Q: What is Textless Material? and why was my project rejected for not having it present.
A: “Textless Material” is any shot of the movie or show that contains text provided separately without the text. Examples of “Text” Include Opening and end titles, subtitles, location titles, and any other writing on the screen during the show. Movie and Television companies ask for textless material for the purpose of converting the show into another language. The procedure for Textless material is to take every shot with text and assemble them without the text in order one minute after the end of the film. The Foreign distributors will take those textless shots and insert them into the spots where their corresponding texted shots were thereby replacing the texted shots with textless shots, they will then add the new foreign language text. Many distributors or networks will not accept shows or movies without the textless shots.
Q: I shot my movie in 4K, Is that the best version for you to do the QC report on?
A: This all depends on what your distributor is asking for. If you have obtained distribution, or have a sales agent you should find out what they are requiring. Usually of a deliverables sheet includes a 4K (or UHD version) of the movie they will also want an HD version. Many distributors and agents are still only going with HD for their submissions. In fact after several years now 4K has not really taken off like many hoped it would, at QC Central 90% of the work we get is still in HD.
Also HD is less expensive to do a Quality Control Report on. If you are not required to deliver 4K it would be best to down-convert the movie to HD for QC. Virtually all anomalies found in 4K will also be present in the HD version. We can also do a QC in full 4K as well if needed.
Q:My QC report says my film has a non-standard aspect ratio, what does this mean?
A:The Aspect ratio is the size and shape of the screen while viewing the movie. It is the ratio between the Vertical lines (top and bottom) and the sides (left and right) of the edge of the picture. The standard for high def broadcast TV and movies is 16X9 which is the ratio on your home TV, A 16X9 Full frame (1.78 to 1) will fill the entire frame. There are also matted versions of movies where the top and bottom of the picture are narrower than a full frame (sometimes called Letterbox) Most movies if not full frame are 2.39 or 2.40 to 1. There are other aspect ratios like 1.85 which is not used as much these days. As aspect ratio can be gauged to be correct by doing a “line count” on a waveform monitor.
This measures the “active video” as opposed to the black at top, bottom, or on sides. As an example a 1Tj6X9 full frame picture will have active video that starts on line 21 and ends on line 550, the rest of the lines being blank. Other aspect ratios have there own line count measurements.
If a program has a line count that does not match one of the standard aspect ratios (1.78, 1.85, 2.39, 2.40) it is judged to be non-standard. This often happens a result of an output error when the file was being made. It can be corrected by re-outputting the file correctly.
Q: What is HDR? And what is the difference between HDR & SDR.
A: SDR stands for Standard Dynamic Range, which is the standard for most UHD / 4K content currently being produced. HDR stands or High Dynamic Range, and is the newest technology being used to make the picture look optimized.
HDR has been used in the past by photographers using programs like Photoshop to increase the color and contrast of a photo. HDR is used to increase the picture quality of both the highlights & shadows of a photo. Photoshop has a filer called Shadows & Highlights that will do that to some degree, but the picture can then be manipulated in selected areas only to improve the quality of just one piece of the picture, this produces a dramatically improved quality to the shot. In video computerization can produce the same effect.
There are different color spacing with SDR & HDR. SDR uses the ITU-Rec 709 color space which is the same used in hi-definition video. More advanced color spacing and gamut are used for HDR including Rec. 2020 which is used for UHD HDR.
There are also higher levels of HDR like HDR 10, which requires an HDMI 2.0 connection, & Dolby Vision which will become more prevalent in the near future. For now most UHD / 4k programming is being done in UHD / SDR
Q: OK we are ready to send your are project for QC, What exactly do we need to send
A: Glad you asked We have a page that answers that very question in fine detail it’s called What You Need To Send Us For Film QC Please refer to this sheet for how to proceed. Of course we are also available to answer any additional questions by phone or text anytime.