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Converting HDCAMSR to DCP


Eugene Lehnert

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Below is a sample workflow (I work at a post house where we occasionally make DCPs):

 

1. Ingest the HDCAM-SR as an uncompressed Quicktime (probably a Blackmagic 4:4:4 codec, in our case).

 

2. Scale the image to meet the DCP 2K standard (for 1.85:1, it's 1998×1080, for 2.39:1, it's 2048×858). To be clear, the image fills the entire frame, there is no letterboxing or pillarboxing.

 

3. Export as a TIF sequence.

 

4. We use OpenDCP, which semi-automatically takes the TIF sequence and converts it to a JPEG2000 sequence in XYZ color, and then wraps it up in an MXF wrapper for delivery.

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Yes, from a scale perspective, we are talking about 9.4% to get it from 1080p to 2K, which I personally think is negligible. Also, if your film were playing in a theater off an HDCAMSR deck feeding to a 2K projector (like a Barco), it would be getting upsampled to 2K by the projector hardware anyway, so I don't know that there's a difference in the end result regardless.

 

If you really wanted to fine-tune the scaling algorithm, then something like B-spline is going to technically look better than Bicubic. However, it complicates the workflow. The four step workflow I mentioned before could probably be covered in 4 hours for a 2 hour tape, using just FCP or Premiere and a DCP application. Adding a B-spline step could more than double that time, as it would add a completely new, time consuming process in a different application (we would probably use Nuke or a Photoshop action).

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