Large Files and saving to transport HHD

[sduga]

Hello all,

I run a small Theater and we present movies about twice a week.
We make our own "preshow slides" giving upcoming event info and such. I have been using DCP-o-Matic to convert these MP4 files to DCP to ingest on my Dolby DSS-220. IT WORKS GREAT! I often make custom trailers to change the "Coming Soon" to say our name and the show times of the feature. This also works like a charm!
I run into problems where the file size becomes too large for the jump drive that I use (it maxes out somewhere around 4GB even though i have a 150GB jump drive) to move content from the DELL PowerEdge T620 Windows 2012 R2 server I use to the encoding onto the Dolby DSS 220 Cinema Server.

For example, I had an Independent Film Project from the local high school that wanted to use the Cinema to present their projects. I ended up having to not use DCP and just have them save their projects to a DVD for playback because once I converted them to a DCP I didn't have a medium large enough, or set up in the proper way to move them over.
I have tried using a USB Chassey and a DCP from DELUX to just see if I could get it to show up on my DELL Server, but it doesn't even see it.
Can someone please enlighten me on how I might be able to make my DELL server see these drives and if I procure a blank one how I should format it and how I can convert large files to DCPs and then have a way to get them to the Dolby Server?

I would love to hear from you all and see what you think, hopefully, my issue isn't explained in such a convoluted way I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be.

Thanks for your help!

[carl]

Hi there,

I would guess your problem is that your "jump" drive is formatted as FAT32, which does not allow files larger than 4Gb.

The easiest way round this would be to format your drive as NTFS. Then you can copy large files onto it, and I think your DSS220 will read it OK.

The Deluxe drive will have been formatted using EXT2 (a Linux format) which is the standard. This format requires extra software to be read by Windows.

I would try NTFS on your transfer drive and let us know if you have problems.

[Carsten]

What Carl says.
From Windows 2012, NTFS is your best option. 'Standard' if you want to call it,for DCP distribution is a Linux ext2 or ext3 formatted drive. But it's a bit of an effort to use them from non-Linux OS's. In a closed situation like yours, NTFS is your best choice. I don't know for Windows 2012, but formatting a USB-Stick to NTFS may need to have some unusual checkboxes ticked, but you will find hints on the net.

Make sure that, whatever drive you use, in general, it should be:

MBR-partition table (not GUID/GPT)
single (primary) partition
drive not larger than 2TB (basically, MBR-only and max 2TB go with each other, but, it is possible to create a 2TB partition on a larger MBR drive, but some servers - not your DSS220 - can not deal with drives larger than 2TB, even if the partition is 2TB).

Since other people are reading this as well - there is a difference between handling your own DCPs on your own projection system, and creating DCPs for other systems. Not all DCI systems support the same features. For your own needs, you can use whatever scheme/format is working and convenient for you.
If you start to create DCPs for other people, go with the specs, and that means, lowest common denominator of all DCI systems in the field.
That is max 2TB drive, MBR partition table, single primary partition, ext2/ext3 filesystem, inode size 128. Yes, this may be complicated to do on Windows or Mac systems.


Does the T620 offer USB3.0?

How many CPUs/cores do you use on the Dell server for DOM?


- Carsten

[Aaron]

Carsten is totally right. If you're on Windows, check to see if you can deliver NTFS. If you're on a Mac, you can use DCP Transfer to format according to the specs Carsten laid out above.

http://cinematiq.com/dcptransfer

Disclaimer- I run Cinematiq which sells DCP Transfer