Film Mastering and Delivery

Steve,

I was working on some movie in Bethpage, Long Island, where Grumman used to be ( big buildings got turned into film stages sorta ( no real sound dampening inside but it was pretty quiet out there ).

Next door to this one stage was a satelite farm ... like big satelites pointed into the sky.

So one day I yapped with some worker going into that place and asked what was going on....

He basically said ( he knew he was talking to an idiot ), " we distribute cable via satelite as mp4 " cause the bandwidth and time and quality was good for viewing all over the world via little satelites shooting signal to each other and then back down to earth....

I asked him if I could come inside someday and look at his oscilliscopes, video and other scopes, but that never happened. I think the reason is I went to another job to do something more interesting ( from set construction to dolly grip ).  satelite man was never seen again.

I don't believe premiere can export 4:2:2 10 bit h.264 (which does in fact exist, like in free shutter encoder)

h.264 is just a container and got a bad rap from using too many delta frames and a slow editing experience.

now, with some h.264 being supported natively for hardware decoding, times may be a changing. 

as for export, if you need 4:2:2 10 bit color, h.264 directly from media encoder probably aint gonna happen any time soon, so Prores it up for now if need be. Only you know what you need for the export (delivery specs)

addenum: mastering means zero quality loss. i.e. EXR 16 bit linear AP01 compared to visually lossless like Prores 444 HQ.

There's variables in prosumer and pro workflows and delivery so this can be complicated and subject to personal opinions to some extent ( due to experience in film biz etc. )

Rather than write a giant book about this subject, since I'm an idiot, I'll say what I do on a prosumer level now as a retired grip on movies and episodic TV and commercials.

Keep in mind that pro film digital cameras have faster processing electronics ( and better chips) so rolling shutter and noise is less of an issue.

I can't imagine buying a $65,000 alexa and then much more for fast ( cinema) lenses, etc.... so I use 2 junky prosumer cameras to shoot really short stuff... like my edit computer would struggle with a 30 min product ( storage issues and cache etc. ).

If you speak to a DP about what's up now with digital it's a little different than the film days.

In some ways it's a lot easier and less expensive ( e.g. masters, work prints, development at labs, on flatbeds, etc. )

I shoot dnxhd 220x on one camera and raw ( braw) 4k on the other one.

I set up the project in editor to match what I shoot exactly.

( fps, 180 deg shutter, size ( only full hd on dnxhd and 4k on braw)

I record sound on seperate equipment with a slate to sync

Now I set the editing computer, as I said, to match what I shot.

Now I edit.

I save as a lot of times for safety ( new iteration of edit, cache, etc.)

In short, I shoot what I want to match what my machine can handle, and then export

usually it is just h264 for social media cause I'm not a pro editor and have no clients. And don't want any cause I'm retired already.

I could shoot prores instead of braw, and I can shoot mov/mp4 in other camera, but I don't shoot the lower bitrate highly compressed h264, cause the bitrates and quality ARE MUCH BETTER FOR EDITING PURPOSES and not VIEWING PURPOSES ON. SOCIAL MEDIA) 

Basically you want a workflow that is already determined from the time you do preproduction ( scouting and solving lighting issues, permits to shoot at locations, and all that stuff ... creating strip boards... it's a big job )....

good luck and have fun telling stories, cause that's a giant part of what you want to do I hope.

: )

don't get caught up on fancy words ( mastering and delivery) and just shoot the best you can and edit the best you can and then deliver it to the platform that works OK ( looks and sounds good ).

Only you know what cameras you have ( intermediade codecs like pro res is OK for HD usually, even from pro cameras ).

Some of this is based on storage space, speed of work flow, etc.

Anyway, if you think the new james bond film with all the hype is based on master and delivery on your level ( and the rest of the world's desire for entertainment ) you are getting a little sidetracked aesthetically, like you just don't know what you

a) have to shoot with

b) want to delivery to

c) what your equipment can deal with

I always encode the H.264 (or any other format) from the digital master file when the project is finished. My thinking behind it is "If the H.264 looks and sounds good, the master is ok.".

I had once made the mistake to render out a HD master and a SD MPEG2 for DVD, iow two separate renders. A few years later i used the HD master to create a Blu-ray compliant H.264 file and when i watched the disc i had a duplicated frame that in the end turned out to actually be present in the master file. Luckily enough i still had the original project so i could render out a new flawless master.

So now i always use the master file to create all media, be it H.264, MPEG2 for DVD, etc, etc.

We all know that Premiere Pro too often are prone to produce renders with random glitches, so just keeping a master that not has been viewed can be dangerous. I did it once and won´t do it again.