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Topic: Making your own DCP's

Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 03-15-2012 11:59 AM

quote: Scott Norwood
Send me a 1998x1080 (and/or 2048x858) image in some common image format and I'll make the DCP. If you just want a still image that fades in, stays on the screen for a few seconds, then fades out, and can have the logo itself already designed, it is trivial to make the DCP.

Thanks Scott, I will work on a couple of ideas.

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Philip Jones
Film Handler

Posts: 90
From: England
Registered: Dec 2011

posted 03-16-2012 04:01 PM

Is there any simple program that will let you test a DCP to see what it will look like without actually putting it on the server and running the projector?

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Jussi Siponen
Film Handler

Posts: 75
From: Mikkeli, Itä-Suomi, FINLAND
Registered: Jan 2010

posted 03-16-2012 05:04 PM

Hi Philip,

the cheapest DCP player software I've found so far is the DigitAll dcpPlayer.

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Philip Jones
Film Handler

Posts: 90
From: England
Registered: Dec 2011

posted 03-16-2012 05:18 PM

Thanks Jussi. No free ones out there then? I suppose it is a bit of a niche market

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Dominic Espinosa
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1172
From: California, U.S.A.
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 03-16-2012 06:43 PM

If it's not encrypted the newest versions of FFMPEG can be used to transcode MXF files down into an AVI, MPEG, etc.
Pay attention to the entry point and durations in the CPL as they can be different for both picture and sound.
I realize that's not QUITE what you were looking for but you can at least see if the content is there.

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Doug Willming
Film Handler

Posts: 45
From: San Antonio, TX, USA
Registered: Jan 2001

posted 03-17-2012 01:20 PM

Stereoscopic player from 3dtv is free - works great for playing back DCPs as long as your computer has enough "oomph".

http://www.3dtv.at/Downloads/Index_en.aspx

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Philip Jones
Film Handler

Posts: 90
From: England
Registered: Dec 2011

posted 03-17-2012 01:59 PM

That's great, works perfectly. Thanks very much.

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Carsten Kurz
Film God

Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 03-17-2012 07:20 PM

I think stereoscopic player (like FFMPEG) does not actually play DCPs/CPLs, but only the MXF parts of a DCP. That might be okay if you only want to test your own DCPs which usually have a 1:1 relation between media (MXF) play time and CPL (no offset in/out points). Most 'official' content like trailers have leaders, beeps, etc., which these simple players will not mask because they are not using the CPL.

The fraunhofer Easy DCP player is available as a free demo download. It will only play 15s or so, but at least it uses the CPL, so, it's another free tool for 'some' testing. The full version is expensive, around 1500€ I think.
It's available for Windows and Mac OS X.

http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/bf/bsy/produkte/easydcp/

The new VLC 2.0 is said to support J2k, and it WAS able to unwrap and play MXF content in earlier versions as well (e.g. MPEG-2 and audio MXF from unencrypted MPEG-Interop DCPs). However, I wasn't successful in trying to play ANY MXF content with the Mac version 2.0. I have yet to try the Windows version.

- Carsten

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Carsten Kurz
Film God

Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 03-30-2012 10:57 AM

New free DCP creation software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux:

http://www.dcpbuilder.com/

I guess it's time to post an overview. There are probably 3-4 free software solutions now available, and about the same number in the commercial sub1000US$ range.

- Carsten

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Tony Bandiera Jr
Film God

Posts: 3067
From: Moreland Idaho
Registered: Apr 2004

posted 03-30-2012 12:44 PM

This discussion is very interesting...I have a short film on Mini DV tape I would like to convert to DCP as well.

But I have one request please guys:

If you reference a program, can you include a link to a SAFE source to download said program (or the same site you downloaded from?) EDIT: LOL Carsten's post went up as I was typing this, so I will say thanks to him right here. [Smile]

Google searches for some of those programs turns up a gazillion hits from sites I wouldn't feel comfortable downloading from.

Also, any info in regards to system requirements ( OS, Hard drive capacity, memory minimums, etc.) would be nice.

Some of us aren't as computer savvy as you guys.

Many thanks!!

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Carsten Kurz
Film God

Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 03-31-2012 08:06 AM

Yes, it is true, the moment you google for something like DCP, you will get zillions of hits with obscure 'free DCP player converter' download options, offering basically everything imaginable - just not a DCP creator or player. The usual way of making you to download obscure software by jumping on any search topics.

Fortunately, the number of REAL software tools for DCP handling is very small, only half a dozend or so, and they are all only downloadable from their ' native' website afaik.

I have a linklist for them, might be able to post a small overview over the weekend.

- Carsten

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 03-31-2012 08:46 AM

Tony--the short answer is that you need to make a 24P version of that video (real 24P, not 23.98PsF). Depending upon how you do this, you will probably introduce weird motion artifacts if the original version was shot at 59.94i. Then, you need to extract a series of TIFF files of each frame (letterboxed or pillarboxed as needed to fill one of the two DCP resolutions) and 48K 24-bit WAV files for each sound channel.

That is the hard part.

Once you have this series-of-TIFFs and collection-of-WAVs at the correct frame rate and in sync, you can feed these to the DCP conversion software. On a modern-ish computer, figure on about one or two seconds per frame for the encoding process. Once you have the DCP, you can put the files in the root directory on a hard disk or flash drive (typically formatted as ext3, though fat32 works for shorts).

I have had success with OpenDCP, and have not tried any of the other encoding options. The good thing is that the only real cost here is time.

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Antti Nayha
Master Film Handler

Posts: 268
From: Helsinki, Finland
Registered: Oct 2008

posted 03-31-2012 09:49 AM

quote: Scott Norwood
Once you have the DCP, you can put the files in the root directory on a hard disk or flash drive (typically formatted as ext3, though fat32 works for shorts).

Also, be sure to follow the recommendations when partitioning and formatting the drive. I just heard about a situation where a colleague’s Doremi refused to ingest a Linux-formatted (either ext2 or ext3) USB drive, apparently because it didn’t like the way the drive was partitioned and/or formatted.

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Terrence Meiczinger
Film Handler

Posts: 45
From: Orono, Me, USA
Registered: Dec 2008

posted 03-31-2012 10:19 AM

quote: Antti Nayha
I just heard about a situation where a colleague’s Doremi refused to ingest a Linux-formatted (either ext2 or ext3) USB drive, apparently because it didn’t like the way the drive was partitioned and/or formatted.

I've seen issues with EXT4. Also, some servers have problems with USB powered hard drives. Plugging in the AC adapter (if it has one) seems to resolve the problem.

On Dolby and DoRemi with the latest firmware, I've been able to use:

HGFS (OSX)
FAT32
EXT2/3
NTFS

quote: Scott Norwood
letterboxed or pillarboxed as needed to fill one of the two DCP resolutions

You don't necessarily need to letterbox/pillarbox. Only one dimension of your image needs to meet DCI specifications. For example, if your images is 2048x500, that would be ok because the 2048 meets the 2K horizontal dimension. The projector would automatically center and pad the 500 vertical to 1080 (although in scope it would then get cropped to 858).

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Carsten Kurz
Film God

Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 03-31-2012 04:37 PM

No need to use EXT3 on USB sticks.

- Carsten

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