Possible DCP delivery issue

[jhuey]

Hello all,
I recently used DCP-0-matic to modify an existing DCP to update captions. I created (and tested) new OV and VF files. I zipped both files individually and place them on my Frame IO account.

A user downloaded and unzipped the OV file and attempted to load to a older Doremi server. They told me that the server did not even see the DCP folder on the drive.

Due to critical time issues, I then posted the original DCP (prior to my work in DCP-o-matic) on my Frame IO account without zipping it. This file was downloaded and used with no issues on the same system.

As a test, I downloaded the problematic zipped DCP, unzipped it and it plays without issues using DCP-o-matic Player.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what might have happened and what steps I might take to eliminate the problem?

Thank you,
Jef

[carl]

Hi,

Was the user who tried to load the DCP onto the server experienced with DCPs? If not, there a quite a few things that can go wrong.

Otherwise, the first thing to check is that you only zipped the _OV folder (containing ASSETMAP.xml, VOLINDEX, and some MXF files) NOT the one containing metadata.xml, video, log etc. Unfortunately there have been a couple of places recently suggesting that you should provide the complete DCP-o-matic project folder to cinemas, which is 100% wrong.

[Carsten]

Maybe they used a 'bad' unzip software. Do you use a Mac to create the ZIP? Is this OV/DCP larger than 4GB?

Then, they need to use a Mac to unzip the ZIP, or, in windows, a moderately recent version of 7-ZIP (from v17.01 up). Note this is not about 7-ZIPs own 7z Format, it's just it's ability to uncompress ZIP files larger than 4GB that have been created on a Mac using the Finder's internal 'archive' function.

Of course, other reasons are possible as well, as they may arise when unzipping very large ZIP files - running into temporary storage limitations, or unzipping on unreliable USB memory sticks, etc.

- Carsten

[jhuey]

Hello Carsten,
Thank you for your comments. I do wonder if zipping was the issue. I made the archive on a Mac. They did no say what their receiving computer was. The person did say that they have been using this system for several years. That does not necessarily mean high skill level.

Now that the screening is over, I am going to ask the people involved if they will help me test. I will send the revised OV to them via Frame IO with out zipping and see what happens.

I will let you know.

Thank you again for your help.

Jef Huey

[Carsten]

You would help them more by advising them to use a current version on 7-Zip. This is not a standard app on windows computers -because, just as on Macs, there is a default right-click option to decompress ZIPs in windows, but this will not work with ZIP files >4GB created on a Mac using the right-click->Archive function. It will leave broken files.