Hi Everyone - a client has just asked me for a recent Atmos mix in DCP format. I’ve seen a post on this forum from a few years ago, which mentions dedicated hardware units and an online thread where someone has created a free windows C++ app. But it is still a little confusing.
I wonder if anyone here has had any experience delivering DCP files?
Thanks!
A). You need to mix and create the DCP master audio files at a dolby approved dub stage. The use of cinema dolby Atmos is restricted to authorised post facilities. You also need to get Dolby approval for the title to do this (unless it’s a non commercial screening where you can turn to facilities such as ours to handle it all).
B) the audio and video is then “mastered” using specific software like “Clipster” similar systems.
It’s not a DIY process
And oh you CAN make a 5.1/7.1 DCP mix based of of the Atmos mix as well but just not with Cinema Atmos unless you do the above.
If you do a 5.1/7.1 fold down mix in a non cinema dub stage there are quite a few potential issues that can happen still.
But yea you can do a 5.1:7.1 cinema DCP and that does not require Dolby approval only the correct know how.
I know I’ll cop it here but…ATMOS is over rated.
I went to the expense of getting a 7.1.4 setup but quickly realised that those top 4 speakers are mostly to be avoided, especially with the music mix. I mean you can have a dryish mono/narrow stereo instrument zip around up there, dislocated from the mix as an object. But if you look into it you’ll discover reverbs shouldnt be up there because of the mush they cause when folded down to 5.1 or 7.1 that most cinemas and home theatres have.
Yes I experience a slightly larger sense of space when I use them with instruments or reverbs and the extra top mics of orchestral libraries (nothing to write home about) but its not a good strategy to put instruments up there that arent in the 7.1 plane. You cant rely on them folding down properly at the right levels despite the theory. In practice most music is delivered in 7.1 or under. Stems usually but the dub mixer wont put much if anything up there.
The tops are fun though, if you’re mixing for cinema you do need them, but the ATMOS Cinema license requirement of Dolby is just elitism which will bite them in the ass sooner or later.
ATMOS cinema shouldnt be restricted. If people do it wrongly the repercussions will be effective enough. Meanwhile indi cinema is moving on, DCPs are deliver in 5.1, 7.1 etc.
But if your client insists well…
OK you can flame me now
I agree that Atmos (as a proprietary format, not as a synonym for "immersive audio) is way overrated for actual music mixes, but:
I beg to differ. 
I wouldn’t do this in 99% of all music mixes in 3D. It’s about the sense of space and enveloping, like you wrote yourself just a few sentences later. 
This depends a lot on the reverb. Good 3D algorithms, or IRs captured in true 3D will sound great even in the downmix.
But I absolutely agree that these unconnected, (almost comical) wiggly “Objects” don’t have much to offer for most musical mixes.
Hey Dietz, always nice to hear your immersive audio optimism.
I would love to be able to really use the tops. But in HC mix its the translation to the user/audience that causes everyone to err on the side of caution. To the point where it’s standard in ATMOS mixes to keep it minimal, especially with reverb (good algo incl). Translation is safe when we use dry objects that dont effect the overall “padding” of the music. But that pad is risky to put up there as well and rely on it, yet.
And of course we all hold license to mess with panning anyway we choose with some projects.
You guys in Vienna have some pretty nice venues so I completely understand your advocacy for immersive. Despite how it sounds I am too
ie its not that it cant be done economically viably, its that regardless, peoples playback systems arent up to scratch. This is well addressed in all the formats, up to a point. Not enough to risk a good 99% of the mix on.
But yeah man bring on multiwav, ambisonics and open source IAMF
We are straying pretty far from the issue of DIY cinema Atmos.
For cinema Atmos I love all the speakers and the separation and immersion achivable that is just super sweet. Even there we have to consider the 5.1/7.1 translating as there are way more of those screens than Atmos.
Interestingly enough I find my Atmos fold down mixes to sound as good or better than when I mix for the format.
This for me is even true with HE (Home Entertainment) mixes.
I definetly use the tears and tops to achieve more immersion for HE. Yes some care is needed to not overdo it as it can overload the downmixes, but in general that is also when it’s actually overused in Atmos as well.
My personal view however is that I really don’t use discrete object panning much for HE. I do for cinema, but not as much for HE.
So for HE I actually mostly mix in 7.1.4 and just a few objects when I feel they are truly warranted.
So far I’m quite pleased how those mixes work in various HE playback scenarios.
Granted I have not mixed any really action packed POV sequences for HE, that might change things but for the shows I have mixed so far for HE it’s worked quite well.
I know mixing in 7.1.4 is potentially making it less expansive for the very few that might have 9.1.6. I aM considering testing that eventually but not sure if it’s worth the extra work involved.
9.1.6 as a home viewing format is super limited I terms of wide spread use so…
Yes we are briefly straying a little. OP @bsoord I concur with ErikGuldager first response. And mine to that is fold down to 5.1 and 7.1 PCM for the DCP. There are hardly any cinemas that have true ATMOS but all of them are used to 5.1 and some of them 7.1
This is us just rambling now.
Erik you are one of the lucky ones who has access to an ATMOS cinema rig, however if for arguments sake you didn’t, then for cinema your main deliverable for DCP would be 7.1 PCM or below wouldnt it? Since Dolby have restricted it. There’s a huge chunk of the film industry delivering in 7.1 PCM because of this, and forging new standards. Dolby’s loss. And annoying for us.
Good to hear of your experiences re HE translation.
Yes we happen to have one of Swedens two Dolby Atmos approved cinema dub stages.
And we also have a single 7.1.4 mix room for HE.
Since we have this and the admin to get Dolby approval for producers are as easy as it is now we probably won’t do any cinema non Atmos mixes going forward. Some external clients that mix at our facility do limit it to 7.1 or even 5.1 mostly because they have not made the extra prep work to be able to expand it easily to a Atmos mix.
I will always enjoy an Atmos debate! About using the heights, all I know is that personally moving from 5.1 to 7.1.4 was very satisfying, moving parts into the extra dimension made a huge difference to the immersive listening experience. I generally work with modern progressive rock and atmospheric rock acts, with a lot scope for splitting up the mix without losing the core energy. Luckily enough there is quite a vibrant market waiting for the blu-ray. I know there is a debate about binaural, but my kids love it on Apple Music. So right now I’m not placing any bets…
Anyway thanks for all the helpful info about DCP!
Kenobi1 What is the DCP restriction you talk about?
There are no restrictions for delivering 5.1 / 7.1 DCPs to cinemas.
Yes there are ATMOS restrictions and Im obviously happy for them, as at least all atmos mixes have to be mixed properly in a dub stage and not in someone’s bedroom or nearfield studio.
Cinema is supposed to be mixed on a dub stage, and when it comes to Atmos yes there are requirements both technically and practically as well as knowledge that is needed to create a atmos dub stage those are all investments made by folks like us.
There are technical knowhow also needed regarding the process of delivering a DCP with DolbyAtmos, its not as easy as just adding the file in Easy DCP.
The producers requirements today to be able to deliver a atmos cinema mix are much lower than they ever have been, they just have to sign a contract, no cost (we the dolby atmos licensed studio carries a cost though).
It IS possible to deliver a cinema atmos mix within the same timeframe and cost as a regular 5.1/7.1 mix but Id advice spending more time/money for atmos to actually get true benefit out of it.
The restriction I mentioned is indeed the initial and ongoing costs of being able to encode a dolby cinema mix.
I dont agree with statements like:
“atmos mixes have to be mixed properly in a dub stage and not in someone’s bedroom or nearfield studio”
With all due respect, it’s just muscle tactics in the studio biz, trying to retain exclusivity for the price of entry. As I said the proof is in the result. I and many other mid level studios can get good translation for their surround mixes for cinema in a mid field studio , and even arguably in a near field studio.
With trial and error and the same experience you talk of, but with a bit more blood sweat and tears and less money and real estate. If the audience and the client likes it, that’s what matters. I’m also a believer of investing time into something, but not necessarily throwing wads of money to corporations like dolby to open the door.
Studios like mine can get access to smaller boutique cinemas or even bigger ones to test our mixes then go back and make systemic changes to our setups for better results without all the hoo hah and rigmarole of a dolby certification.
If we were able to encode in dolby for cinema for no more cost than HE and we messed up then we simply wouldnt get used next time and our client would go elsewhere for that part or even the whole mix. So its in our interest to get it right for them.
Anyway as I said it Dolby’s loss since the format wont get as much use and wont propagate into small and mid budget markets.
People who cant afford the giant space and facilities, to certify and license for what is essentially just another encoder keep delivering masters at 7.1/5.1 pcm for DCP and get accolades and recognition too.
In fact the restrictive nature of dolby for cinema is leaving room for the other standards to get a foothold. Namely plain old pcm or the new IAMF. These codecs dont have restrictions and thus are subject to market forces. If the results are good, and a mix works well in a big cinema is doesnt matter if it was done in a small nearfield studio.
Yeah but the point of having a standard including certification is to actually make sure that the mix works in a theater the way it does on a mix stage.
If I look at this as a consumer the odds are simply far higher that if I go into a Dolby Atmos certified theater and watch a Dolby Atmos certified movie I’m getting to hear what the creators wanted me to hear. This is a good thing for me as a consumer. It is a good thing for production.
But it’s about far more than “just another encoder”. It’s about room size, reverberation, the entire B-chain setup and so on. Think about all of that and Atmos basically being an evolution of the standardization and certification of what we already had.
And delivering 7.1 PCM for DCP is obviously completely different from delivering a mix with objects and a height dimension.
Bringing this back to the original query - this highlights the issues of bringing Atmos for music into the minds of label marketing departments. It’s quite a recent phenomenon where labels start thinking about one off cinema playback promo events for an album launch (at least for a relatively small scale release). Try explaining to them why my Atmos mix might not translate to a cinema room, let alone the concept of ‘Atmos’ as a music format in its self. I attended an event in a 70 seat room for one of my Atmos mixes and confess I didn’t particularly enjoy the experience compared to nearfield.
In what ways did your mix environment differ from the playback venue’s?
Here is the deal yes it IS technically possible to mix a film in a small or medium sized room. Of course it is. But you as a. Mixer will never hear how it actually sounds in a cinema monitoring environment in a big room with lots of air and lots of speakers (ours have 41 loudspeakers).
It’s night and day because of how we humans perceive things.
We have both small studios and a medium sized cinema dub stage (not Hollywood size).
So I know how far I can get premixing in a small great sounding mid-field Atmos room. I also intimately know how the large stage changes how I perceive sounds and how I relate to themAND how the large screen makes me relate to it all. It just happens. Just like a film will feel nice and fat in a good home cinema but will be a totally different experience on the big screen.
Apple won’t give iPhones away, in fact they sell crazy expensive phones. Quite a lot of folks choose to buy them. I do. And some is the engineering and the integration with our other stuff. But quite a bit is marketing. We are all affected by it.
Owners of a technology chooses to set the rules of how it can be used. They could have chosen to just publish recommendations and create an open source decoder software that anyone could implement. And that would have been the end of Dolby. Not a smart business move.
Instead they make every Atmos decoder buy a chip from them to do the decode as well as keep the cinema Atmos standard at the. Same qualified level as they did when they were selling Dolby SRD (Dolby digital for cinema) and ac3 encoders and decoders etc.
If they would let anyone mix feature film Atmos without beein able to actually hear how it works in a big room they would have made themselves a disservice.
Have you mixed Atmos in a cinema dub stage?
Unless you have, you have not heard the difference between 7.1.4 near or mid-field mix and a proper cinema Atmos mix.
I obviously have. I’m actually doing the reverse right now. I’m mixing a streamer mix in our dub stage, going from premixing on the big stage to the smaller 7.1.4 room to finish because we have two Atmos projects being mixed right now.
Do I think I. Red to adjust some stuff for the finals in the small room? Of course. Reverbs feel different, time alignment is totally different. The tonal difference when mixing beds to arrays compared to single source speaker setup makes it different as well. So yes I will probably need to tweak a bit before I ship it.
The resolution difference is huge, the perceived difference from 7.1.4 to cinema Atmos isn’t just where you have positioned your sound sou ce. It’s quite a bit more.
I think exactly what Erik just said - in a bigger room, decisions I made in nearfield no longer made sense. Especially the transient, percussive elements of a mix. Take for example a shaker overdub - I’m so used in 5.1 to send it to the rears. In a large room I was squirming (granted I was sat at the front) due to the timing lag and disorientation. A small room I think music can be totally immersive what ever the nature of the source. A big room things changed so much. What to do? If I was told I had to mix for a theatre environment my mixing paradigm would be upended. There would be a lot more compromise. I would have to annoy (the vocal!) home enthusiasts in order to make it translate to all the environments.
@bsoord
The main reason you feel disoriented is the diffenence in time alignment.
Yes the speakers are time aligned but not in the way a near field system is.
Why?
it is impossible to time align sounds coming from different speakers in a large room with a large seating area to coincide anywhere but for a single seat that is not even something that is done.
There is time alignment but it’s done differently and according to Dolby standards.
So a transient musical element panned to the rear in a large cinema will be severely out of time to the sounds coming from the front speakers. That is just physics. And nothing can be done to change that sounds take time to travel through the air.
In a cinema we also have sounds sent to multiple speakers (this is called an array) and this sounds vastly different to point source mixing.
In a small room the timing differences are so small and the relative seating area as well that we do attempt to time align all the speakers.
I can agree with most of the responses here and come back to my point that if I do make the wrong choices in a 7.1 mix that dont translate, then its on me. For a small or even mid budget I have to keep going back and forth from a cinema to my studio to make changes that do translate. Then after a while I learn what works and what doesnt. Market forces would drive my success.
If there was a budget I would advise the director to do a final mix in a certified dubstage. But the reality is different for small to mid budget.
Yes as a viewer, if I was looking for info on the film release saying it was dolby certified I’d agree I’m more guaranteed of a better sound (creative content however, correlation is less). However no-one that I know of, except those in the industry, actually look for that. For popcorn movies half of them do look for a big theatre they know will sound better. Mostly its based on size or the label chosen by the theatre complex eg Cinimax, Panamax etc.
And then there is small indi festivals, award nights and boutique art house cinema which exist completely out of dolby certification because its not viable. Here in Perth, also in Melbourne, there is a lot of that. There is only a couple of theatres (big commercial ones) and the Imax that have overheads and will take an ATMOS mix.
We can only strive for the best, and the cinema world will keep plugin along as it is. Quite divided due to budget. A missed opportunity of the traction ATMOS is gaining in my view. Other standards may push it out of the way in the decades to come. I sure hope they do.
Agreed. As long as ATMOS keeps itself exclusive only to the big guns, there will be other formats that will provide the same but cater to small to mid-sized budgets. I have a strong feeling it will be so in the future…