Tip #79: Have a Blu-ray mastering workflow

By Dan Parkes (Director/editor)

Although not (yet) commercially released in the Blu-ray format, Ambleton Delight was mastered in HD and hence we created a Blu-ray master first, before down-converting it to DVD. This is something we recommend all filmmakers do, as not only will it look great on a HD TV, but it future-proofs your film and also allows for HD quality projection if shown in a cinema (e.g. cinemas such as Cineworld are now equipped with Blu-ray players that can be used with their digital projectors). This is the workflow we used:

1. Export HD master file
Since the film was shot and edited in HD we simply exported the entire film as a HD master file, in our case, from Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, as an .avi file using the Cineform intermediate codec. (For more information on this refer to our earlier blog: http://ambletondelight.blogspot.com/2011/02/tip-63-establish-editing-workflow.html)

2. Encore authoring
We then authored the Blu-ray disc in Adobe Encore CS3, making sure all the menus etc we at HD resolution (ie at least 1280x720). It is recommended to create these menus separately in image creation software and then import to the authoring programme. We created ours in Photoshop.

3. Add extras
The great thing about Blu-ray is the ability to fit up to 23GB of data on the basic 25GB discs, compared to 4.3GB on standard 4.7GB DVDs. This not only allows for higher quality video but a load more extras. On the Blu-ray version of Ambleton Delight we could include the full Making Of plus other extras such as deleted scenes and the alternate ending -something that would just not fit on a standard DVD.



4. Burn DVD and HD
Adobe Encore has a great feature -the ability to export both a Blu-ray or DVD disc from the same authoring project. It does involve creating different transcodes for each disc and so there is some extra rendering time. You also need to decide whether your Blu-ray video is transcoded in either MPEG2 or h.264. H.264 is higher quality but takes a lot longer to transcode, unless you use a Matrox system which has the ability to speed up h.246 encoding.

5. HD Image file
We also recommend not burning direct to disc but creating an image (.iso) file for both the Blu-ray and DVD discs, that can then be burned to disc using IMGburn (http://www.imgburn.com/) which can verify the accuracy of each disc that is subsequently burned.

Tip #63: Establish an editing workflow

By Dan Parkes (Editor/Director)

Good organisation is key to any editing project, especially when you are dealing with a film that will be at least 90 minutes and over 20 hours of HD footage has been shot for it!

So we very early on devised a workflow that would ensure we could achieve this, even though we were editing on essentially a domestic computer using software that is not widely known for feature film work: Adobe Premiere Pro. I have personally used most Adobe products, starting from when I was a graphic designer at a newspaper using Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat. It seemed natural to later progress to Premiere Pro for editing and After Effects for compositing and effects. But many widely regard Premiere Pro as not being up for the task of a feature film, believing Avid or more recently Final Cut are better tools. I had used Premiere Pro for some large projects including a 45 minute feature film, but this was in HD and so was possibly going to be an issue.

Above: Here is one of the 5 'reel' projects
(click to view at 100%)

The answer lay in two simple factors.

1. An intermediate codec
In Final Cut, when editing HD, the Quicktime files are often encoded using ProRes 422, developed by Apple. So I decided to use Cineform as an intermediate codec, converting all the m2t files from the camera harddrive into Cineform HD .avi files. Although much larger file sizes these worked very well in Premiere Pro and meant I could edit in HD without any issues. It also ensured no colour information loss when rendering out, maintaining the quality of the picture.

Above: Here is 'master' project
which combined all 5 'reels'.
(click to view at 100%)

2. Project structure
Although the Cineform intermediate codec made for easy editing I was under no impression that I could have one single project that would end up being 100 minutes long and still be stable. So I divided the film into 5 logical sections, which I called "reels" (inspired by the reels projectionists use) each being about 20 - 25 minutes in length. I worked on each reel independently (sound included) until I was satisfied with the cut. Then the 5 reels were combined into one single master project. This was the only difficult part, as I had to create a guide track and sync points for how these reels were joined for when the sound was mixed later but in the end did not prove to be too difficult.

VIDEO BLOG: Episode 6

Explore the post-production workflow including editing using the Cineform HD intermediate codec, sound effects, and most importantly having a tailor-made score written and how to get high quality band music, even for free!

All this and more in the sixth episode of the seven part series 'How to Make a Next-to-Nothing Budget Feature Film' exclusively on YouTube..