Super AV Nerd (My Company) asked a question.
Do I need to pay Dolby a license fee to release a small budget movie with a Dolby Atmos track?
I'm helping a friend edit his very small budget movie, and I'm considering doing a 5.1 track, and then from that go to a Dolby Atmos track. I can do all the mixing, etc, but say I get to the point where I have an image to send to a Blu-ray authoring company (or even author them myself), and also where we can upload it to iTunes, Amazon, and other streaming services.
If I decide to include a Dolby Atmos track in the Blu-ray and the streaming release, does my friend have to pay Dolby some type of license fee?
If I decide to include a Dolby Atmos track in the Blu-ray and the streaming release, does my friend have to pay Dolby some type of license fee?
For content creation and distribution the only thing needed for you is software license. If you have all tools enabled with Dolby Atmos editing like DAW, Dolby Atmos Renderer, encoding software e.g. Dolby Media Encoder, this are the tools you need to own to create Dolby Atmos content.
Using Dolby Atmos should more go other way around, first create Dolby Atmos mix, then it will be less effort to create 5.1 downmix out of it.
Please note that above software are example ones, I'm not listing all workflow on the content creation path.
I was intrigued by what you said about first creating the Atmos mix, then creating the 5.1 one. I don't have a way to monitor Atmos directly, but I can monitor 5.1, even 7.1 as my Mac Studio can output that via HDMI. But it only sends PCM signals, so without some kind of Dolby Atmos interface, I wouldn't be able to mix in Atmos in a way that I can listen to it on my home theater setup while mixing.
What I can do is mix in 5.1, and then assign certain foley sounds as objects, using the Atmos mixer (so far I only used the one in Logic Pro X, which has a panner that allows you to position the object in 3D), then convert using AWS and then I can finally listen to the full Atmos mix in my home theater. Even if I don't get it perfect the first time, each of those encodes in AWS is just a few cents, so it doesn't matter.
https://customer.dolby.com/content-creation-and-delivery/dolby-media-encoder-with-dolby-ac-4-v360