Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Ingest from a DVD

This is topic Ingest from a DVD in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 09-16-2016, 02:35 PM:

For reasons unknown, someone just sent me a DCP on a DVD(maybe BluRay). Neither my Mac nor Windows computers recognize the disk, so I can't copy it to a thumb drive.
Anyone know a work around to get this ingested?
Fortuneately, not mission critical, mostly for my own curiosity at this point.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 09-16-2016, 03:13 PM:

I have ingested content from a DVD on several occasions. As long as all of the DCP content can fit on one disc, it should work just fine.

If the disc is a BluRay but none of your machines have a Blu-Disc drive, that could explain why it's not being recognized.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-16-2016, 03:28 PM:

Disc might have been formatted using EXT2 format where regular computers can't use the format.

Posted by Gavin Lewarne (Member # 5397) on 09-16-2016, 03:38 PM:

DVDs / CDs / BluRays do not use "standard" drive formatting. they they have their own thing and it is completely platform independent.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 09-16-2016, 04:18 PM:

If it's a DVD just go to wallyworld and get a cheapo external USB CD/DVD drive then plug it in the server directly. That's how we generally do it when the server hasn't got an internal drive. Maybe get a blu-ray one, most will play these and record DVDs and CDs as well... I think the laser to burn BDs is expensive or something, to get one that records them costs a bunch more.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-16-2016, 05:36 PM:

My GDC server has a dvd drive installed in it just below the raid drives. It came that way. I've never used the dvd for anything, but "dvd" is always the first thing on the list and the default when ingesting content; I have to select the USB or CRU option.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 09-16-2016, 06:50 PM:

quote: Dave Macaulay
I think the laser to burn BDs is expensive or something, to get one that records them costs a bunch more.

Blu-Ray just uses a violet laser with a shorter wavelength in order to read the finer pitch of the data tracks that the disc has.

I think that most of the price increase comes from the cost of patent/firmware licensing. Since there is a perception that Blu-Ray is "better" than DVD, manufacturers probably use that as a justification to charge higher prices, too.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 09-17-2016, 09:47 AM:

Aside from being able to ingest system software updates, I THINK back
in 'the early days' of Digital Cinema Systems, the idea was that the DVD
(later blu-ray) drives on DC servers would be used to ingest things like
trailers & other ads. I recall getting a few on DVD disks a long time ago.

I think that at some point in the evolution of DC systems, the cost of
memory chips (IE: USB thumb-drive sticks) dropped to the point where it
was just more cost effective to use these for short content distribution.

I've only had one film-maker deliver a short DCP film he made on a DVD-
type disk. I was skeptical at first, but. . . it worked!

(Which means I've had a 100% success rate with film makers delivering
DCP content on a DVD, whereas the percentage of 'home-made' DCP's
delivered on thumb or mini-hard-drives is somewhat less, usually due to
drive formatting issues, but sometimes just the result of clueless incompetence)

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 09-17-2016, 08:57 PM:

Do you have a USB CD drive you can plug in to your server or LMS?

Posted by Jesse Crooks (Member # 9389) on 10-01-2016, 11:34 PM:

As Monte suggested the disc is probably formatted for the Linux operating system (which is what DCinema servers use), which is why you're having trouble opening it.

One solution would be to install a Linux virtual machine on your PC. Download a free virtualizer like VirtualBox and install a Linux distribution with a GUI like Ubuntu Desktop (you'll find plenty of walkthroughs online that will help you do this). You can then format a sufficiently large thumb drive to the ext2 file system and copy the files over from the disc.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 10-02-2016, 08:52 AM:

If you would like to see the contents of a drive that is formatted in EXT2, you could try this program:

EXT2FSD

This driver/program will allow your Windows based computer to see drives that are formatted for Linux.