The challenges of making an HD master
Aug 1, 2006 8:00 AM
Colorist David Block worked under the direction of Rick Shaw recently on the independent film “Beat the Drum.”
When HD Technology Update interviewed Pinlight president Rick Shaw in February, he briefly discussed “Beat the Drum,” an independent film he co-produced.
When HDTU caught up with the head of the Hollywood-based production and post company, he had just completed all of the HD deliverables for distribution of the film in the United States and abroad.
HDTU talked with Shaw about the intricacies of making a 1080p master and some of the surprises he encountered along the way.
HD Technology Update: You recently completed mastering your film “Beat the Drum” for international distribution and on Showtime HD here in the United States. What lessons did you learn from your first experience making an HD master from film?
Rick Shaw: We first had to create a high resolution HD master because Showtime agreed to air the HD version, and because we suspected there might be other networks around the world wanting to air it in HD.
So we created a 1080p master in 1:78 aspect ratio, and then that became the basis for masters for everything else.
The film was shot on Super 35mm. So the 1:78 1080p master allowed us to scan the entire IP so that we had the entire frame to work with. On the deliverable copies, we simply put a 2:35 matte over the picture so it looks like it does on the screen in the theaters.
HDTU: What were some of the intricacies of the process that surprised you?
RS: Showtime’s deliverables specifications are very stringent and the requirements for audio internationally are incredibly complicated. We had to have Turbosound in Hollywood do seven different versions of soundtrack, depending on where the film was going to be aired or be shown theaters. Some countries wanted to put their own languages in, and they are all in different formats.
When you are starting with six-channel Dolby 5.1 soundtrack, it does get a little complicated. But we found that for most cases four-channel audio was suitable for broadcast. That gave us Channels 1 and 2 as stereo and Channels 3 and 4 as music and effects.
HDTU: What were some of the Showtime deliverable specs that were surprising?
RS: Well there is a long list. You have to have so many seconds of bars and tone. You can’t have anything but the movie on the tape. There can’t be any technical problems. The tone has to be at a certain level. It’s quite a long list of things. And since there are so many audio effects, the way people produce movies, you could do four-channel audio, or six-channel, but it all had to be in Showtime’s specifications.
Also, Showtime can’t air a 1080p tape. It doesn’t have the D5 format. We had to provide the staff with an HDCAM tape in 1080i, which required us to downconvert our 24p master to 1080i. The general feeling out here in Hollywood is that the 1080p 23.98fps master is the one that you should always make. Then you can go to any other version from that with the least amount of damage.
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