Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: preshow resolution

This is topic preshow resolution in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by George Murray (Member # 6991) on 06-21-2013, 01:55 AM:

what resolution do most people receive their preshow content and what codec is it normally encoded with. We are currtently creating our own preshow and we were thinking of taking a couple of ads off of youtube and converting them to dcp content has anyone done this before?

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-21-2013, 02:21 AM:

Just an FYI, converting youtube to DCP will look spectacularly horrible.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 06-21-2013, 05:31 AM:

Depends on what you are playing preshow content from. Do you convert it to DCPs, or d you have a dedicated preshow player?

If possible, get 1080p or at least 720p material and leave out any unnecessary conversions/scaling. Stay away from interlaced footage.

- Carsten

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 06-21-2013, 02:34 PM:

quote: George Murray
we were thinking of taking a couple of ads off of youtube and converting them to dcp content has anyone done this before?

Since you need to have permission to use this content anyway, why not contact the creator of said ads and ask them if they have it in a high quality format, if possible, even raw or loss-less compressed.

Taking content from YouTube will generally look horrible, unless it is available in 1080p, then it might be watchable after conversion. Still, expect a large amount of MPEG artifacts in the end results.

Posted by Bajsic Bojan (Member # 4928) on 06-21-2013, 03:43 PM:

One can say, "Just ask the production facility for a better version of..." and you can get it most of the times in a superior resolution and codec, hassle free, with permission.

Then again, we had numerous occasions when an HD trailer of a movie (not DCP, a 4:2:2 prores file), would cost us in excess of 500$. Great business plan...

Non DCP preshow files, trailers and other content we get:
-50% prores inside .mov
-20% mp4 h.264 inside .mp4
-10% DNxHD inside .avi or .mov
-10% mpeg2
-10% random .wmv or .qt

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 06-21-2013, 11:30 PM:

Remember the saying, "GIGO: Garbage in. Garbage out."

The pixel resolution, spacial compression, temporal compression and color depth means everything. 90% of all content on YouTube is low resolution and is highly compressed. Even if you resize and transcode to a lossless CODEC like ProRes before you convert and package as a DCP, you're still going to get a result that looks like it is made out of 3,450,000 Lego bricks.

A local TV station sent us a promo to play in front of our feature, "Tornado Alley," but it was only 480i resolution. It was wrapped as a WMV file to boot. I tried to reencode it two or three different ways but, no matter what I did, it still came out looking like Legos. Then, they had the balls to complain that it looked bad on the screen. My answer was, "GIGO."

We got a promo/PSA for the Presque Isle Partnership which was coded at 720p and I was able to scale it up to 1080p without looking too bad. It was a little furry looking around the edges of high contrast areas but there are only a few other artifacts that most people wouldn't be able to identify. For a trailer or a PSA before the feature, 90% of the people watching won't notice.

A video from YouTube probably won't look any better than the spot from the TV station. Possibly even worse.

You'd think that the people from a TV station would know better. Wouldn't you? No, these people probably wouldn't know the difference between a movie and a roll of toilet paper!

For downloading trailers, you're probably better off getting them from Apple iTunes. The resolution and encoding are usually good enough. You'll just have to put up with the little Apple trademark in the bottom corner. Personally, I hate it but most people don't care. I have used trailers from Apple if I can't get them from any other "clean" source and I have never had a problem.

Yes, you're supposed to get permission from the distributor or owner of the content but, as long as you are using the material to advertise THEIR product, nobody's going to say anything. Just make sure you don't edit the trailer. Cut off the green band if you so desire but don't change anything else.

I have had phone conversations with distributors like Sony Pictures Classics and that is what they told me. Okay to use downloaded trailers as long as it is not edited.

Besides, most of those people are so frickin' lazy, as long as they don't have to lift a finger they'd rather you download the trailers from Apple.

Just remember: GIGO!

Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 06-22-2013, 01:33 AM:

It always made me laugh when there was an Apple logo in the bottom right hand corner of the trailers playing on my theatre's lobby monitors.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 06-22-2013, 02:00 AM:

quote: Brad Miller
Just an FYI, converting youtube to DCP will look spectacularly horrible.

I have pulled 1080p content from YouTube, placed them in a video editor to add my own titles, and saved them as MPEG files. Then used those MPEG files to create DCP packages. The MPEG files I am creating are 1080p 24fps at 15000kbps.

The quality is actually pretty good. It's obviously not DCinema quality, but it does not look horrible. I have used this content within our preshow to tease special showings. While it is not DCinema quality, the quality is comparable to our other pre-show content and does not look out of place.

I'm using QubeMaster Xpress to write DCP packages.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-22-2013, 11:44 AM:

I said "spectacularly horrible", not just "horrible". [Razz]

Sounds like your preshow is pretty low quality in all honesty. I'm now curious as to what you are using. (Possible you are using a portable video projector?) My bench reference for "preshow quality" is Screenvision via HDfrend boxes into the D-cinema projector. While it doesn't match the quality of DCPs, I've found Screenvision seems to have the best overall quality levels for a preshow system. Plus they aren't some lazy half-baked excuse for a preshow company by forcing "rolling stock DCPs" at the theater, of which are usually all over the map in terms of quality as well as on occasion crashing the servers. Screenvision actually sends dedicated players.