DCP Player - Only 1/4 of image visible

[rshm]

I'm experiencing some odd behaviour when using DCP-o-Matic player on my MacBook Pro (M1 Max) running macOS 13.3 (22E252)

DCP playback in a window is absolutely fine, as is full screen mode on the MBP's inbuilt display. However, when connected to an external output (I've tried with two projectors, most recently a Christie LHD700 (1920x1080)) using full screen or two screen mode only the upper left quarter of the image is projected (and it fills the screen)

Interestingly, when dragging the playback *window* in window mode from the MBP across to the external display it appears fine until more than 50% of the window is on the external display, then the content of the window does exactly the same (shows only the upper left quarter of the image)

Any advice you can offer would be very much appreciated, we're looking to use DCP-o-matic to screen a movie that was provided to us (which plays fine in the windowed player!)

[IoannisSyrogiannis]

Without being close to a computer with DCP-o-matic, to check preferences, this smells like a display setting misconfiguration on the computer's part.
If there is a "resize" checkbox on the preferences of DCP-o-matic player's full screen, I can't check.

I for one -if I was to play out of a PC- see no purpose on using a DCP. A ProRes, an MP4 or similar file seems to me better. Maybe with the subtitles burned-in.

All the best.

[rshm]

The display is configured to its native resolution (1920x1080) and other applications (e.g. QLab, QuickTime Player etc) play files fine full screen, I couldn't find any option within DCP-o-matic to resize it (and it seems odd that it's perfectly the top 1/4 which seems odd given it's a 2K container)

As for playing using DCP rather than ProRes, we received the feature in DCP format. I *have* been able to extract it and convert to ProRes (using DCP-o-matic) but it's a time-consuming process and less intuitive for others, I'd love for them to be able to play DCP easily!

[Carsten]

Have you tried both display modes in DCP-o-matic player prefs? May not be a solution, but may help identifying the reason.

[IoannisSyrogiannis]

You write that the computer is an MBP. Is it retina?
Could it be that there is some mirroring setting there going wrong? (The laptop screen would be of higher resolution than the projector's native.)
Give it an effort to set the "Video display mode" to Simple(safer), rather than OpenGL and see what happens.
Or, check playing in half resolution.
Check the Dual-screen displays preferences.
Any changes?

I don't want to discourage you to troubleshoot and solve the issue with the projector, but my experience as a projectionist in multi-source festivals showed me that, when playing out unencrypted content off of a computer, DCP and DCP-o-matic is not the most practical solution.
Even more, when there are more than one titles to be screened on one show.

Again, all the best.

[rshm]

Thanks all, tried both decoding modes and it was the same (Simple and OpenGL) and yes, the laptop is a Retina display but even changing the laptop to the 1080 mode has the same problem.

I might try with another (Windows/Linux) computer.

The end goal is to make something idiot proof that someone can connect the DCP drive to and just play.

We receive DCP drives of a single presentation regularly. It's only that one file that is screened (not multiple different things during a festival for example) - therefore the aim is to simplify it to a point of; insert DCP drive caddy into computer (or connect by USB), press play. I was hoping to be able to use DCP-o-matic to achieve this.

[carl]

I'm away from home at the moment, so I don't have access to my only mac (an rather long-in-the-tooth mac Mini) so it might be a couple of weeks before I can look into this. Alternatively I might be able to add some debugging logs to investigate, if you have time to do more tests?

I don't want to discourage you to troubleshoot and solve the issue with the projector, but my experience as a projectionist in multi-source festivals showed me that, when playing out unencrypted content off of a computer, DCP and DCP-o-matic is not the most practical solution.
Even more, when there are more than one titles to be screened on one show.

It's true that DoM's playback for presentation is not particularly sophisticated (and quite poorly documented)! Did you try the playlist editor to manage playback of multiple pieces of content?

[Carsten]

I remember that Apple Silicon Macs had/have various graphics compatibility issues. This one may be one of them. I don't own an M1 or M2 machine, unfortunately.

[rshm]

Happy to do any tests you want, would love to get to the bottom of it

I've only got the M1 Mac handy, but I can try it on an Intel one too to see if it happens there also

If it runs reliably on an older Intel Mac mini I can just use that in the future, or alternatively a linux box possibly (both of these are much older spec though so I'd be more concerned about the chance of dropped frames) but, again, it would be nice to get it working