Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: NeoDCP & non DCI DCP playback in general

This is topic NeoDCP & non DCI DCP playback in general in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Sam Cuthbert (Member # 4857) on 08-26-2018, 11:16 AM:

Hi friends,

I've encountered two venues in recent weeks who have said they "have dcp capabilities" but when I've gone to have a site visit both have turned out to be NeoDCP running on a Mac/PC hooked up to, quite expensive, AV projectors via HDMI.

Anecdotally i've heard that an encrypted DCP from the major studios is never going to play back on these system but some homemade, some even homemade encrypted DCP's do play back.

I've no first hand experience of this so I wondered those that have encountered such systems - what have you found does/doesn't work?

I'm not looking to build or run films on such a device, very happy with the Series 1 & 2 machines I use elsewhere, I'd just like to be able to alert people to the pitfalls of these systems as it seems like more and more mixed arts venues in UK are being sold them by companies that don't fully understand the cinema landscape.

Thanks as always!
Sam.

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 08-26-2018, 12:12 PM:

i concur with what you've heard. there's not a problem with playing encrypted movies per se, but the big guys won't issue keys as the systems are not dci compliant.

also, you may find it much harder to, say, not crop the sides off a scope movie.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 08-26-2018, 12:17 PM:

Since general-purpose computers don't have the security, watermarking and digital rights management features that a real digital cinema server has, the major studios will not allow their movies to be played on those machines.

I guess the PC-based solutions do work to some degree at least, else nobody would be using them for any purpose at all. But it's not going to get you what you will get with a real digital cinema server.

Small distributors and arthouse producers may not care about the security features of any particular venue, but the majors do care and they care in a big way.

Ultimately, you're dealing with something that might work for some of the smaller stuff, maybe, versus something that will work for everything.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 08-26-2018, 03:52 PM:

We've been using NeoDCP for film festivals, where not all equipment is DCI compliant but most of the times high-end venue gear. The picture of such a setup usually isn't any better or wordse than an average DCI configuration, at least if you put in the time to calibrate it correctly.

Most independents, if they encrypt their DCPs at all, don't make a big deal of accepting NeoDCP certificates. I've even had some studios sending out KDMs for repertoire titles for NeoDCP, after arguing that I could also just play the BluRay. I doubt you can convince many to hand over keys for first-run movies for non-certified equipment.

My biggest gripe about NeoDCP was the lack of automation cues in their playlist. So all movies you play using this software need manual supervision in order to switch on "house lights", etc. The biggest frustration was the need for manual format changes between e.g. flat and scope. I've not updated their software in a while, but maybe they might have added something to trigger external events in the meanwhile.