generic black menu, with the disc set to play on insertion…but you can customize it a little, if you want. Click on your job, and go to the Inspector…click the Job Action tab and look at the options you have. Next, click Submit and let Compressor do its thing.

If your source footage is good quality, more often than not you will be able to burn a high quality Blu-Ray disc without changing any settings or any fuss at all. The encode and burn will take a couple of hours, probably. If you are unhappy with the results, you should turn to a professional authoring service.

Worth a shot anyway. Good Luck.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Johnny Smith] “My fcp sequence is 1920 x 1080.
I need to make the highest quality Blu-ray possible for this Tuesday’s screening at the Vista Theatre.
How many hours will this take? I have a high end Mac Pro.”

We use Adobe Encore to make “Play Only” BluRay discs using MPEG-2 and AC3 files from Compressor. If this is all you need, and you already have the BluRay burner handy then there you go.

If you don’t have the BluRay burner or have no idea how to create a play only disc, then hire someone that does. I’m assuming there’s a production house somewhere around that can do this.

We’ve had multiple screenings of our documentary off BluRay disc in large venues with Christie Projectors and the image is simply stunning. In fact our next screening is Wednesday at Cal-Berkeley.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.

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[Walter Biscardi]

[Johnny Smith] ”
Mark, what could possibly go wrong and how long does it take to make a blu-ray disc?”

Dropped frames during your film. That would be horrendous.

Take about 2.5 hours to create the files for a 1 hour film.

Takes another 1 hour for Encore to create a Play Only ISO file. If you try to burn the disc directly from Encore it will fail at least 75% of the time.

Take another 1 hour for the BluRay disc to burn using Toast or Nero.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.

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[Warren Eig]

Johnny,

If you are in Los Angeles and have the project on an external FW drive, I can make the Blu-Ray for you.

Warren Eig
O 310-470-0905

email: warren@babyboompictures.com
website: https://www.babyboompictures.com

https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/AFX.html
https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/KnitWits_Movie.html
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0251670/

EDITING REEL: https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/Editing_Reel.html
TITLE DESIGN: https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/Titles_Reel.html

[Michael Gissing]

Talk to the theatre people. Do they only play off a bluray player? My experience is that most theaters these days have some sort of file server playback system that can handle mpeg2 high bitrate files with mpeg2 or ac3 multichannel audio.

Talk to them and find out if they can and what specs to adhere to. Deliver the files on a hard drive and forget the whole bluray authoring path if they play off a hard drive server system. Do a short test and check days before the premiere