Film Negative to DVD9 process

[EuropeanMan]

hi guys...i'd like to know where i can find out about the process of taking a movie from the original film negative all the way to DVD9 release (either pal/ntsc).

i'd like to see all the steps and learn what is involved...how a 24fps negative goes to 29.970 for NTSC dvd release... :)

thanks in advance.

hope i have the right section for this.

[JarrettH]

Not sure if this is much help, but it could be of interest to watch the extras on the restoration process on the new Godfather "Coppola Restoration" and Apocalypse Now Redux (The Complete Dossier). :cool:

[Mug Funky]

the modern process (things have changed since back in the day):

- film is exposed in the camera
- it is processed at a lab
- it is telecined in "proxy" res (usually standard def, compressed into DV or similar, but increasingly this is happening in high-def), and location sound is synced
- it is edited
- visual effects, titles, are worked on while fine editing happens
- when the final cut is approved, it's all "re-conformed" in high quality. this means scanning the film in a high resolution (usually 2k, or 2048x1556). colours are adjusted, or "graded", FX and titles are incorporated with the graded pictures in a process called "online editing", credit sequence is added.
- it's all output to the desired format. this is usually a HDCAM-SR video tape. sometimes it's a digibeta, sometimes it's a file on a hard drive. if the film is destined for traditional cinema, it will also be output as a "dpx" sequence of still, logarithmic 10-bit image files to either hard disk or LTO/DLT data tape for printing to film intermediates and release prints.
- the output video tape or hard drive is taken to a DVD authoring house where it is encoded to mpeg-2 at an appropriate bit-rate depending on DVD-5 or DVD-9 and how many special features are on the disc
- it is authored
- it is premastered (layer break position is added, the compiled VIDEO_TS folders are made into a DDP image file for each layer)
- it is sent to a replicator, where it is glass-mastered.


that's pretty much all of it. i've worked most of the above jobs at some point.