Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: UK Adverts from P&D -half are in smaller resolution

This is topic UK Adverts from P&D -half are in smaller resolution - issues in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Gavin Lewarne (Member # 5397) on 03-03-2013, 07:40 PM:

Is anyone else in the UK who receives P&D adverts on DCP noticing that about 50% of the ads look like they are in 1920x1080 resolution rather than the full 1998x1080 2k resolution?

We have adjustable side masking and have to leave it in Flat for the duration of the adverts as the lower resolution ones are not all in one "block"

I prefer to have super accurate masking, right up to the edge of the picture, and it bugs the hell out of me that these lower res adverts leave blank screen either side. And for me this is unacceptable as my ratios are very carefully zoomed and cropped to "hide" the keystoning - so these lower res adverts have slightly angled edges.

Really my question is thus:

is it possible to create another lens / screen file, with a little more zoom (to fill the screen with these ads) and have it available as a cue on our DSS200 ?

EDIT - should add we have a series 2 barco, and a DSS200 running 4.5.4(1)

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-03-2013, 10:29 PM:

Of course you can - incl. trapez masking. Check wether you have sufficient user access level for the Barco to create your own formats. Do you have a manual for the BARCO communicator software?

- Carsten

Posted by Gavin Lewarne (Member # 5397) on 03-04-2013, 07:57 AM:

Is it a case of creating new lens and screen files and assigning them to a new macro?

Posted by Bajsic Bojan (Member # 4928) on 03-04-2013, 12:20 PM:

yes.

on the barco open a flat lens file, zoom it out, focus it, save as new lens file, then do the same with the screen file.

then save a new Preset macro with new lens/screen files.

I don't know how dolby handles the presets (based on name or position number), but getting it done should probably be no problem.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 03-04-2013, 12:23 PM:

You can indeed but do you really want to crop your adverts top and bottom? Considering that sometimes the words "safe margins" are unknown to most, I would think again about it.

That said, you can create a new screen and lens file and assign it to a different macro.

Posted by Gavin Lewarne (Member # 5397) on 03-04-2013, 01:23 PM:

marco - I only need a couple of inches either side really of extra zoom, not a massive amount or anything.

Thanks for the help everyone [Smile]

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 03-04-2013, 02:10 PM:

Why don't you create a scaled macro? That would leave the lens where it is, the switch would be almost instantaneous.

Posted by Gavin Lewarne (Member # 5397) on 03-05-2013, 05:10 AM:

Thanks for the idea Marco I hadn't thought of that. But.....isn't scaling disallowed bythe dci spec?

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 03-05-2013, 10:52 AM:

I've never seen the DCI police doing an inspection. Once we had to ensure a TMS rack doors could be closed and locked, but I've never has them check the image was 100% compliant - many are not because of keystoning and such.
Anyway, ads will not be subject to DCI rules anyway.
What do you do with flat-in-scope trailers? These must show the trapezoidal keystoning too.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 03-05-2013, 11:03 AM:

Is it? Not sure whether cropping is allowed though! [Smile]

I would never scale a feature but - particularly with slow and old series 1 - it may be a good idea to have a scaled macro for some trailers and adverts. It saves your lens and takes a second.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 03-05-2013, 11:32 AM:

Just out of interest, how are adverts delivered now? They were still on film when I last projected, some time after most features were digital.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 03-05-2013, 12:36 PM:

On a CD/DVD or a USB stick here in Canada.
Scaling is not allowed under DCI specs. There are cropping limits as well, I don't remember exactly how many pixels are allowed off sides and top of the image container. I can't say I care much anyway, the customers sometimes want something I know is out-of-spec but they get what they want (within reason).

Posted by Gavin Lewarne (Member # 5397) on 03-05-2013, 12:58 PM:

Dave - all the scope-trailers-in-flat I have encountered so far almost fill to the sides, again only about 2 inches of black on the sides. We always play the trailers in flat, since they are all labelled as flat (so far) Our keystoning issues are only really visible on the sides, the top and bottoms are straight as far as I can tell eyeballing it

Stephen - The P&D adverts are now sent out on a CRU drive, Dolby masters and ships them on behalf of P&D

As for our keystoning, it isnt very much, probably about 3 pixel widths difference on the sides. Im just trying to make as professional a presentation as possible with the equipment i have.

We are so old-school our side masking is manual [Frown]

We have to change it before each screening to match the feature being played, so if the feature is scope the ads/trailers have a lot of black on the sides. This is primarily the reason i want to find a solution for scaling / getting rid of the side black on the adverts(in flat) as the "unused" pixels are still a little brighter than the blank screen. It just looks yucky. I doubt our customers either notice or care, but i do.

Oh, how i wish we had automagical motorised masking [Frown]

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 03-06-2013, 11:24 AM:

Your setup sounds similar to mine -- DSS200 and Barco DP2K-32B.

The DSS200 only "sees" the first 14 presets on the Barco, so I assigned the relevant ones to fit within that range. Otherwise, it's not possible to use the DSS200 to automate the preset change.

My Barco has hard buttons on the projector for the first 6 presets, so 1-6 are populated with the most common formats, and 7-13 are assigned to those that are less-commonly used.

Preset 14 -- the last one that the DSS200 will "see" -- is a "wild" preset, for material that can't be handled by the first 13 presets. Basically, it entails re-assigning the lens, screen and LSC files.

(Maintaining a constant name for that preset -- "DCP Variable" -- means I don't have to reboot the DSS200 to force it to recognize and update the name of the new preset.)

For ads, I would avoid using the lens to zoom the image, because that means having to build in a few seconds of black each time to hide the zoom, and I just hate having more than one "black patch" in a pre-show.

But, more importantly, every time you disturb the lens, you risk losing focus. I know this stuff is supposed to work perfectly but, in reality, my Barco needs lens recalibration about every 2 weeks. So, I'm not going to tempt fate unnecessarily by increasing the number of lens operations that happen in a single screening. It would be just my luck that the ads will look great, and feature will end up out of focus. That is Murphy's Law.

So, instead, I would create a few presets that contain just the screen files, to conceal the keystoning. For example, initialize with the "complete" 1.85 preset, and then use the "screen only" presets when jumping around between aspect ratios. I don't lose sleep over ads that don't fit the screen completely.

I haven't played around with scaling but, if it changes instantaneously, you could add that to your "quick change" presets. But, personally, I would avoid scaling in this case, because it will mean cropping. I'm okay with letterboxing and pillarboxing for ads and previews. To reiterate, it's not something I'm going to lose sleep over; there are too many more-important things on the radar.

Let Pearl & Dean see that their ads don't fill the screen. If they want full-screen ads, they need to make full-screen ads. This isn't exactly their first day at the rodeo. If you make up for their shortcomings, then you are part of your own problem.

Posted by Gavin Lewarne (Member # 5397) on 03-06-2013, 12:48 PM:

Manny - sound advice, thank you.

Im not sure how the adverts work in the US, but P&Ds over here are one "block" in the playlist. They are not added individually, so working out the proper times to add screen file change cues would be a full time job in itself - we get new adverts every week and different ones for different films, all in one contigious "block" in the playlist.

Perhaps i am being too picky and should just forget about trying to find a catch-all solution to this silly issue. You would think Dolby, who master and distribute these adverts would know better, but evidently not.

Thankyou everyone for the advice [Smile]

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 03-06-2013, 01:12 PM:

quote: Gavin Lewarne
Im not sure how the adverts work in the US, but P&Ds over here are one "block" in the playlist. They are not added individually, so working out the proper times to add screen file change cues would be a full time job in itself

Eff. That! [puke]

Leave them alone. Pace yourself. Save your wits for something that really matters. Seriously.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-06-2013, 05:09 PM:

Most ad footage is probably shot with FullHD Cameras and will natively have 1920*1080 resolution. Frankly, I would prefer to have MY 1080p ad screened pillarboxed instead of scaled from 1920 to 1998...

But when you say you receive a mix of 1920 and 1998 wide ads - I assume they are mixed arbitrarily, that means, left and right borders 'jump' in and outwards between ads? In that case, I would in fact zoom in the lens for ALL ads so that a steady frame is projected. I wouldn't care about the lost pixels at the side for 1998 wide ads.

- Carsten

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 03-06-2013, 05:30 PM:

^^ Yes...Well, maybe! [Smile]

Assuming that uniformity is valued more highly than projecting all pixels, then another option would be to crop them all to 16x9 and use the same lens and LSC files as you would for the feature. This eliminates the time it takes your projector to zoom, focus and shift the lens back to your "true" 1.85 preset. And, as I've mentioned, it safeguards against focus drift.

If my math is correct, enlarging 16x9 to 1.85 requires a 7.64% increase. I have experimented with projecting 1.85 Blurays at the same size as a 1.85 DCP. It has a noticeable impact on image quality. FWIW, I didn't care for it.

If you decide to create a preset that zooms 16x9 up to 1.85, make sure to give that preset a descriptive name, to avoid confusion between it and the proper 1.85 preset.

Posted by Gavin Lewarne (Member # 5397) on 03-06-2013, 07:09 PM:

Carsten - yeah, the borders jump about all over the place, hence why I wanted a "catch all" situation to just zoom and crop.

I will experiment with some presets on Friday when I have a couple spare hours and see what looks best.

I dont think having a couple seconds of black between "zoomed 1.85" and "true 1.85" from the ads to a feature while the lens changes is going to be as much of a distraction compared to the jumpy borders, and certainly no different from the flat>scope zoom time anyway.

Ill get back to you all when im finished with what I think looks and works best (zoom+crop vs scale)

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-07-2013, 05:46 AM:

Yes, I think three lens settings max is still okay - 'ads', 'trailers', 'main feature'.

The problem with masking only for the 1998 trailers is that you still need to zoom in for the trailers again to show them properly.

- Carsten

Posted by Gavin Lewarne (Member # 5397) on 03-07-2013, 06:47 AM:

^^ Carsten - im not following you ?

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-07-2013, 08:16 AM:

Sure you are ;-)

For trailers you need to show the full 1998 width. If you want to show 1920 ads before within the same masking, you need to zoom in to enlarge the 1920 to the 1998 masking optically - first/initial lens setting.
For the trailers then, usually flat, you need to zoom out - second lens setting.
If your main feature is flat, no change, if it is scope, or there is a scope trailer block - third lens setting.

- Carsten

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 03-07-2013, 03:57 PM:

I don't think it's up to the mastering facility to scale and crop the original picture. If the customer wanted an HD picture, the mastering cannot just decide to scale it full screen.

Some films have been released in HD. It's up to the production/distribution. Dolby/Deluxe/Technicolor just do what they are asked to do. If the customer asks for HD picture, the facility can warn on the consequences, but that's it.