when DCP-o-matic will work finally?

[radomarkov]

From time to time I check dcp-o-matic to see if finally it will begin to work and produce 100 % (hundred %) standard DCP and do not crash, have undefined behavior etc. I DO NOT USE amateur programs, but I'm curious about deep amateurism covered digital cinema ecosystem...
Latest example, all version after February 2019 version, freeze (program not responding) when any file or dcp or directory is put on the content window . Examine content finishing (saying ok),but then program freeze, showing hourglass (standard windows icon for "waiting") and this can stay to infinite (I wait for 24 `hours and killed the program). Its running on windows 7 and is valid for all versions of dcpomatic after February 2019.
I observed than never dcp-o-matic produced fully compliant with ALL! standards DCPs and if sometimes DCPs work and users are "proud" its ONLY due to the generosity of the DCP server manufacturers that was tired of permanent black screens due to amateur programs like dcpomatic, and some of them decided to relax the rules and to allow DCPs that are NOT fully compliant with the standards to play. But its dangerous for continuity and reliability of the projection itself - you never know what can happen at the middle of the movie.
Amateurs that use dcp-o-matic are happy with automagick creation of otherwise highly complicated DCP, but lets thing about cinema owner or festival organizers that have big headache with crappy amateur DCPs created from amateurs with amateur software.

[scozz76]

I see you joined this forum to make your wildly inaccurate statement. Whereas you could have joined this forum to discuss your "problem(s)" and if not find an immediate solution, at least the made the creators aware.

DCP-O-MATIC is a great tool and works well and I have not had any problems with it on a range of servers. Maybe the problem is with your system?
There have been minor bugs which are rectified quickly... While waiting for a bug to be fixed you are able to go back to a previous version.


I'm a projectionist and I have seen many problematic DCP's come in from "Professional" (paid) software and DOM has come to the rescue. For example, has the Wraptor plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro fixed their channel mapping - I remember the day I received an advert made in Wraptor, what should have been 'Centre' came out of one of the surround channels.

I doubt the problem is the software (DCP-O-MATIC) but more the user. No amount of software refinement will fix stupid.

[binba]

That's a rude and pointless post, radomarkov, coming to the dcp-o-matic forums to basically trash it with nothing to support what you're saying.

I'm sorry to hear that it's crashing for you all the time, but you didn't phrase your post in any way that's seeking help, like details about your setup, troubleshooting steps you took etc. All we know is that it never works on your system and works great on many others, so given that data, the conclusion is that something is messed up with your own setup.

You rant about DOM's "amateurness" but you sound like an amateur yourself: How about approaching it professionally, like telling us which media block or QC tool you tested DOM's DCP's on and what was getting flagged?

I'll take scozz's input instead, which is in line with what I know: DOM works very well and projectionists like it. Furthermore, I don't have much first-hand projectionist experience, but read around ISDCF and SMPTE presentations and you'll see that even major Hollywood releases, done by the top people in the business, sometimes encounter major of problems. I'm always happy to learn more - but my impression is that DOM's code is no more buggy than the code in Doremi, GDC etc. servers.

[carl]

Hi Rado,

You have raised points similar to these a number of times with me via email, I'm not sure why you have decided to raise them again on a public forum.

Why do you call DCP-o-matic amateur? What about it is amateur? I am the principal author, and I am a professional software engineer. Is it amateur because it is free? What would make it "professional" in your eyes? A $2000 price tag? You will need to explain yourself a bit more here.

Your first point: a hang on adding a file to the content list. Since you are the first person to report this, and we can make a rough guess from the web logs that there have been around 42000 downloads since February, it seems just possible that the bug you are seeing is due to a fairly unusual set of circumstances. Did you report the problem anywhere, so that we could investigate it? If you didn't, you are just making the world worse by complaining in vague terms about the bug on a public forum.

Your second point: DoM producing non-compliant DCPs. What, specifically, are the problems you are seeing? If you tell us what they are, we can fix them, and the problems go away. Otherwise, we are back to the same actively unhelpful approach of complaining without any detail.

Your third point: cinema owners and festival organisers; lots of these use DoM to help with their cinema presentations and their film festivals. I think about them quite a lot. Talk to me IN DETAIL about the problems your cinema owners and festival organisers are having, and let's try to fix them.

Would you be happy if DoM was infallible and always produced perfect DCPs? Or would you still find something to complain about because you can't believe that free (libre) software ever works?

All the best,
Carl

[scozz76]

I'm thinking he may be from a rival software developer.

[radomarkov]

As you understand well, I have no time to cope with THOUSAND issues with DOM. If you remove one, then 2 new appear. Also lets check only date of 5 sep. when I accessed forum. Its was only for that day 3 (three) bugs at the list.And that for 10 years old software ! Carl may be is good programmer (or may be not), but it is NOT enough. you must be also good digital cinema "scientist", color science and many more.Also you need a lot of standards from SMPTE,ISO,IEEE that are PAID, expensively paid. and cannot be found in torrents or pirated sites. So because you have no such money you do reverse engineering of DCP structure. But its hard task. its difficult to do from sausage - pig (inverse is much easy). That is the main reason I consider this soft amateur. it do not comply with standards and use amateur approaches (i.i.ffmpeg). You say it works. It works JUST BECAUSE server manufacturers are already tired of thousand phone calls to support, spending thousand manhours due to bad, amateur made DCPs and then relaxed server requirements for respecting standards, giving possibilities for any crappy DCP made with DOM or WRAPTOR (because wraptor also made crappy DCPs). But this is bad approach from the part of the manufacturers. Because if it do not fit standards behavior is undefined and sometimes can happens something wrong. In the middle of projection. don't say "its never happened to me", because it happened to some peoples and they never want to hear about DOM anymore.If you do not respect standards you cannot guarantee smooth running.
Its a good idea projectionists only deal with quality projection of the movies and not with movies processing/making. Its a highly professional task not suitable for just everybody with computer and knowledges about the torrent's (like projectionists). I like open source, but not at any price and not for any task. Professional video and even more digital cinema are not domains that are suitable for open source application IF YOU ARE NOT PROFFESIONAL FROM THE DOMAIN, like SMPTE 21DC member, or ISO 29 member or working at high position in professional lab (not garage one) and so on. So asdcplib is professional, DOM is deep amateur.
I begin an campaign against open source in cinema made by amateurs, that started from IBC Amsterdam and continue across the Europe conferences on the topic. tThose conferences are visited by professional from cinema, big festivals, state film centers that financing movie making and so on. Final idea is DOM to be forbiden for usage at big festivals, professional movies and those financed with public money. There are way to found how DCP was made. Next step is to license which DCPs server can play. If server owner want headache and painstakes then server can play any DCP. But if owner want smooth running and no additional headaches then server can run only signed DCP made in certified labs (by checking signature certificate chain.)Then all the deepest amateurs here will cease.
Amateurism in such highly professional domain like digital cinema must not be promoted, nor endorsed and should be limited to the outside of professional cinema ecosystem - to amateur "authors", small damn cinemas somewhere outside big towns and so named "hardcore arthouse" cinema that surviving ONLY due to EU subvention (but this will not last long anymore).
So please, first release a version that work fine, respect all standards and then I'll try to change my attitude versus DOM.
As for now, versions after February 2019 when you put file in the "timeline" they check it to infinite.

[carl]

Hey Rado,

Carl may be is good programmer (or may be not), but it is NOT enough. you must be also good digital cinema "scientist", color science and many more.Also you need a lot of standards from SMPTE,ISO,IEEE that are PAID, expensively paid. and cannot be found in torrents or pirated sites. So because you have no such money you do reverse engineering of DCP structure.

You do not know anything about me, so I would be grateful if you did not make such assumptions.

It works JUST BECAUSE server manufacturers are already tired of thousand phone calls to support, spending thousand manhours due to bad, amateur made DCPs and then relaxed server requirements for respecting standards, giving possibilities for any crappy DCP made with DOM or WRAPTOR (because wraptor also made crappy DCPs)

I find it really strange that despite all these thousand man hours, not one single server manufacturer has ever contacted me to talk about these problems. If they took half of one man hour to write me an email saying "this DCP was made by DCP-o-matic and is wrong for this reason" I would fix the problem and all would be well, at a saving of 999-and-a-half man hours. If you spent half the time you spend complaining instead giving me details of your complaints, everything would be better. But that never happens.

it do not comply with standards and use amateur approaches (i.i.ffmpeg)

ffmpeg has nothing to do with the standards compliance of the DCP output from DCP-o-matic.

But this is bad approach from the part of the manufacturers

So why on earth do they do it?

I begin an campaign against open source in cinema made by amateurs, that started from IBC Amsterdam and continue across the Europe conferences on the topic. tThose conferences are visited by professional from cinema, big festivals, state film centers that financing movie making and so on. Final idea is DOM to be forbiden for usage at big festivals, professional movies and those financed with public money

What form is this campaign taking? Are you publishing papers?

There are way to found how DCP was made

Of course there are! DCP-o-matic leaves easy-to-recognise fingerprints all over the DCPs it makes (at least in the default configuration). A single grep command would find these fingerprints in a fraction of a second. A festival could trivially easily check all its incoming DCPs and reject any from DCP-o-matic if it so wished.

Next step is to license which DCPs server can play. If server owner want headache and painstakes then server can play any DCP. But if owner want smooth running and no additional headaches then server can run only signed DCP made in certified labs (by checking signature certificate chain.)Then all the deepest amateurs here will cease.

Sure. As IMAX already does.

Despite me asking you several times, you are still not providing any useful or constructive details of any of your complaints. Unless you start doing that I am going to block your future posts from appearing on the forum.

Carl

[Carsten]

Radoslav - you have literally thrown yourself out of ISDCF mailing list with your repeated rants, and your similar statements regarding your concerns during past ISDCF meetings are legendary among ISDCF members/participants as well.

Please be at least aware of the fact that you are making a fool out of yourself in public, and your worthy business won't benefit the slightest bit from this. What you are trying to achieve in locking the DCI universe against open software will never happen, trying to pursue that plan could even result in serious legal actions by and against various cinema industry participants. Obviously, you haven't thought much about that.

As a result, you are not locking out 'amateur' software, but you lock out yourself.

Thousands of regular users of DCP-o-matic understand better than you what DCP-o-matic is capable of. Among them, many industry professionals.

- Carsten

[rahmani]

Hey Rado
It is better to say your problem instead of nonsense. Those who use this software know its value well. Also if you have a problem say the kind of problem, here is the right place to troubleshoot the development version of this software developed by a very professional team, and especially a professional software developer like Carl. is. It's not bad to read a little bit about software programming and how to write a program if you are a specialist and try to get a better understanding of software development and applying the knowledge of cinema standards instead of meaningless lectures. As Carl and Carsten said they gave you the right answers. If you have a little bit of professional intelligence, you will definitely change your mind and respect the users of this software and its developers. Although there is a saying in our culture that "The answer of the fools is silence" but, it was a pity not to defend Carl and his group.
Solomon

[gunnar]

Ok radomarkov…
What is wrong with you?
Have you ever thought about that Carl, the creator of DOM has built a great software absolutely free?
Yes, you obviously have since your meaning is that DCP o matic is amateur program because it is free. Will 9000$ price tag make it professional?
I do run digital cinema lab and I own Dolby Cineasset Pro license.
If Dolby would decide that cineasset is going to be free software, is it then amateur software?
I don’t thing you know what DCP is if you think ffmpeg have anything to do with DCP standards.
You say that you have not had any working DCP since February out of DoM?
That was 8 months ago... Do you really thing that your problem would not have happened to everybody else if it was the software that was the problem?

The reason why some festivals prefer DCP´s made with professional DCP mastering software is only because of when they see it is made in that system it must be very skilled person that did the DCP and therefore they are ready to take that risk of test the DCP without being wasting any time on somebody that just googled “how to make DCP” and did something and send them DCP that did not work.
DCP-O-Matic is free open source software, the creator of the software does not owe you anything.
In fact, Carl could decided today that he are not going to continue development of DCP-O-Matic and there is nothing you can do about it.
The only thing you can do is being thankful for having the opportunity to use DCP-O-Matic.
You have not reported anything here in this forum to actually describe your problem.
But I can tell you right now that if you have not being able to make working DCP with DoM since February… Everybody would have notice that if the program stops producing working DCPs last 8 months.
So, if you want answers to your problems with the software, you must describe your problem in detail. What is not working?
Meanwhile your only bug report is “This is amateur program, nothing has worked since February…” then you are the problem, not the software.

And finally, if DoM is amateur program. Why are you here? Are you amateur or what?