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Is this just a center-cropped image?

If it was, then this wouldn't be much of a project. Sure, some hours are put into it, but many of them are not man-hours, and instead are just letting the computer do some renderings, encodings, muxings, etc. Center-cropping a film does not always place the image where you want it to be, and can cut off information that you otherwise might want in your new frame. Sure, it can be acceptable for the most part, but once you find out that you can do whatever you want with it, you rarely leave yourself with a single shot dead-center, as something else is almost always more ideal.

This is custom-cropped, which means I even adjust some shots as high or as low as possible and still be within frame, if I feel the shot warrants it. This means many, many man-hours (well over 30). I have done this before for TDK, TDKR, Interstellar, and Dunkirk.


What is the matter with the film's shifting aspect ratio?

It's a personal preference thing for me, but basically I don't like it. I really can only take it in one kind of setting: 15/70mm IMAX theaters. What Nolan intended to take advantage of in the format are supermassive screens that can work a 1.43:1 aspect ratio and ~12K resolution. None of these items can be translated into home, even if you had the screen size. It becomes more of a nuisance than anything else, even though the picture is astounding either way. Thankfully, simply cropping the image doesn't hurt that.


Why not just watch the digital copy then, since it doesn't change aspect ratio?

For starters, I actually sold my digital copy. It makes my purchase of this disc that much sweeter!

Besides that the reasons would vary, one being I just don't like streaming as an option. I don't find the loss of quality there to be fitting, I don't like to rely on it, and in essence I'll have my own digital copy when I make it this way plus the physical disc. At least with the disc, I can place it into my Blu-ray player (PS3) and I can guarantee 23.976 FPS playback and DTS-HD MA audio.

I will also be making this in a 2.40:1 aspect ratio, as opposed to the digital copy's 2.20:1 aspect ratio.


Since you sold your digital copy, I take it you're also not basing your cropping off of it at all?

This is correct. It would take far too long for me to go shot-by-shot and try and match what it is providing, when I feel I can judge for myself what is a most ideal framing for each shot. Besides, I am using a different aspect ratio anyway.


Okay, now why are you cropping the film from 2.20:1 to 2.40:1? And does that mean you have to consider cropping non-IMAX shots as well?

I'll answer the last question first: yep. Thankfully, many shots don't need much tweaking, and even if I can tweak it, it'll be bare. But yes, many shots will be tweaked, whether you ever know about it or not. I am actually looking through the entire film for this one, and this ain't a short film by any stretch!

Why the change? Like anything else in movies, I'm just looking for something more cinematic in appearance. There are very few films I know or own that use the 2.20:1 aspect ratio, and its different appearance makes it lose a bit of a cinematic appeal for me. I am almost okay with Dunkirk having it because of being such an unconventional and different kind of experience already (almost taking bits from the silent film era and from documentaries, and then having a lot of aerial battles). I was also impatient at the time, and Dunkirk has so much IMAX already without many transitions that it was okay for one film.

We can argue "what is cinematic" all day since the majority of films are presented in 2.40, 2.39, 2.35, 1.85, and 1.78, but the fact of the matter is these are ones that I am most familiar with, so they'll feel most cinematic in the end. Even Frozen had a strange 2.24:1 that I would have no trouble parting with. All I'll say is this: I'm watching my project in its infancy, and I'm already in love with the look of it. I think it changes it for the better, but that may be just me.

Why did I choose 2.40:1 instead of 2.39:1 or 2.35:1? Because 2.40:1 is exactly 800 pixels in height in 1080p, whereas 2.39:1 and 2.35:1 are imperfect near odd values, and with the way I'm editing these it's easier to work from a hundreds value (literally every number I'm adjusting is calculated). It'll also align with my discs for TDK, TDKR, and Interstellar.

Also, if you are a home theater CIH owner, this resolves the hiccup between center-masking or dealing with a smaller image so the IMAX shots would only fill the screen. Clearly, Nolan isn't taking care of the top-end folks here.


Why are you making a 1080p BD instead of a 2160p UHD?

1) Unfortunately, the software that I use to edit does not support the MKV container, and while I use Handbrake to try and do a perfect re-encode of my MKV, working with HDR, Rec 2020, and WCG 10-bit does not always translate items perfectly. Every time I tried to encode just the opening scene, the white lights in the opera house dimmed tremendously. I just couldn't crack the right settings or way to work that part out.

2) Editing is maddening to do in 4K with these, as does handling rendering time, memory, storage space, etc.

3) I honestly didn't bother searching, but I wasn't aware whether I could find physical media that could write to UHD and have software to certify for UHD's to play them, etc. I know what I can do on Blu-ray, so I just decided to go this route for now.


What editing software are you using, and what is the entirety of the process involved?

I'll save the details for actually putting it on disc, but for editing I am using Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Studio 16.

Since I ripped my Blu-ray into an MKV and Resolve can't use MKV, my first job is to change it into a readable container such as MP4. Unfortunately if I only make that change, Resolve sometimes shows errors, glitches, and doesn't show 23.976 FPS after its encode (instead it shows 60 FPS). To remedy this, I make an MP4 encode using Handbrake.

One the file is on Resolve, I must do the following:

1) Mask the entire video from 1920x1080 to 1920x800, using the crop feature by setting the top and bottom at 140 each. This is a viable default center-crop option, in case I don't feel like I need to change anything on any shot. I can adjust from here.

2) Splice up the video on a shot-by-shot basis. There are over 2700 cuts in this film.

3) I preview each shot. There are two different ways I can look at this from here: (a) Is it a reasonable shot if I don't adjust anything? (b) Is it the best possible shot I can make, or should I adjust? I ALWAYS go for option (b).

Now, although I can physically drag the crop up and down, it changes "where you see the black bars" until I reposition them to appear 140 above and below my crop, which is a calculation and number entry in the Y-position transformation settings.

In other words, let's say I only wanted to get the bottom 800 pixels. First I would drag the image so I've cropped 280 pixels on top and 0 pixels down below. Then I need to enter a position value of 140 to reposition the image back up to the center, with black bars on top and bottom.

On the flip-side, what happens a lot more is that I drag the image to my desired outcome, see what value it is (and they were all decimals for reasons of the window scale I had to work with), look at the top/bottom crop values, and do a subtraction with 140 based on the size of each crop value (if the top number is larger I'll subtract 140 from it, but if the bottom value is larger I'll subtract it from 140). So let's say that I decided to drag the image down so that the top crop says 53.689 and the bottom crop says 226.311... then for my Y-position transformation value I would have to enter the number -86.311.

4) I encode this video at an incredibly high bitrate, and as a .MOV file.

5) I re-encode it one more time using Handbrake, getting it down to size (both by file and bitrate) and making it an MKV. I need to make sure I definitely stay under 45 MB/s bitrate and under 50 GB total if I want this to play as a Blu-ray on, say, my PS3 (and with one often comes the other).

6) I mux the lossless DTS-HD MA audio codec with my new video file.


How far along are you in the project, and how long has it taken you so far?

So... technically I am "done," at least on my first pass, which has probably taken at least 30 man hours. If you viewed my file as it is right now, you'll see a cut that is completely in 2.40:1. It is currently not Blu-ray quality though, and won't be for a couple of weeks. This is because I'm at my sister's house through New Year's, and won't be back at my house for the highest quality encodes until I get home again.

If I do all the above steps in the way I plan on doing it, I intend for lossless quality on all stages so any video changes will be completely imperceptible to the human eye, and the audio will be identical. Currently though, everything was encoded with somewhat starved bitrates, and I'm using an audio file that's a merged 2.0 MP3 from the five main channels, causing a bunch of audio eww-ness.

Therefore, I like to say that I'm in a proofing stage. This is where I do two things: (a) Make sure I don't have any cropping errors, and I at least have one that I've already corrected (but is not on my current saved encode); (b) Re-watch the film and decide if there are any edits I do want to make. As it turns out, I think I want to make several. There are a couple of scenes where I think I cropped too much at the top, but it looked good in the small window preview. This shouldn't take too long, but thankfully I have two weeks to do all of this.


Since you will be making a disc for yourself, will it be identical with menus, chapters, and language options for audio/subtitles?

I actually never really figured out how to throw in menus, and honestly since I have the other disc I've been fine without it. I only personally bring over the film and the English audio tracks, alongside burning in English translation subtitles of foreign language dialogue. I'm sure that I can probably provide the English subtitles as an option, as well.

Currently though, I'm just working on the cropping, which unfortunately loses chapters once I do the Resolve encode. I haven't yet found a way to add chapter markers back in that Blu-ray players will recognize, but I'll keep working on that.