- Posts: 11
- Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2023 1:27 am
- Real Name: Sam Studer
Hello there! DI, DCP author and college educator who's taught a lot of folks how to make DCPs here.
First and foremost, let's get something technical out of the way that'll be relevant down the line. Delivery-format audio channel assignment for theatrical 5.1 is *always* the following:
1. Left
2. Right
3. Center
4. LFE
5. Left Surround
6. Right Surround
(Post-Audio Pros will affirm that they often don't mix (as a verb) in this channel assignment, but the Mix (as a noun) will most certainly always be this when it hits both the theater and the home viewer.)
I would *strongly* encourage you to always mix your theatrically-aimed films in a 5.1 environment, either done by yourself or a professional mixer. Notice I say "in a 5.1 environment" and not "make a 5.1 mix." You can totally make a mono mix if you like and have it play in a theater via DCP! You can even add in some stereo elements, effectively making a "3.0" mix, where most of your audio comes out of the Center speaker, with some elements (maybe music, maybe some "choice" panning sound effects like passing cars and planes and the like) come out of Left and Right speakers.
The salient point to always bear in mind when mixing for modern theaters is this: While not all movies are mixed in 5.1, (damn near to) all theaters are *equipped* for (minimally) 5.1 mixes. More to the point, (damn near to) all cinema servers *expect* for your audio to be mixed in 5.1, and for your DCP to be flagged as having a 5.1 mix, as that has been Academy reference standard for many years.
Given this, the safest bet in making sure that your DCP encounters no issues interfacing with either the cinema server or the speakers in the theater is to always deliver your audio in a 5.1 container, whether your audio is 5.1 or not.
Here's the big, not-exactly-secret trick we DCP authors use: You just render out the unused channels as silence!
In the case of a purely Mono mix wrapped in a 5.1 container, this would mean that your audio channel assignment would be:
1. Left (Silence)
2. Right (Silence)
3. Center (Mono Mix)
4. LFE (Silence)
5. Left Surround (Silence)
6. Right Surround (Silence)
For a 3.0 mix:
1. Left (3.0 Mix Left)
2. Right (3.0 Mix Right)
3. Center (3.0 Mix Center)
4. LFE (Silence)
5. Left Surround (Silence)
6. Right Surround (Silence)
Now, another thing you could do (which I want to emphasize, I do not expressly recommend) if you don't have access to a 5.1 mixing environment is to mix the film in Stereo, panning what you want to eventually hit the Center channel to the middle, and then use a mid-side decoder to split apart your Stereo mix into 3 channels, with your center-panned audio being your newly-made Center channel track (you can find mid-side decoders in a number of DCP authoring softwares, as strictly Stereo mixes can cause a problem in theaters where dialogue "bounces" around the space and phases in unintended ways). Again, it is far better to mix your film as it will nominally appear.
As for special audio software - it's generally recommended that you mix your film in some sort of DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Pro Tools, Neundo, or the Fairlight page in Resolve. Any other software would simply do the job of "up-mixing" your film automatically.
Hope this is helpful!! DCPs are pretty complex and daunting, and this is just the audio mix side of things. I know many people in this forum might tell you, "it's best to pay a professional to make your DCP for you." And they'd be right - but it's definitely a thing you can learn to do. There are a lot of good resources out there these days for learning the intricate ins and outs of authoring, starting with the ISDCF naming convention page.
https://registry-page.isdcf.com/
Best of luck to you!!