Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project

As you remember, we give a special thanks to people who helped realizing Sintel by purchasing the DVD set in advance. The film scroll credit was for those who pre-paid before Sept 16, 2009. The other pre-paid orders will be mentioned on the DVDs itself, in a special “thank you” section.

Here is the DVD list:
/dvd-only-sponsor-credit/

Please check? Thanks!

-Ton-

Hey all, Beorn here, the animator dude who’s been roped into the thankless task of encoding the movie into various formats. (Actually I was crazy enough to volunteer!)
Fortunately the DivX files will be encoded by the good people at DivX, who are actual professionals (as opposed to a forum trawling script kiddie like me).
Despite what Ton has said on this blog before, this is not my area of expertise. I’m really learning as I go and would very much appreciate any advice from the community. I just thought I’d share my current progress and ask for any suggestions on how to improve things.

The goal:
To provide h264 quicktimes and ogg video files in 480p, 720p and 1080p, with subtitles and surround sound (except the 480p versions which will be stereo), and to encode the video for the dvds (NTSC and PAL versions).

I’ve been supplied:

• directory of PNG files, 2048×872 in size
• a stereo wav file
• an audio only quicktime file with 5.1 sound in the aac codec. (there is also an ac3 file for the dvd)
• a directory of subtitle files in .srt format

Please note: I’ve compiled my own versions of ffmpeg and x264 in order to make the quicktimes.

My current issues:

• I haven’t been able to add 5.1 audio to the ogg files in any other codec than flac, which means the files are HUGE.
• The ogg video files are about 3x bigger than the quicktimes, even with stereo sound
• I haven’t been able to add subtitles to the quicktimes.
• I’m using mplayer to do the scaling/cropping/letterboxing, but it keeps crashing on the 1080 versions when trying to crop on the fly. Notice the hack I’ve included on those versions; making cropped copies of the PNGs, encoding them and deleting them. It works, but it’s… inelegant.

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We’re just back from the final-final-final 35mm scope screening with dolby digital, and I’m still glowing from pride, excitement and emotion. All pieces have fallen together, and with Jan’s soundtrack this is truly incredible good stuff!

So much thanks to everyone – also to you reader – and so much gratitude for all the great work I’ve witnessed in the past year! <sob!>

The online release date has to be finalized yet, but aim is before or on October 1st. DVDs then should also being printed, and ship 1-2 weeks after. Stay tuned 🙂

-Ton-

With Murphy’s law happily working (studio server died, no network), Pablo and Soenke pulled an all-nighter to get all frames properly graded and transferred to DPX on a USB drive. Each and every frame got a double check, and a dozen or so frames needed a re-render even. A test screening at film lab Cineco yesterday showed it all was just perfect!

Meanwhile Jan Morgenstern went to Hamburg for a 2-day final mastering session in Konken Studios. They made us their excellently equipped dubbing stage available, allowing Jan and Stephan Konken to finalize a true theatrical master for Sintel.

Today Cineco Amsterdam prepares everything to get it printed on their Arrilaser, so we can get official Dolby SR-D cinemascope 35mm film copies. First copy screening for us is tuesday. Wednesday the copy goes to the Netherlands Film Festival.

That also means we can start now on DVD mastering, a NTSC and PAL disc (with film, 60 minute documentary, out-takes, 4-split version, extra credits, subtitles), a 8 GB DVD-ROM video disc (the film in various formats, tutorial videos, other extras) and a 8 GB DVD-ROM data disc with all the relevant files and docs to examine our work and allowing to re-render it all.

Officially today is also last day to order the Sintel DVD box in our store, if you want your name to appear on the DVD!

Thanks!

-Ton-

Hoi! (now you know how to wave in Dutch!)

Sintel Cover

So! exciting times here at the Blender Institute, today is our very-really-thistimeforsure last rendering day, next to some color grade we need to do still, but then is time to grab those big .EXR files and convert them into friendly DPX’s for the guys at Cineco to do magic with it and turn them into 21312 stills of 35mm chemical glory.

That means we’re getting close to our (real!) Premiere, so in order to help us make some noise, 3D World is widely covering Blender topics on October’s issue, Sintel will be on cover + interview time with Ton (Producer), Colin (Director), and William (Animator), and even BBB got a column in “A list of the all the Best CG shorts out there” 🙂

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Dolf spent the last two weeks here on a wonderful film credits, based on David’s concept art, which added another few minutes to the film! Pablo and Soenke keep trying to make shots even more awesome, but that also has to stop soon now. The next week we can still do last re-renders, spend time on a final color grade session, and then at sept 7 deliver the final files to the film lab. The final Dolby master then has been scheduled on the 9th, with the first film print – for the premiere on NFF – ready tuesday 14th.

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With a pre-screening copy we are already submitting to festivals, the first approval now is in, for Siggraph! Here’s a snippet of their email:

We are very pleased to inform you that your submission “Sintel” has been accepted to Animation Theater of the SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 Computer Animation Festival.

Our International jury, a diverse group of leading animation experts, selected your piece from among the hundreds of entries for the festival due to its high quality, interest, and impact on the SIGGRAPH Asia Community. Congratulations!

Siggraph Asia will be in Seoul, South Korea, from 14-18 december. I probably will have to go then! 🙂

-Ton-

(Added Asian styled Sintel mockup from David !)