This is topic Saving a movie for later in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-29-2013, 03:40 PM:
 
I had the idea to copy a kids movie off of the distribution drive to a portable drive, so it could be re-ingested later if we want to use that movie for a matinee....saving the shipping costs.

When I plugged the drive into my computer via the CRU boot, the computer would not recognize the drive. I tried it on 2 different computers (Windows machines).

Is it possible to do this some way?
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 08-29-2013, 04:02 PM:
 
I have formatted a new drive to *EXT2 file system, installed it in a CRU shell, and put it in the CRU bay on my Dolby DSS200. It was recognized and I backed up all my test patterns, trailers I wanted to keep, and a couple of unencrypted features to it simply by highlighting and clicking on the transfer arrow just the reverse of ingesting. I successfully re-ingested after replacing my RAID drives with larger drives. I don't know if other file systems will work.

*While I've got software that can read and write to EXT2 from Windows XP, I was unable to find anything that would let me format in the first place. I downloaded an ISO image file of a Linux thing for this purpose, which was burned to a CD. I used it to boot the PC and it gives a drive handling utility and even a convenient web browser (and connection software) in case one wants to look something up while working on this. I will have to see what the name of this freeware was.
 

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Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 08-29-2013, 04:29 PM:
 
Mike - what server? Like Steve says - You should be able to export the content from the server to a drive directly. If you want to copy it from the distribution drive, you need an EXT filesystem driver for windows.

e.g. http://www.fs-driver.org/

- Carsten
 

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Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 08-29-2013, 05:19 PM:
 
Note...on a Dolby server, you can format a USB with FAT 32 or CRU drive with EXT2 if you have administrator credentials as of system 4.5.4.2

"A new script has been added to the Show Store via the Administrator login: formatStore.sh will format a CRU or USB drive to be used for content transfer. CRU drives will be formatted EXT2 and USB will be formatted FAT32. Caution: All existing files on the attached drive will be lost."
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-29-2013, 05:53 PM:
 
We have a GDC server.

Thanks for the Ext2 info, I will give that a shot. Don't have anything we want to save right now but I'll add it to my list of things to work on.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-29-2013, 06:05 PM:
 
Mike, I believe you said the GDC could read an NTFS drive. Assuming that is the case, your easiest solution is just to buy a USB drive and connect both to your computer and do a straight copy/paste to your USB drive.

That being said, I don't see any way the studios would let you get away without paying for them to ship you a drive. They will probably scream "OMG PIRACY YOU ARE THE DEVIL!!!" and try to send you to jail even though copying an encrypted file is useless for actually being able to play it without that key from the studio. They're kinda silly that way, but it's because they don't understand how the encryption actually protects their content.
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 08-29-2013, 06:11 PM:
 
The software I used is called Parted Magic. I used 6.6 so it looks like it has advanced since then. Here is the .iso image file to burn a CD and then just set your machine to boot from the CD drive.

http://downloads.pcauthority.com.au/article/10704-parted_magic_iso
 

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Posted by Jim Henk (Member # 3628) on 08-29-2013, 08:22 PM:
 
Brad, you hide your devil's horns very well, but the red shirt gives you away...
 

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Posted by Joe Elliott (Member # 4006) on 08-29-2013, 09:34 PM:
 
Having a bootable thumbdrive with Linux is handy for other things also. I had a motherboard die on my main computer, and after I spent $150 to have the exact same motherboard shipped, as my hard drives were in an array, and you have to have the same chipset to read them, I found that windows then identified me as a different user. I booted with Linux on a thumbdrive and was able to copy all of my files that Windows "security" would not let me copy as a different user. I also was able to use it as my primary drive when my laptop drive crapped out while in the field.

Linux on a thumbdrive instructions.
 

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Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 08-31-2013, 03:47 AM:
 

quote: Mike Blakesley

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I had the idea to copy a kids movie off of the distribution drive to a portable drive ..

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Question: what about KDM keys, or is the content decrypted for playback at any time?

Lot of us thought about this also in saving content for later time, but the KDM issue comes up and makes up forget the idea.

(Unless you got one fancy XML editor that can change the dates and code in a whim to unlock your content with...)

-Monte
 

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Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 08-31-2013, 04:50 AM:
 
Where's the problem, you request a new KDM later, but save on the shipping cost.

Also, we now store quite a few DCPs without any encryption at all, or with very long KDM duration. e.g. we received a couple of DCPs with KDM duration of half a year or so.

- Carsten
 

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Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 08-31-2013, 07:41 AM:
 
Formatting is easy in Linux using the makefs command.
It gets a bit weird because of permissions though: a drive formatted in your server may not be available on another or from another Linux system. If you install a Windows utility to access ext2 drives, the one I have doesn't care about permissions and I have r/w access.
Probably someone here knows how to set the drive permissions so the drive can be used more freely, I haven't cared enough to find out.
The easiest way would be to use a distribution drive... I see enough year(s)-old trailer drives lying around theatres to believe nobody really chases them. It's certainly dishonest to steal their drive (already in a nice CRU caddy!) but if they ever do ask for it, you can just "find" it and send it back.
I'm not sure about GDC servers, but you should be able to set up an NAS appliance and just ftp content in and out of it. That would be filesystem transparent, and pretty large storage units are fairly cheap now.
 

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Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 09-01-2013, 07:20 AM:
 
Regarding permissions, there is a passage in the ISDCF recommended practices:

http://isdcf.com/papers/ISDCF-Doc3-Filesystem-Structure.pdf

- Carsten
 

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Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 09-01-2013, 11:06 AM:
 
I heart Linux.
 

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Posted by Aleksandar Obradovic (Member # 7266) on 10-02-2013, 03:46 PM:
 
http://www.ext2fsd.com/?page_id=16

guys (and girls) you can use this one piece of software on your Windows machines to format HDD's to linux partition tables and read from linux filesystem partitioned HDD's (ext2/ext3).

BR
The Priest
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-02-2013, 06:30 PM:
 

quote: Brad Miller

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Mike, I believe you said the GDC could read an NTFS drive. Assuming that is the case, your easiest solution is just to buy a USB drive and connect both to your computer and do a straight copy/paste to your USB drive.

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