I'm giving my film to a film festival that is requiring a DCP. I made the DCP with DCP-o-matic (which was effortlessly simple cudos to the program designers) and I formatted a USB3 portable drive to a .ext2 io nodes 128 in my Linux machine.
My colorist says I'm going to need a CRU drive because the DCP specs AMC gave specifies a server. I've seen on here and in other spots that a USB drive formatted correctly is fine for DCP exhibition.
Here's the spec list AMC gave me:
Anyone have any experience with exhibiting at an AMC Theater of late?
PS: What does a "wrapped DCP" file mean? Is that just all the files in the folder with the .mxf and other files in it?
'Wrapped' just means, a DCP file structure, in opposite to 'plain' Quicktime, MXF, etc. files.
Wether CRU is an issue, I don't know for AMC. As a matter of fact, with many servers nowadays being without CRU slots, standard 2.5" external USB discs have become common for disc based distribution. I can't imagine an AMC site denying ingest of a USB disc. Also, that spec sheet doesn't mention CRU, so...
At our site in germany, we hardly see CRU drives coming in now. Most content is delivered through broadband, and those that come on discs mostly are 2.5" portable USB discs.
AMC sites are all operated through a central TMS system (a central server). These will usually offer CRU slots, but USB connections as well. I am pretty sure you will be okay with a USB drive, if it is formatted properly.
I made a DCP with DCP-o-Matic 2 version 16 (a beta version with Disc Writer because I was going to use it to format the drive but I opted to format it in Linux) and it did not work at the theater.
So I went back and installed 2.14.55 and it worked like a charm. This time around instead of making a Linux drive I gave them an NTFS and it ingested perfectly fine. AMC Theater in Times Square accepts NTFS, FAT32, and ext2 drives so it's safe to assume most, if not all, accept them same.
I am super duper Pyhton-illiterate other wise I would have ran it through ClairMeta to check the integrity in the first place.
'did not work at the theater' - do you have any details? Did it ingest properly, but wouldn't play, or, was the content not visible on that disc you formatted in Linux? Do you remember the parameters of that format procedure?
Techwise, NTFS on an MBR-partitioned disk (max 2TB disc size) is safe for all servers and TMS systems.
Note, 'MBR' and max 2TB disk size IS important. That excludes DISKs (not just partitions) larger than 2TB and the now default GUID/GPT partition scheme - don't use GUID/GPT! Such disks may work on some systems, but are guaranteed to cause severe problems on others.
Some locations and festivals may still demand ext2/ext3, and this is still the official format for DCP disk distribution.
carl wrote: ↑Tue Nov 02, 2021 10:29 pm
I'm glad you got it working! Do you still have the DCP that you made with the 2.16 beta (the one that did not work)?
I do actually! Would you want me to try and send it over?
What's interesting is that I played this DCP file in DaVinci, DCPOM Player, and demo versions of NeoDCP and easyDCP Player+ and it played perfectly fine.
Last edited by skye_films on Wed Nov 03, 2021 3:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Carsten wrote: ↑Wed Nov 03, 2021 12:59 am
'did not work at the theater' - do you have any details? Did it ingest properly, but wouldn't play, or, was the content not visible on that disc you formatted in Linux? Do you remember the parameters of that format procedure?
Techwise, NTFS on an MBR-partitioned disk (max 2TB disc size) is safe for all servers and TMS systems.
Note, 'MBR' and max 2TB disk size IS important. That excludes DISKs (not just partitions) larger than 2TB and the now default GUID/GPT partition scheme - don't use GUID/GPT! Such disks may work on some systems, but are guaranteed to cause severe problems on others.
Some locations and festivals may still demand ext2/ext3, and this is still the official format for DCP disk distribution.
I honestly wish I had more information about this. I followed this video here to format the drive: https://youtu.be/n6rGDYoNXi0 . I asked the technician at AMC and this is the response I got: "It appears in the content list of the server, but it will not play."
Both drives I used were 500gb portable disc drives. One was Linux formatted and the other NTFS. For the NTFS drive, I stuck the original DCP file in as well as the new one made with DCP-O-Matic 2.14.55 and one made with easyDCP (I called in a big favor with a buddy of mine) just in case it was DCP-O-Matic for whatever strange reason. The original DCP file still did not work but both the DCPOM 2.14.55 and easyDCP files worked perfectly fine.
Based on this info I assume the Linux drive was formatted correctly.
Last edited by skye_films on Wed Nov 03, 2021 3:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MBR/NTFS is safe technically for all DCI servers - but there are requirements in place for some sites or festivals that simply demand ext2/ext3.
That said - on all projection servers that I know, the operator is not able to tell wether a drive that has been connected for ingest is ext2/3 or NTFS. Content shows up, and that's it. But some sites/festivals will not just connect a drive to a projection server, but to an intermediate TMS, ingest, storage server, etc., and there it may become an issue.
500GB drives are a good choice, because they usually are MBR partitioned from the factory. At least in Windows, it is not so easy to e.g. force a drive back to MBR once it has been partitioned with a GPT/GUID scheme. Simply reformatting the drive in windows disc manager doesn't solve that isse.
You need to use a command line tool, DISKPART for it, and it's not intuitive to use.
