what drive do I need to ingest and MB for best quality?

Anything and everything to do with DCP-o-matic.
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noraj
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2022 8:43 pm

what drive do I need to ingest and MB for best quality?

Post by noraj »

Hi
I made a DCP from an Apple Pro Res HQ 222 file and set the mb /second at 200.
Is that high enough to preserve quality?

Also, I bought a CRU DX 115 drive to send my DCP to a film festival. But my Macbook pro could not read the drive and and so couldn't copy my DCP to the drive.
When I called CRU, they said the drive was formatted for Linnux. They helped me reformat the drive to OS Extended Journaled, with a "Guid Partition Map". I was able to copy the file, but I wonder what the difference between this fancy DX 115 drive is and one of my regular old rugged Lacie external hard drives, which apparently won't ingest into a projector...?
Thanks!
Confused about drives and ingesting...
jdent02
Posts: 53
Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2020 10:32 pm

Re: what drive do I need to ingest and MB for best quality?

Post by jdent02 »

200 is at the high end of normal.

Servers are only guaranteed to accept drives formatted in Linux Ext2. Many will also accept NTFS, but that's a Windows format. Those are it. No server that I know of can ingest from a Mac OS Extended format drive. So you'll have to find a way to format the hard drive correctly. DOM has a disk writer that'll do it for you, but it's still experimental. There are paid programs you can buy that'll do it as well (https://cinematiq.com/dcptransfer/).

The only thing special about a CRU drive is the enclosure, which offers some protection to the hard drive (but not enough to save it from a fall onto concrete). Many servers also have CRU ports on them, in which case you just slide the drive right in and you're ready to go. Those seem to be disappearing though as more an more movies are distributed online now (our new IMS3000 servers don't have them). I switched to a Samsung T5 SSD that plugs right into the USB3 port on the server.
Carsten
Posts: 2648
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 9:11 pm
Location: Germany

Re: what drive do I need to ingest and MB for best quality?

Post by Carsten »

You need to contact the film festival - some demand linux ext2/3 formatted drives explicitly. Some accept NTFS. Either way, you need to use special software to format the drive and copy the DCP.

For writing to NTFS on a Mac, there is Tuxera NTFS. You could also try DCP-o-matic disc writer. I will transfer a DCP and create a Linux partition in one go. It is beta, though, however, since you work on a dedicated transfer drive, I assume there is not much damage to be done.


200MBit/s is fine.

- Carsten
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