DCP Transcoding Freezes at 51%

Anything and everything to do with DCP-o-matic.
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Rick
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon May 27, 2019 9:07 pm

DCP Transcoding Freezes at 51%

Post by Rick »

Background: I am attempting to create a DCP from an 11 minute MP4 file. The MP4 runs flawlessly through multiple playback platforms, including on YouTube. The file size before converting the MP4 to DCP is 2.1 GB. I am creating the DCP on a flash drive with a 32GB capacity which is formatted for NTFS. I have been converting MP4 files to DCP, mostly retro trailers, for several years using DCP-o-matic with minimal issues.

The problem: I've tried converting the MP4 file to DCP multiple times over the past two days. I am showing the file on Thursday, May 29, so I still have 2 more days to figure out the problem. I updated DCP-0-matic to 2.14.5, with no resolution. I tried multiple thumb drives, with no resolution, and even tried reforming the thumb drive. Every time I attempt to create the DCP, it freezes at exactly 51%, at exactly the same number of frames. I have tried both the IOP and SMPTE options.

Any ideas or suggestions?
Carsten
Posts: 2648
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 9:11 pm
Location: Germany

Re: DCP Transcoding Freezes at 51%

Post by Carsten »

Hmm. Can you play over that mystic 51% in preview?

A a quick shot into the blue - load the content, and export it to either ProRes or MP4/h.264 - then try to convert to DCP from this export.


Maybe you can make that file available to Carl for a test.

I assume you already tried creating a new DCP-o-matic project from scratch multiple times?

You are 100% sure the target drive is NTFS or size limited by other means? Are you sure the resulting DCP will fit onto that drive? 11min SHOULD fit, but...
What is the frame rate of this MP4 file?

- Carsten
Rick
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon May 27, 2019 9:07 pm

Re: DCP Transcoding Freezes at 51%

Post by Rick »

I got it to work, just had to reformat the 32GB thumb drive. Thank you.

The annoying part of this was having to wait an hour just to find out it was freezing at 51%. I think I made about 5-6 attempts before it worked.
Carsten
Posts: 2648
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 9:11 pm
Location: Germany

Re: DCP Transcoding Freezes at 51%

Post by Carsten »

In general, I would avoid writing to thumb drives directly. Even 'fast' ones are slow compared to even 'old' spinning discs.

From my experience, 'freezing' during transcoding (as opposed to reel writing issues) is typically related to either issues with source content (broken file or codec anomalies), or storage space issues.


- Carsten
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