Premier pro export for big screen cinema.

[Walter Soyka]

[Eddie Cantle] “Does any body know the best settings for exporting my footage to view in a big screen movie theater. Premier doesn’t support pro res so what’s the best solution.”

The theater should have specific playback requirements. You should check with them.

And Premiere does support ProRes. You can read ProRes on a PC, and you can read and write ProRes on a Mac.

Apple does not support ProRes encoding on Windows, but some enterprising open source developers have reverse-engineered it.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Eddie Cantle]

Do you know any website I can get ProRes for Premier pro cs6? Does it even exist? I would like to choose Prores when exporting out my footage 🙂
Premier does not come with that option. What’s your best advise? Is H.264 the same quality as ProRes?

[Shane Ross]

[Eddie Cantle] ” Do you know any website I can get ProRes for Premier pro cs6?”

I believe you need to buy COMPRESSOR from the Apple APP Store. Either that or Motion or FCX…Compressor is the cheapest, most useful option.

[Eddie Cantle] “Is H.264 the same quality as ProRes?”

No. ProRes is a professional level editing and mastering codec. It’s 10-bit, 4-2-2. H.264 is acquisition format, is 8-bit. It can also be used for mastering, but only for uses that require smaller file sizes, like the web.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Eddie Cantle]

I have compressor on my macbook pro, but I prefer using my pc because it is more powerful for the work I’m doing and I prefer the work flow on my premier pro cs6 compared to my final cut pro. Can compressor be used on a pc?

[Eddie Cantle]

I’m sure there is a way around this whole thing anymore ideas please?

[Walter Soyka]

[Eddie Cantle] “I’m sure there is a way around this whole thing anymore ideas please?”

You really need to find out what the theater prefers to play, because they can all be different and we can’t answer this question for you.

Maybe ProRes isn’t even an option for playback. Maybe they need DCP. Maybe they actually prefer Blu-Ray. Maybe they have another delivery spec.

There are other codecs similar to ProRes that you could use for mastering, like CineForm, DNxHD, or AVC-Intra 100. You could use AVI, MOV, or MXF wrappers. You could create a very high bit rate, intraframe H.264 in an MP4 wrapper. There are many different options, but what the theater will actually accept should be your main concern.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Eddie Cantle]

Thank you for responding, I will get on that ASAP 🙂

[Christy Mahon]

I have a similar interest. My studio works with Macs but I have PP running in Windows. The studio requested I provide the file as either Prores or AVI-Uncompressed. PP does offer AVI-Uncompressed as an export option. However, after exporting as AVI-Uncompressed I find (by playing back) that the AVI-Uncompressed file seems to be sound only. I’ve re-exported several times now with the same results. Can anyone explain why I have no images in the AVI-Uncompressed playback? Are the images there in the file but unreadable to software video players?

[Walter Soyka]

[christy mahon] “The studio requested I provide the file as either Prores or AVI-Uncompressed. PP does offer AVI-Uncompressed as an export option. However, after exporting as AVI-Uncompressed I find (by playing back) that the AVI-Uncompressed file seems to be sound only. I’ve re-exported several times now with the same results. Can anyone explain why I have no images in the AVI-Uncompressed playback? Are the images there in the file but unreadable to software video players?”

How did you try to play these files back?

Uncompressed video files can be very, very large and your system may not be able to play it back in real time.

If you import the file back into Premiere and open it into the source panel, can you see an image if you scrub the playhead and then let it sit for a moment?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Dave Felder]

“Big – screen” cinema is not so much a format as it is a file system containing the proper files that the digital projector is looking for. Think of a DVD or Blu-Ray disc; there are several non-media files, in a specific folder, that instruct the player what to do. That’s what digital cinema projectors look for. The system is referred to as “DCP.”

Blu-Ray is not digital cinema quality. Or maybe, it’s better to say that Blu-Ray is not the format that Hollywood distributes movies in.

We use PPro to create files for big screen projection. We output audio as WAV and the movie as a TIFF sequence, which is then encoded using “openDCP.”

When setting up your sequence, you have to know if the theater is using a 2K or 4K projector. You don’t want to edit at 16:9 and then output at 2.39:1 or 1.85:1 (the most common movie formats). That’s as bad as editing at 4:3 and outputting at 16×9. In other words, start with the proper sequence settings, don’t try to output a square peg into a round hole.

Here’s some screen resolutions that might help:

4K
Cinemascope (2.39:1) 4096 x 1716
Flat (1.85:1) 3996 x 2160

2K
Cinemascope (2.39:1) 2048 x 858
Flat (1.85:1) 1998 x 1080

Dave Felder

Ryan Video Productions Inc. Rockaway, NJ