Dubbing stage mixing for LTRT question

[hitp]

Hello as you all know we have been doing a ton of TV commercials here in the Philippines, many now are going to Cinema where we have to prep track for transfer to stereo optical and deliver on DAT. Have been playing a lot with levels and stuff, but not happy with the results. . . still I realized how our mixes that sound great on TV translated so poorly to the big screen.

Noticed also how commercials in US Cinemas are regulated to sound much softer than the trailers and actual features, many of these US commercials are also lacking in mix quality. That is not the case here and no one regulates so everything is loud short of distorting the optical track.

We are thinking to build a small dub stage at the moment and found a local guy who built several of the high end cinemas and is the Dolby, DTS and THX rep for the country, to design the room for us. We found a nice space as well that will hit all the minimal room dimensions and noise levels for Dolby cinema certification. We are using horn loaded QSC theater speakers behind a pref screen and an ICON D-Command for monitoring and mixing. Only limitation is we are using video projection and will do all the pull up / downs to compensate when working with film.

At this point we are not looking for Dolby certification at the moment as most of my Ad Clients do not want to pay any fees no matter how reasonable. This is the Philippines and not the US. But as a studio that always wants to give the best work, I am hoping to find a way to deliver a simple but effective analog LT/RT mix that would decoded properly when transferred to optical and played back in cinemas with maximum compatibility with the different cinema processors. Also hopefully building a dubbing stage which will pass Dolby certification when the time comes and we have clients willing to pay the fees, will allow us to monitor our mixes in a more real world environment.

So here is where the silly questions begin . . . all you high end post guys please chime in.

1) The firm over here who will build the room for us, not only built many of the THX and DTS cinemas in the Philippines and SE Asia, will also tune our room. Does a small room have to be equalized differently from a big room? Obviously the RT 60 will be different because of physics. What are your experience with your mix rooms.

2) I notice some of you US mixers have also the ability to playback an optical track in your rooms into the cinema processor for decoding. Do you feel it is important, especially in checking the sound neg from the optical transfer house? Also what will you need to sync to your picture to a sound mag track if you do not have the ability to project a film picture? I was told there is a sync box that can lock an optical sound print to video and allow you to preview the sound print directly into your CP650 processor to do an actual check of the transfer? How do you QC your mixes once they are committed to DAT?

3) What is a simple way to making an LTRT track to print to DAT? I know Dolby gives you an encoder when you sign up and qualify for cinema or trailers certification. Will the plug-in version for PT be adequate? Will it translate adequately when transferred to optical? Our builders also have a spare DTS rig they have and offered to let us try it out, claiming it does an analog LTRT encode that would playback on most Cinema Processors with good results. It also has a compactor circuit that would allow me to push the dynamic range a bit more. What is your opinion on this?

4) When you do an LTRT mix that will playback to 4.1 in the Cinemas. I assume most projectors that are set to SR or Dolby Digital would auto switch to the analog track if no Digital track is present. When you monitor at 4.1 in cinemas are the subs (LFEs) working at all? I know this is different from Bass Managed subs in home theaters or DVD playback systems. Comments if any.

At this point I have probably put my foot in my mouth more times than I wanted to, but I really have no where else to turn to for answers. Hoping someone would be kind enough to educate me on this. Wish there was somewhere to learn this stuff short of having to intern in one of the big Hollywood studios for many years.

Thanks in advance and any help will be appreciated.

[hitp]

Just came from the Gearslutz Post forum moderated by Georgia. Amazing source of information and already it answered half of the questions . . .

Thanks Georgia for being so generous with information.

[edboy7]

Hello Dennis,
Fellow pinoy here. I'll try to answer some.

1) The firm over here who will build the room for us, not only built many of the THX and DTS cinemas in the Philippines and SE Asia, will also tune our room. Does a small room have to be equalized differently from a big room? Obviously the RT 60 will be different because of physics. What are your experience with your mix rooms.

From my experience on our SR mixes its 95% close from dubbing stage mix. Theater mixing has this so called x curve room eq which I think is a standard for film mixing. You may want to check this out for reference http://www.micasamm.com/publications...und_0100b.htm.

2) I notice some of you US mixers have also the ability to playback an optical track in your rooms into the cinema processor for decoding. Do you feel it is important, especially in checking the sound neg from the optical transfer house? Also what will you need to sync to your picture to a sound mag track if you do not have the ability to project a film picture? I was told there is a sync box that can lock an optical sound print to video and allow you to preview the sound print directly into your CP650 processor to do an actual check of the transfer? How do you QC your mixes once they are committed to DAT?

We check our mixes espcially SR tracks in a properly calibrated movie house. We just pick a part that we think will be most critcal for the final soundtrack.Final mixes done on our Dolby room would go straight to DAT, No more QC AFAIK

3) What is a simple way to making an LTRT track to print to DAT? I know Dolby gives you an encoder when you sign up and qualify for cinema or trailers certification. Will the plug-in version for PT be adequate? Will it translate adequately when transferred to optical?

Dolby Plug-ins would be ok but again Dolby mixing room comes to play.

Our builders also have a spare DTS rig they have and offered to let us try it out, claiming it does an analog LTRT encode that would playback on most Cinema Processors with good results. It also has a compactor circuit that would allow me to push the dynamic range a bit more. What is your opinion on this?

A Dts mix would be great but few movie houses here are dts equipped. Just like you said, We are in the Philippines
4) When you do an LTRT mix that will playback to 4.1 in the Cinemas. I assume most projectors that are set to SR or Dolby Digital would auto switch to the analog track if no Digital track is present. When you monitor at 4.1 in cinemas are the subs (LFEs) working at all? I know this is different from Bass Managed subs in home theaters or DVD playback systems. Comments if any.


[/QUOTE]
LT/RT----no LFE signal at all .
pls send my regards to Ms Anna as well.
HTH
eddie