
Netflix Originals: Production and Post-Production Requirements v2.1 - Vagantem
https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-us/articles/217237077-Production-and-Post-Production-Requirements-v2-1
======
Animats
James Cameron ("Avatar", "Titanic", etc.) used to argue that high frame rate
was more important than higher resolution. If you're not in the first few rows
of the theater, he once pointed out, you can't tell if it's 4K anyway.
Everyone in the theater benefits from high frame rate. This may be less of an
issue now that more people are watching on high-resolution screens at short
range.

Cameron likes long pans over beautifully detailed backgrounds. Those will
produce annoying strobing at 24FPS if the pan rate is faster than about 7
seconds for a frame width. Staying down to that rate makes a scene drag.

Now, Cameron wants to go to 4K resolution and 120FPS.[1] Cameron can probably
handle that well; he's produced most of the 3D films that don't suck. He's
going to give us a really nice visual tour of the Avatar world. For other
films, that may not help. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" was recorded in
3D, 4K resolution and 120FPS. Reviews were terrible, because it's 1) far too
much resolution for close-ups, and 2) too much realism for war scenes. Close-
ups are a problem - do you really want to see people's faces at a level of
detail useful only to a dermatologist? It also means prop and costume quality
has to improve.

The other issue with all this resolution is that it's incompatible with the
trend towards shorter shot lengths. There are action films with an average
shot length below 1 second. For music videos, that's considered slow; many of
those are around 600ms per shot.[2] They're just trying to leave an
impression, not show details.

[1] [https://www.polygon.com/2016/10/31/13479322/james-cameron-
av...](https://www.polygon.com/2016/10/31/13479322/james-cameron-
avatar-3d-4k-hdr) [2]
[http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php?sort=asl](http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php?sort=asl)

~~~
HappyKasper
You neglect to mention the fact that we are so used to seeing 24 fps that
anything above it doesn't look like a movie.

Why do home videos have that "home video" look? The biggest reason is the 60
fps frame rate - it just doesn't feel cinematic. Even the 48 fps of the Hobbit
films felt too "lifelike" and not cinematic enough.

A lot of prominent directors, as you've mentioned, say they'd like to move
towards a world with higher frame rates. But that'll be a bitter pill to
swallow for a viewing public that unconsciously believes "cinema" means 24
fps.

3D in particular is very difficult to watch at frame rates as low as 24 fps -
a big reason it makes so many people nauseous, and a big reason so many
directors are saying we need higher frame rates.

High resolution may not be a huge positive but it is definitely not a
negative. There's nothing inherently cinematic or better about low resolution
like there is about 24 fps, and if excessive sharpness feels jarring in a
scene, the cinematographer can elect to use a lens with a softer focus.

And the strobing effect you mention - unless we're talking 3D (where motion
blur feels wrong), a low shutter rate and consequent good amount of motion
blur easily avoid strobing.

~~~
Animats
Viewers will get over it. There were industry people opposed to sound, to
color, to wide-screen movies, and to digital cameras. They're mostly over
that. Adding grain in post-processing is on the way out.

(Film is really dead. There are some directors still making noise about
shooting on film, but it's digitized for editing.)

~~~
KaiserPro
we've had >24fps for a number of years.

It just doesn't look film-y. I suspect it won't be until VR that we'll see
proper high framerate.

Its just such an oddity that I don't think people will take the risk, given
the expense in retrofitting cinemas. (plus virtually no TV is actually capable
of properly doing 60fps)

just one point:

>Adding grain in post-processing is on the way out.

thats with us to stay. most film grain from 2008 onwards is digital (yes even
on film films) because most will have gone through a VFX pipeline with DI.
Grain is stripped out and put back in after.

grain is a good visual cue for a number of things, just like desaturation of
colour. its a tool thats not going to go away

~~~
baby
It doesn't look film-y is exactly the kind of excuses we used to hear in the
past. The reality is that once you've watched movies in 48/60fps you can't
really go back to slow framerate movies as you see them blurry and stuttering.
I personally can't wait for 24fps to be a thing of the past. Especially for
action movies.

~~~
dx034
At which point it will look like a youtube video to many, not like a movie in
the cinema. High frame rates haven't been successful for several years, I
don't see why this should change. Same for 3D. Maybe there will be another
trend that enables it, but as of now 3D wasn't a great success.

~~~
baby
> but as of now 3D wasn't a great success

I too find 3D gimmicky often, but probably because the technology varies
grandly between production, cameras and theater displays. On the other hand,
there are 3D movies every day in every big cinemas and 3D TVs as well. So I'm
not sure we can say that it wasn't a great success.

> High frame rates haven't been successful for several years

The number of cinemas that can display 48fps is not great, the number of
cinemas that can display 60fps is zero? So I don't know how you can say that
"High frame rates haven't been successful for several years".

Actually if you look on Youtube, high FPS videos are successful.

> At which point it will look like a youtube video to many, not like a movie
> in the cinema

There are some great youtube videos out there, don't know why you're saying
this. Cinema is what you're defining as 24fps, sure because you're used to it.
If tomorrow we start watching a lot of 60fps movies then you will define it as
Cinema. Objectively 60fps is better for action movies anyway, the rest will
follow.

~~~
KaiserPro
> The number of cinemas that can display 48fps is not great, the number of
> cinemas that can display 60fps is zero?

any cinema that can do 3D can do 48FPS, at least.

RealD uses a single projector, with an electrically controlled circular
polarising filter on the front.

This is why 3D in cinema for any kind of action is terrible, because you get
juddering nastyness.

To get round this, some places project at 96 FPS(well I thought it was 144,
but that might be the limit of the projector where I worke)

~~~
baby
> any cinema that can do 3D can do 48FPS, at least.

You'll have to explain to me why they weren't showing The Hobbit in 48fps
then. You sometimes had to go to a different country to see it in 48fps.

~~~
KaiserPro
because buying the film in HFR costs extra...

------
mmastrac
This likely gives them confidence that if they were to remaster for a
different color-space or higher resolution, that they could. For a 4K original
shot in 8K, Netflix could send it back through the production process for a
more reasonable cost and be able to launch the title quickly.

I'm surprised they don't ask for VFX sources to be archived though. ST:TNG and
Babylon 5 both suffered badly from loss of the original VFX.

~~~
happycube
The VFX elements for TNG were mostly kept, so it was mostly new post-
production - it was DS9 that got bit hard, since there was much more CGI in
the later seasons making an HD remaster too expensive.

~~~
dave_sullivan
I'll bet we see neural network-based upsampling (aka super resolution) being
used for HD remasters in the near future.

~~~
lotyrin
Nobody's done this yet?

~~~
adiabatty
It's an area of active research:
[https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x](https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x)

------
eponeponepon
That's beautifully clear - I wish I worked with specifications so lucid. I've
got almost no real knowledge of the field it's governing, but I believe I
would know how to successfully shoot some footage that Netflix would accept
off the back of reading it.

One thing intrigues me though - albeit likely a function of my lack of
knowledge on the matter - do these requirements implicitly rule out shooting
on film for Netflix?

(I mean, I'm sure that ${hollywood-bigshot} could negotiate, but for Joe
Public..?)

~~~
objclxt
> One thing intrigues me though - albeit likely a function of my lack of
> knowledge on the matter - do these requirements implicitly rule out shooting
> on film for Netflix?

In terms of resolution, no. Standard 35mm can produce a good quality 4K
transfer (depending on the speed of the film you're using), and if you shoot
on VistaVision (which is where you use 35mm film but rotate it 90 degrees) can
go even higher.

Of course, the cost to do so is massive, and it's getting larger ever year.
The only TV show I know this year that was shot on 35mm was Westworld.

Joe Public can't afford to shoot on 35mm for his/her Netflix original series
even if they wanted to. Netflix would almost certainly only let an extremely
experienced A-list director shoot on film, both because they'd be able to
negotiate it but also because on film you can only usually afford a 3x overage
(that is, you shoot three times what you end up using), whereas with digital
that can go as high as 10x. It takes a really disciplined director and DP to
manage that.

~~~
iampliny
3:1 would be an extremely low -- I've never seen a shooting ratio that low in
my life. Shooting just 4.5 hours of footage for a 1.5 hour film, for example,
is unheard of.

Even a 10:1 shooting ratio was pretty low for indie features in the 35mm days.
Nowadays it's not uncommon to see shooting ratios upwards of 30:1 on digitally
acquired productions. (Although that number varies a lot with the director.)

------
coldtea
To paraphrase Bill Gates (who never actually said the original, but anyway) 4K
should be enough for everybody.

Having seen 1080p stretch and play nicely on a 30 feet cinema screen, and not
being much worse looking from regular Hollywood titles even for front seat
viewing, I don't see the allure of 8K even for "future-proofing".

Sure, monitors and tvs might improve their resolution in the future. But I
don't se human eyes improving much (regarding angular resolution vs distance)
or houses getting any bigger to fit a 30ft tv.

4K is good for reframing (cropping) and higher detail, but after some point
enough is enough.

~~~
hrktb
I use my 40" 1080p tv as a second monitor from time to time, and it's way too
ugly to be deemed as 'good enough' IMO.

Perhaps action movies won't be much improved with better resolution, but I'll
want screencasts, browser windows, nature documentaries or really any detailed
image to be shown in 4K at least.

Actually I'd want screen to stop being "TVs" or "computer monitors", it should
be just a high def big rectangle than can be used to display anything. For
that we'd need to come at least to retina level of text rendering from any
comfortable distance. That should mean 8k as standard def in my book.

~~~
Mister_Snuggles
> Actually I'd want screen to stop being "TVs" or "computer monitors", it
> should be just a high def big rectangle than can be used to display
> anything.

I would love to see this as well.

My ideal "television" has at least 8 HDMI inputs plus a couple of composite or
component video inputs. There would be no cable/antenna/tuner input. There
would be buttons on the remote for power, volume, input, plus menu and enter
to access the settings. There would be a handful of audio outputs, and a
switch to disable the internal speakers, which would allow it to feed into an
audio system for those that like to have that separate. It would come in a
variety of sizes, but only in 4K or 8K resolution.

This doesn't have a tuner or any TV-specific features, nor does it have any of
the Smart TV stuff. People who need those are not the target market for this
TV.

I wish this was a thing that existed.

~~~
voltagex_
Amen. My current TV has the Android TV stuff so tightly integrated that when
you're making the CPU work hard, there's huge delays switching inputs or
settings.

~~~
softawre
Buying a smart TV is like buying an all-in-one PC. Much easier to replace the
Fire Stick if it's outside the box.

~~~
voltagex_
Unfortunately buying a TV without the smarts also means sacrificing the DVB-T
tuner, as well as the price being significantly higher. It looks like the
commercial version of a ~2012 panel
([http://pro.sony.com.au/pro/product/professional-displays-
bra...](http://pro.sony.com.au/pro/product/professional-displays-
bravia/kdl-43w750dpsd)) retains at least some of the smarts. I like the idea
of driving a TV via RS232 but the replacement for the tuner - a HDHomeRun - is
sold at ridiculous prices in Australia.

I bought my 4K TV at $800 - at RRP of $1800 I would have been really angry but
I can buy a 4K HDMI switch and get over it.

------
robodale
...And that my friends, is how you layout specs. Simple enough for anyone to
read and understand, yet concrete enough to minimize interpretation variances.
Love that change log.

~~~
gcb0
not really. this how you do not do it. I'm particularly bugged by their list
of approved cameras. it's silly. exclude most of the interesting cameras in
the market for 4k now.

my bet is that they are receiving so much submissions, and actually buying all
of them, that I guess the company, or a few clever individuals, saw the
"consulting" or equipment renting/financing potential and will try to monetize
on selling cookie cutter packages.

~~~
modfodder
What cameras would you prefer shooting on that isn't listed? I'm not seeing
anything that I'd prefer to shoot on (other than film).

Cameras like the Sony A7s or the Panasonic GH5 are great for the low budget
film, but if Netflix green lights your project, you can afford much better
cameras. Unless the project calls for really small and unobtrusive cameras, in
which case Netflix would most likely approve the use of whatever camera best
fits the project.

~~~
martinbalsam
I would say that the Arri Alexa SXT is a better camera than most of the
cameras listed there.

~~~
frankchn
I suspect the Arri Alexas are not on the list because they do not have "a true
4K sensor (equal to or greater than 4096 photosites wide)." The SXT has a 3404
x 2202 resolution when used in open-gate format.

~~~
fgandiya
Yeah, that's their reason [https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-
us/articles/229498668-...](https://backlothelp.netflix.com/hc/en-
us/articles/229498668-Can-I-shoot-on-the-ARRI-Alexa-Amira-)

------
indescions_2017
Ah, that Canon EOS C700 is a symphony of light capturing technology, though.

Here's a sample "A Day in Kyoto" shot at 4K 120fps raw:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MeEKCYvApM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MeEKCYvApM)

------
code4tee
I always find the idea of future proofing interesting here. Like the way
Seinfeld reruns are in HD even though the technology didn't really exist at
the time--because they shot a TV show in actual film and then could re-scan it
later to keep up with modern tech.

Crazy expensive but obviously given the value of those reruns the cost made
sense.

~~~
bbrik
I don't think they shot Seinfeld in 35mm to be future proof. It was the best
way to film at the time.

~~~
joezydeco
_Friends_ reruns also got the HDTV rescans. In some shows you can see things
that weren't supposed to be on-camera in the 4:3 format.

It's just a matter of which shows are worth the cost and time to do it.

~~~
Houshalter
They did this to some of the star trek series. Some scenes you can see things
that were not meant to be seen. E.g. here Kirk and Khan are arguing, and then
suddenly two people dressed like them start fighting:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=B_c...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=B_c1Odol9xw#t=45s)

I can't find it now, but I believe they even redid some of the early CG
effects by just rerendering the old models with modern software. It's worth
preserving that kind of stuff for future generations. One of my favorite video
games was rereleased over a decade later with updated graphics. Sadly they had
to recreate everything from scratch because the original files were lost. And
the original models were very high detail. They just converted to 2d and down
sampled a ton because of the limitations of PCs at the time.

~~~
cakedoggie
What is the vid you send supposed to show?

~~~
Corrado
I think the point the parent was trying to make was that 4K resolution can be
detrimental. You can plainly see that the two actors that play the original
characters didn't actually perform the fight scene. In the original broadcast
the resolution was so low that makeup and effects didn't really have to be
that great in order to work.

------
ldite
Wow, this is pretty scanty. For comparison, the BBC's technical requirements:

[http://dpp-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/specs/...](http://dpp-
assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-
content/uploads/specs/bbc/TechnicalDeliveryStandardsBBC.pdf)

~~~
dfox
These two specifications are for different use-case. Netflix's is about having
consistent quality of ordered works and preserving the ability to do lossless-
ish conversions, while BBC's is technical specification of what can be
broadcast without excessive additional conversion steps.

~~~
ldite
True - the equivalent Netflix spec is this one;

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9DJydDVOVKKLVdCdlF2cFVDVEE...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9DJydDVOVKKLVdCdlF2cFVDVEE/view)

...again, a bit less detailed.

------
devmunchies
I'd like another post going into more depth on audio (sound design, mixing,
mastering...). I've seen a few things on Netflix where the bad audio
engineering totally ruined the experience.

------
samstave
Best pricing info I can find quickly:

* c300 mk ii 6998

* c500 18995

* c700 28000

* Varicam 35 12949

* caricam lt 16500

* red dragon 32520

* red weapon 49955

* red helium 49500

* panavision dxl cant find

* sony f55 28990

* sony f65 cant find

* sony fs7 12949

* arri alexa 65 cant find

* ursa mini 4.6k 5995

* ursa 4.6k 4995

~~~
praveenperera
The RED cameras are pretty much unusable without a lot of very expensive add-
ons. The real cost comes out to 100K+.

Source:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t1PQJmM8P4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t1PQJmM8P4)

~~~
KaiserPro
They come with a lot of "emotional" baggage

Well, its died down now, but it used to be a proper cult. old $work used to
make software that was a key step in transcoding from their shitty jpeg2000
"redfile" to something more usable.

yes they had high resolution, but they had rolling shutter and were still
quite expensive. Not to mention poor colour reproduction.

~~~
Wistar
... and crashing. I hear a lot of complaints about crashing.

------
Justin_K
I wish they'd push for 4K 60FPS so they could upgrade their releases to this
in the future.

~~~
cbg0
60 FPS is undesirable for most movies/shows, as opposed to 24 FPS which
creates a certain feel that most people prefer.

~~~
fenwick67
I think that's why he said "in the future", when people might eventually
realize that 60FPS is good.

~~~
matt-attack
24fps is a form of impressionism, plain and simple. An engineer claiming that
60fps is _better_ simply because it offers realism, is as naive as claiming
that a hi-res photo is obviously better than a Van Gogh because it "has more
detail". Can you imagine commenting on an impressionistic painting and
remarking, "well it's nice, but if the painter has used finer brush strokes
we'd see more detail and it'd be more life-like". The lack of detail is
_precisely the goal_ of the artist.

Films at 24fps are precisely the same thing. Their lack of detail and realism
is precisely what has made the medium so successful over the last 100 years.

~~~
Glyptodon
It's also a way making me feel like I'm going to have a seizure every time
they do a horizontal pan.

~~~
matt-attack
It's like the old doctor joke, "then don't do that".

------
olegkikin
I'm surprised they don't allow UHD resolution (3840×2160). There are probably
a few people in the world who can reliably tell the difference with true 4K.

An average person can't even tell the difference between 720p and 1080p.

~~~
pflats
They do allow it.

~~~
olegkikin

        Camera Requirements
    
        4K Resolution:
        • Camera must have a true 4K sensor 
          (equal to or greater than 4096 photosites wide). 
    

Also notice that not a single UHD camera is on the approved list.

~~~
pflats
The cameras have to be 4K+; the final product can be UHD. See the "IMF Master"
section.

~~~
olegkikin
I was talking about the source material from the beginning.

The fact that they allow UHD in the IMF master makes it even less reasonable,
because downscaled 4K-> UHD footage will have lower resolution than the native
UHD footage.

------
Havoc
Can someone explain the 24fps to me? It seems out of place old-school in light
of the 4K & 240Mbps etc.

~~~
DanBC
I have never watched a tv show show and thought "You know what this needs? Not
better writing, plotting, story arcs, acting, or directing, but more frames
per second or a higher resolution".

~~~
Houshalter
You may not have noticed it consciously, but I bet your subconscious noticed
it. Once I started to notice motion blur in movies I can't stop noticing it.
Often times its really hard to tell what is going in a scene with lots of
motion. All objects become unrecognizable blurry smears across the screen. Of
course it effects the way scenes are filmed - directors take it into account
and film things differently than they otherwise might have at higher fps.
Avoiding shots with too much movement or camera panning, that might have been
very superior.

Conversely, high frame rate stuff "feels" so much more real. It's hard to
explain, but if you look at side by side comparisons, the higher frame rate is
definitely preferable. The guy who did the tech demo of full motion video on a
1981 PC had some interesting points about this. He did experiments to find the
optimal trade off between frame rate and resolution. He found higher framerate
with lower resolution was better than the reverse, and had some nice examples
of it. PC gamers have known this forever and are obsessive about high frame
rates.

------
joshuak
This is really tragic to watch. I like Netflix in many respects but this is
just incompetent. Not one Academy Award Winning film for best picture would
qualify for these specs. Not one. I expect very few if any nominees either.

The Arri Alexa is eliminated by these specs, for crying out loud. The single
most popular camera amongst high end feature cinematographers.

This is driven by some misguided belief that input resolution == output
resolution AND that resolution is _the_ measure of quality.

I really hope they get their head out of their asses on this at some point.

It's good to have quality standards, and thank god they aren't Turner Classic
Movies (the fuck was that all about??). But these specs are as arbitrary as
saying all of your food must be cooked in copper cookware.

We tell stories, not pixels.

~~~
mattalbie
The Arri Alexa 65 is on their list.

~~~
joshuak
Yes, and not the camera I'm referring to.

~~~
dsl
Pretend most of HN has no idea what you are talking about, especially which n
is "THE n".

~~~
joshuak
Good point. And I suppose I didn't do a good job making my point clear.

It isn't a matter of which camera is better, but that the camera is a part of
the creative process of filmmaking and is not strictly tied to the quality of
deliverables. It is a brush with which an artist chooses to paint, for
creative and practical reasons.

For a company like Netflix to control quality the goal must be to capture the
creative intent with the highest fidelity[0]. Keeping in mind that the pixels
serve the content, the content does not serve the pixels, and pixels are just
one of very many things that serve the content. This can and should be done by
specifying the quality of the result, the deliverables, not the tools used in
the creation process.

[0] Fidelity as apposed to quality is an important distinction (that seems to
be lost on Netflix). "Pi", "Saving Private Ryan", "No Country for Old Men",
and "Deadpool" have different objective measurements of image quality, but
they can all be presented to an audience at high fidelity.

~~~
dsl
Thank you, that makes much more sense to me. Otherwise it is on par with a
developer complaining about their workload running on equivalent AMD
processors vs Intel.

It sounds like Netflix could use someone like you.

------
Kaedon
I'm so, so glad I don't have to care about deliverables requirements anymore.
Every studio has totally different set of requirements that are as complex as
this and it's a real bear to make sure you're fully in compliance with them.

------
gwbas1c
I wonder if Netflix is experiencing quality problems? Sometimes the lower-
budget content that's a few years old looks pixelated or over-compressed. In
these cases, it's somewhat obvious that whoever produced it just didn't know
better.

~~~
Analemma_
If it's third-party content, that's not Netflix's fault: they have to use
whatever footage the studios give them, and sometimes what the studios give
them is junk, either accidentally or deliberately.

------
yodon
Do they have a similar Pre-Production requirements doc?

------
tomc1985
These are the kinds of high-quality production standards that all companies
should employ. Technical excellence above all else

------
Glyptodon
I assume this doesn't particularly apply to documentaries and such?

~~~
modfodder
The Canon C series (100/300/500/700) are popular among documentary filmmakers.
And this in mainly for projects produced by Netflix in the pre-production
stage. Not for projects that have already been shot (but not yet distributed).

I'm in post on a project shot mainly on the Canon C100 (not on the approved
list). We will be talking to Netflix at some point about picking up the
project and I have no worries about in not being in 4k or shot by an approved
camera. If they like the project and want it, the camera format won't matter.

~~~
callesgg
I would assume that the document is only in regards to productions that they
have a hand in during production. (Self produced)

------
ryaneager
Now if they would stream UHD content at 240 Mbps, they would almost double the
quality of UHD Blu-ray (144 Mbps). Or any increase of the 15.6 Mbps they are
using now.

~~~
voltagex_
It's probably too early in HEVC's life to know how much of a real increase in
quality that would bring - you'd also exclude most of Netflix's customers (my
connection is exceptionally fast by Australian standards and I couldn't stream
that). Not to mention blowing their storage costs out the window. Have you
noticed their audio bitrates, btw?

------
exabrial
Only 24fps? Wow

------
misticdeveloper
I guess this is old news, but apparently if you get hired by Netflix to shoot
anything and you want to use an Alexa.. good luck. You should get in line and
wait for an Alexa65 when it's available.

------
Coffee_lover
Can anyone break this down a bit for the lamen. What's the ACEs pipeline?
Frame chart, power windows... And more?

------
Dpackers
This is Netflix setting the standard for the whole industry.

~~~
SwellJoe
How so? There's an entire film and television distribution industry that
(currently) dwarfs Netflix in scale. They all have their own requirements,
though usually not written out with such clarity.

And, these are not onerous requirements. They ensure good quality but don't
impose significant costs. There are several cameras here for under $10k, which
was unheard of even a decade or two ago; when I worked in television in
college (20 years ago), the cameras in the studio cost ~$80,000 each, and the
decks we edited on cost ~$25,000 each.

If you're making a show specifically for Netflix, you follow these guidelines;
if not, you can make it however you want, but these aren't terrible or adding
significantly to the cost of a production. I mean, there are several line
items on most productions that'll be more than the camera. And, in post-
production, resolution and file size barely matters today; a computer can chew
through 4k almost as easily as 1080p, and multi-terabyte hard disks are cheap-
as-free.

