Cooking Film

Currently, the film scanner outputs several files by default: a ProRes 4444 (mezzanine) .mov, a folder of DPX image files (one for every frame), and a 96 kHz / 24 bit .wav file. For the most part, everything else we need do do with the file, we can do with the ProRes. We can cut it to create clean clips to send out, and we can create a proxy, watermarked mp4 from it. We even use it as the mezzanine copy that we write to the Digital Hub. But, the ProRes is not what we write to ARCHive. For the preservation copy, we want to create a Matroska (.mkv) from the sequence of images and audio file if present.

To do this, we use a tool called RAWcooked. To use RAWcooked to create the Matroska, follow these steps:

1. Go to a machine that has RAWcooked installed and has our departmental license stored.

2. Locate the files for the film scan that you would like to cook. The files need to be arranged in the following way, which the scanner output will do by default:

   • /uniqueID (folder) We'll refer to this as Top Directory
     • uniqueID.wav (file)
     • /uniqueID-dpx (folder)
       • uniqueID_000000.dpx
       • uniqueID_000001.dpx
       • uniqueID_000002.dpx... (all DPX files)

3. Run the following command to begin cooking:

rawcooked /path/to/top/directory -c:a copy -framerate 24 --check-padding --output-name mkv/output/file/location.mkv

• The frame rate (24 in the example) should be set to the frame rate of the original film. This should be noted while scanning. If you are unsure, 24 is a good place to start. If you leave out the frame rate, it will default to the rate that was encoded into the DPX files, but this might be incorrectly set.