DCP issues for a newbie

[Joseph Owens]

I you don’t have time to make a BluRay, you really don’t have time to make a DCP… and export it, and test it…

jPo, CSI

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Adriano Castaldini]

Dear all! Thank you so much for your help.
Yesterday I had my tests in the theatre, I had 23 video-tests with me, and I must say that I am very happy with the results:
1. the DCPs I’ve made with DCP-O-Matic had exactly the same colors of the original prores444xq from Resolve;
2. 25fps perfectly handled by the Christies;
3. having a Mac the only Christie’s compatible file system was FAT32 (ExFat did not work) so I’ve made a splitted-reel-DCP that worked perfectly;
4. having my original prores’ audio in stereo, I tried various audio variations (DCP-O-Matic gives the possibility to maintain the original stereo or even build various “fake” multi-channel alternatives), so I tried with stereo, 3-front-channel, and 5.1. With my surprise, the best solution appeared to be 3-front-channel (probably because of the type of audio material used in the original video, but also – perhaps – the space of the theatre, and – almost surely – the quality of the theatre’s audio system).

So, I’m very happy to have had my test-day, with DCP-tests made in few hours by myself, so I HAVE TO THANK ALL OF YOU!!! YOU GUYS SAVED MY DAY!!!

Now, as I said, I’d like to learn about color spaces: I want to learn when/why using Rec.709 vs P3 vs Rec.2020, and XYZ, and ACES, etc. So please tell me if does exist a manual, a guide or something to start learning this things.

Thanks really much!

[Aaron Owen]

So you’ve got a DCP that you are ready to send out… That’s only half the battle. If you want the DCP to be read on any digital cinema playback system in the world, there’s still some work to do.

You’ve got to put it onto a Linux formatted drive according to theISDCF spec (master boot record, ext2 or ext3 filesystem, inode size at 128) and ensure that the package was transferred onto the drive without getting any read or write errors that would cause the server’s validation process to fail.

That’s where DCP Transfer comes in. Check out the guided tour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NftjF4jFZVc

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Aaron Owen]

So you’ve got a DCP that you are ready to send out… That’s only half the battle. If you want the DCP to be read on any digital cinema playback system in the world, there’s still some work to do.

You’ve got to put it onto a Linux formatted drive according to theISDCF spec (master boot record, ext2 or ext3 filesystem, inode size at 128) and ensure that the package was transferred onto the drive without getting any read or write errors that would cause the server’s validation process to fail.

That’s where DCP Transfer comes in. Check out the guided tour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NftjF4jFZVc

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Michael Gissing]

I had extremely poor compatibility with Australian cinemas when I delivered ext3 or ext2 formatted drives. Most use a Windows based ingest system so the most reliable format turned out to be NTFS format. There was also a great deal of older servers that couldn’t handle frame rates other than 24.

The problem I found with DCPs was the cinemas lack of conformity to specs and their poor tech support. Mostly it’s a kid that sells ice creams and popcorn doing the ingest and they had little idea how to articulate back other than it didn’t work or the sound was distorted (it wasn’t – just glitchy when 25 is played back at 24).

So I don’t don’t any more. There are companies that admitted to me they have data bases on specific cinemas so they know what to send that will work. Nearly always that turned out to be old Interop 24 on an NTFS drive.

edit: Oh and you never get your usb cables back. I ended up using 128gig thumb drives.

[Aaron Owen]

USB 3 thumb drives are a great way to go. Just make sure you put a tag on them with the relevant information (film title, encryption status, running time, credits offset, frame rate, etc) as theaters have lots of drives and they can easily get mis-placed.

As for the actual drive format, NTFS will work if you ::know:: that the drive will end up at a multiplex with a library management system (LMS) or another sort of theater management system (TMS). The problem with this approach is that this isn’t a universally recognized format. If your DCP drive ends up being plugged into a rented projector/server combo at a film festival, or is sent to a single screen theater where it’s plugged directly into the playback server for ingest, it won’t work.

Every time I’ve seen issues with a drive that is formatted ext2 or ext3, it’s been because of the inode size. DCP Transfer checks the all the parameters of the drive format against the ISDCF specs to ensure universal compatibility.

Cinema Mastering & DCP Authoring
cinematiq.com | dcp-transfer.com

[Michael Gissing]

[Aaron Owen] “The problem with this approach is that this isn’t a universally recognized format.”

The problem with the universally recognised format is most theatres that I supplied in Australia couldn’t use the ext2 or 3 formatted drives. They made a mockery of a prescribed format by simply not supporting it. None of them would plug the disk directly into the server. All of them used the TMS and most of them didn’t have a simple bit of freeware to read a Linux formatted drive. I emailed them the software but they refused to put it on the TMS Windows machines.

So it is misleading to talk about ext as a universal format when many theatres won’t ingest from them. The whole point is you have to ask – never assume.

[Aaron Owen]

My understanding is that Deluxe Technicolor ships Hollywood movies to theaters worldwide on drives formatted to the ISDCF standard as Deluxe was the creator of the so-called standard based on many rounds of trial and error. I may be wrong about this, (especially in regards to Australia) but if a theater ingests from a Deluxe drive, it’s probably formatted that way.

Cinema Mastering & DCP Authoring
cinematiq.com | dcp-transfer.com