Digital Cinema Mastering Workshops

High Definition & Digital Cinema Ltd, supported by the Skillset film Skills Fund, presents the ‘Theory and Practice of Digital Cinema Mastering.’ A series of 2-day workshops for post-production professionals, covering the whole process from receiving the picture, sound and subtitle files, through to final compression and secure packaging. Mastering systems are provided by: Fraunhofer Institute IIS, Dolby, Doremi and Qube.

These workshops are run over 2 days to provide some hands on experience after initial principles have been explained. They will impart the basic theoretical knowledge from first principles of digital cinema mastering as well as some practical exposure to typical equipment used in taking a Digital Cinema Duplication Master and turning it into a Digital Cinema Package.

The course will cover the whole process from receiving and quality controlling the picture, sound and subtitle files through the XYZ conversion, compression and packaging process which will result in an MXF (Material Exchange Format) wrapped secure DCP (Digital Cinema Package) with attendant security keys.

On completion of the course the delegates will be able to understand:

*The concepts of the Digital Intermediate process and DSM (Digital Source Master) *Conversion between the DSM and the DCDM (Digital Cinema Distribution Master) *Picture file Format conversion *Picture File Compression *Sound file preparation *Subtitle file preparation *File wrapping (MXF) *Composition playlists *Security, Encryption and Key Delivery Message generation *Digital Cinema Package generation *Quality & Interoperability Checking and most importantly the logistics to put it all together.

The specialist hands-on nature of this course will limit the practical number of delegates that can attend each session, so please book early to avoid disappointment.

The workshops are planned to run at 4 venues;  twice in the London area and twice in the North of the country:

The first workshop takes place at the National Film and Television School, Beaconsfield on 9th and 10th August.

The second is at the British Film Institute, Southbank, London on the 4th and 5th November.

A further 2 workshops are planned early next year in Bradford, early January and Scotland, mid March. Venues will be confirmed later in the year.

The workshop fee for the 2 days is £425 + VAT. A light lunch and refreshments is included on both days. Places are limited and booked on a strictly first come first serve basis.

For further information and booking e-mail [email protected] or call Nikie on 02392 350 233 or 07747 805 894.

These workshops are supported by Skillset funding, which is the industry body that supports skills and training for people and businesses in the UK creative industries sector. The aim of these training funds (which are contributed to by industry and public sources) is to help ensure the UK creative industries have a workforce with the right level and range of skills. The  funds broaden access to training opportunities and career development in order to make the workforce in this industry more knowledgeable and competitive with the rest of the world.

The reasoning behind these workshops is that movie post-production has over the last decade migrated to an all-digital process called Digital Intermediate.  The film is scanned into a digital file and this file is passed from process to process until post-production is finished.  At this point the digital files can be output to a film recorder for transfer back to film for distribution or packaged into a digital file for digital cinema distribution. Digital movie cameras can also be processed by the DI workflow. Currently, only a small number of post-houses outside North America have had any experience of the mastering process for digital cinema distribution, which makes UK post-production facilities at a disadvantage with urgent training needed to bring the UK into a competitive position.