On Location News • September 28, 2016
Recently I found myself needing needing to create a DCP for a filmmaker that was to show his film in an upcoming festival. All of the other films that were being shown had their own DCP so the last film would be the only one shown on a blu-ray. I really did not want to have the odd film out. So I waved my options. I knew for sometime that Adobe Premiere had DCP capabilities with the built in export plugin by Wraptor. So I set off to work to create my very first DCP. I opened Premiere and found that the highest quality DCP I can create from Premiere’s Wrapt0r plugin is a 2K 250bit rate with a stereo or 5.1 surround. You will find below a step by step instruction of how to setup your video and audio to properly export your DCP. This process has been fully tested and projected in a movie theater.
The first step is to properly set up your sequence. This step is important if you plan on having a 5.1 surround sound mix. Your master audio channel needs to be set up as stereo if you only have left and right audio but if you have a 5.1 mix you will need to set the master up as 5.1 and you will need 7 mono audio tracks. (See the sequence setting below.
The next part and the most critical for having your 5.1 audio play back correctly is mapping your audio. There is one gotcha in Premiere. When you map the LFE audio track it maps it to the center channel. This method combines both the center channel and the LFE in one audio track. This will not play back correctly in a movie theater. You will have to do a few extra steps in order to have the LFE track on its own. First map all of your channels. Use the SMPTE standard. L, R, C, LFE, Ls, Rs and the extra channel to Invert the LFE track removing it from the Center track. This method removes it from the center channel and keeps the LFE track on its own. Take note that the LFE track has the LFE rotary knob turned to 100 and the 7th track has the invert function enable on the audio rack.
Once you have your audio set up and your video on the timeline you are set up. Now comes the final step, which is exporting to a DCP. In the export settings dialogue box set the format to Wraptor DCP. Under presets set it to 24 frame flat if you are in the US or 25 frame if you live outside the US. From there adjust your video dimensions based on if it is full, scope or flat. You will notice that the bitrate is fixed. You can purchase and upgrade which unlocks more features. I made sure to check the box for use maximum render quality.
The next step is to select which audio you want to export. It is simple. Stereo or 5.1.
The final step is to learn is the naming convention. The site that helped me the most is the official DCP naming convention website found at http://isdcf.com/dcnc/. I have found that this naming convention is a critical part as this aspect is one of the quickest ways for a movie theater to see what the film is and all aspects of what is encapsulated in the DCP.
When the render is complete you will have a folder with the JPG2000 XML file inside. I was able to transfer this to the theater DCP content player system and it played flawlessly. An important not is that this file is a non-encrypted file and adobe premiere does not have the capability to create an encrypted DCP. You will have to search out companies that can create one.
At the end of completion of creating the DCP for the feature film I ended up creating a teaser trailer DCP and converting a trailer for another film to a DCP format for terrific presentation during the film festival. If you have any questions please let me know and I hope this helps.
