DCP newbie - am I doin it right?

[fhickler]

Hey all. I've done my own video editing as an avocation for decades, so I am pretty experienced, but maybe not up to a super professional level. I made an indy feature documentary that will be playing a film festival in a few weeks and tried my hand at making the DCP for the theater. I wanted to run down what I did and either get confirmation that I did it right, or suggestions as to what I should have done.

Feature length doc
Original footage is a real hodgepodge of SD video, consumer 1080p footage, some pro 1080p.
Sequence had a frame rate of 29.97
Exported from Premiere as 1080p, 24 frames / second, .h264 codec, .mp4 file
Imported into DCP-O-Matic
Created DCP with all default settings
Only error I got was that there were no credit / rolling credit markers
I validated it and got no errors except the credit marker errors

It looks and sounds decent when I view it in DCP-O-Matic Player on my computer. Does that sound like it should result in a decent DCP that will play well in a theater? Or are there settings / tech issues I need to consider?

THANKS!

[Carsten]

I guess you should be okay. Are you satisfied with the 29,97->24fps conversion?

You can ignore the marker warning. The audio levels may be off when played at the cinema, but they can adjust it there. Did ypu perform the audio analysis? Maybe you could reopen the project once more and show us some screenshots of settings and audio analysis results.

- Carsten

[fhickler]

The 29.27 to 24 fps looks fine in the player.
I believe when I did the verification that it analyzed the audio and found no errors. I don't know how to show the analysis results again.

One thing that just occurred to me is that I exported the original file out of Premiere at VBR 1-Pass / 15Mbps. I wonder if I should do 2 pass and/or up the bitrate. Any thoughts?

[Carsten]

If the project and source files are still there, you can always reopen it and show all analysis results. 15MBit is a bit on the low side for a DCP source, but, depending on source file, may still look good.

[fhickler]

What bit rate would you recommend?

[Carsten]

It really depends on your source quality. I would use something in the same ballpark as your source bitrate is (if the codec is the same). Bluray typically uses 25MBit. I'd suggest something in the 25MBit/s to 50MBit/s range for your export/master. For your DCP compression then, 150MBit/s is probably sufficient. MP4 and DCP/J2K are very different codecs, you can't compare bitrates between the two.

Do you work on a Mac or in Windows?