It has been a while since I last discussed video formats for screenings. After a few years of changes, everything seems much clearer now, but what do we really need to screen a film, whether a short or feature film, at festivals?
First of all, we need to have a video file in QuickTime, .mov, with a medium bitrate, between 15,000 and 20,000, since a higher bitrate can cause playback issues, with skips and freezes. We must be careful with these files; I have been at some screenings with videos so heavy and with such a high bitrate that they could not be played.
This video file must be encoded in .h264 and with a Full HD, 1080p resolution. This format is the most widely used for screenings, and it is preferable that the audio be stereo. We should aim to have an “all-terrain” video that sounds and looks good in any theater.
As for subtitles, the ideal is to have several options: a clean video without subtitles, the files in .srt, and the versions with embedded subtitles, one for each language.
In addition to this video, we need to have a copy in DCP, the Digital Cinema Package, which is the standard format for cinema screenings. Making a DCP is not too expensive; there are many companies that do it very well, and more and more festivals are using it. I always recommend having a DCP from the beginning of distribution, reviewed in a theater and functioning correctly.
This DCP is much better if it has the subtitles included, not embedded, and as many dialogue lists as we can have.
We should also have an Apple ProRes file (although I am not a strong advocate of this format for screenings, as I discussed in this post) with and without subtitles, and a Blu-ray disc. Both formats are used very little, but there are a few festivals that do require them, and it does not cost much to have them ready.
- Copy in h264 (with and without embedded subtitles)
- DCP (with non-embedded subtitles)
- Apple ProRes (with and without embedded subtitles)
- Blu-ray disc (with subtitle option)
I can have these files available via a Dropbox or Google Drive link (except for the Blu-ray, of course), and it is always better to use systems without expiration dates, as occurs with the free WeTransfer option. The DCP is better sent on a USB flash drive or USB 3.0 hard drive formatted in Linux ext3, or in NTFS. In some cases, we can also have it available via a download link, but always depending on the size of the video, and verifying very carefully that there are no errors in the transfer.