Odd question - transferring a DCP from cinema server BACK to a hard drive???

[samstuder]

Pardon me if this is inappropriate for the DoM forum. I've also posted on reddit, and if its unacceptable here I'll take it down. Just hoping to find people familiar with DCPs in a short time frame.

The owner of the theatre seems to think that it's impossible to transfer a DCP back onto a hard drive once its in the cinema server. I have a hard time believing that, but also, DCPs are a strange beast. Basically, I need the audio portion of the DCP that is locked on the cinema server. But that's the question, is it really "locked" on there?

The reason is long but here's the short answer - there was trouble with the video portion upon our pre-screening. I went home to figure it out, dropped my external, and was only able to salvage the project because the theater had a week old DCP on a hard drive. (Don't bother with reminders about backing up your files, I thought Davinci was doing it, turns out I did it incorrectly).

Anyway, I've taken the old DCP and made a .mkv, but if I could just access the file on their server, I could use the up to date audio, and essentially re-create the project as it wa

[carl]

Do you know what make/model of cinema server it is?

[Carsten]

Most do allow to access DCPs - basically, to aid network transfers between multiple servers that will show the same content. Some servers have an explicit 'export' function that usually works towards a locally connected ext2/3 drive. Some servers allow an external computer to connect through FTP and download a DCP or parts of it. But it's in no way standardised, and in most cinemas, it is not a daily procedure, so, local staff will most likely not know about it.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Yup.

We had to do it recently for the premiere of Hit Man, because the only copy was pre-loaded at the shop on the temporary install 4k Laser IMS, and unbeknownst to us they wanted to run a concurrent backup on the house 2k Xenon projector. We had keys, but did not have time to DL the feature over the internet. Backup finished ingesting 1 minute before doors. Didn't need it, but would have if we didn't have it.

As a projectionist, it's definitely worth knowing how to do. Outside of syncing servers across multiple screens it is rare, but when you need it, you REALLY need it!

[jdent02]

Dolby IMS servers (at least the 3000) can export a DCP to an attached USB stick, but if I remember right there were some restrictions on the USB format, as it had to more or less be the same as a DCP hard drive you might get for distribution.

Only did it once but it worked fine.

[Ryan Gallagher]

On our DCP2000 system yes, easiest if you have a CRU or USB drive formatted as ext2 or Fat32. It will ingest from NTFS drives, but can't write to them.

In our premiere situation we were able to do it from an IMS3000 over FTP, so it was drive format agnostic. But might require some additional system passwords to get an FTP user with access to the CPL storage.