The elephant in the room.
We make money by converting digital films to the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) structure, as well as building out the physical delivery kit for providing the film to theaters. So why, as one would say, would we give away the keys to the kingdom?
Basic DCPs are easy to make. The export format exists within all the major Non-Linear Editors (NLEs) today. If you just want to deliver a digital file for your small local theater to display or for a festival, you do not need an expert to handle this part of the process.
As for the physical delivery kit? A few quick searches on your favorite search engine will yield the information in no time. If you have, or know someone who has, a few basic computer skills in formatting hard drives and connecting a hard drive to an enclosure, you can pretty easily do this on your own.
So again, why are we going to tell you what to do? At TreeTech, we offer beyond the basics services and peace of mind for anyone who does not want to or can not handle this work on their own. We can do the work for your organization or film team and let you focus on where the skills of your group lay. If you want TreeTech to help, peruse our service offerings and we’ll gladly lend a hand.
But if you are the go-getter independent type. Keep on reading.
What is a DCP?
Let’s start by borrowing from everyone’s favorite crowd sourced encyclopedia, Wikipedia:
A Digital Cinema Package (DCP) is a collection of digital files used to store and convey digital cinema (DC) audio, image, and data streams.
Wikipedia, Digital Cinema Packages
More specifically, it is a standardized set of folders and files representing the whole of a movie. This not only includes the video and audio, but also subtitles, captions, accessibility features, metadata, and sometimes security. The biggest catch is that everything needs to be formed and named very specifically for the cinema to ultimately project.
Quick tip: If you only want to export yours once for that local cinema I mentioned? Aim for 2K scope or flat aspect ratio and size when making your own DCP. Most projectors won’t downgrade, they want to deliver only what is being handed to them and do nothing to process it further.
For the most part, all you need to do is export your movie using the presets available in your NLE. It should handle the rest. The trickier parts come when you want to build in surround sound, accessibility audio tracks, or subtitling. Distribution itself requires the tracks for accessibility to be present. However, most festivals do not.
How are DCPs delivered?
Ultimately, a file needs to make it to the cinema projector and stored locally to be projected. However, how it gets there can vary. Not all festivals will require a physical delivery, but theaters generally only accept a physical device to transfer your movie. The physical device needs to fit within a set of requirements of it’s own.
At a very basic level, the device is just a hard (or solid state) drive. You may hear people refer to them as CRU drives. CRU is actually the company name. Technically, former company name as it all now exists under the name Digistor. They provide the physical enclosure that is used when loading the content to the projector. In reality it’s a regular hard drive inside a custom case with a custom interface on the back. Likely you will not be able to just go out and pick up but you can order them.
If you go this route, we would recommend doing a MoveDock with the Carrier and get a HDD preinstalled. That’s the easiest route.
If you don’t like the easy route and would prefer to build your own solution, go with a diskless carrier only. Next, get a SATA HDD to plug into the case. Finally, we would recommend buying a SATA to USB adapter to make it easier to transfer the drive after transferring the DCP. That adapter is necessary if you are transferring from a laptop and a fantastic time saver when disconnecting from a tower.
Note: We don’t get a kick back from you ordering a case.
Also, there is a chance you don’t even need a CRU enclosure to make the transfer happen. Every theater we’ve worked with so far in our area (big and small) have also accepted a drive to be connected via the tried and true standard USB-A male connector. External HD/SSD and thumb drives are viable options.
Great! I have a hard drive, can I just hand that over?
Not quite. The gotcha here is the formatting of the drives. DCP physical media needs to be formatted as Ext3. Scared? Need a life line? Contact Us. Otherwise, keep reading.
If you aren’t familiar with that, it’s a common format on Unix (Linux, BSD, etc…) based systems. If you aren’t familiar with it and run on Macintosh or Windows, Paragon Software has your back:
Windows: https://www.paragon-software.com/home/linuxfs-windows/
Macintosh: https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/
Note: Still not getting a kickback from these links… you think we would have learned.
Before you go and format the drive containing your movie, stop. ALL DATA WILL BE REMOVED when a drive is formatted. Use an empty drive when performing your format. Also be very very very VERY clear when choosing which drive to format or remove all other drives ahead of this task just to be sure. When you finally format, don’t do anything fancier than just formatting the entire target drive as Ext3. Don’t do Ext4. Don’t consider journaling. Just simple standard Ext3.
I pulled the trigger, I have a drive formatted and I am ready to transfer the movie.
Great! Congratulations! You’ve accomplished the most difficult part of the task!
Now you need to transfer THE ENTIRE FOLDER produced by your NLE on to the drive. Again, as mentioned above, a DCP isn’t just a single file like movie movies you play on your devices. This is a collection of files.
When you NLE exported the movie, it created a folder that was likely named as you specified in your export settings. This folder contains some XML files, a video file, and an audio file. The entire folder IS the movie. Don’t break it up and don’t rename anything. Just drag it onto your new drive and let it copy over.
Once done, safely remove your drive from your computer. If this was an external drive connected by USB, bring your drive and an appropriate USB cable to your destination. Again, it will need a USB-A male connector on the end that will go to the transfer computer/projector for the theater.
Did you go the route of a DCP kit from CRU/Digistor? Hopefully you went the MoveDock route. If not, then you’ll need to unplug your hard drive from your computer, insert it into the enclosure, secure down the drive, and replace the cover on the enclosure.
Is… Is that it?
Yep, take your drive to the drop off location and wait for them to confirm that the movie transferred and passed their tests.
If for any reason it didn’t pass the tests, we might know someone you can contact.
Otherwise, we congratulate you on a successful transfer and wish your project the best of luck with the screening. Drop us a line to let us know if this article helped and, if you are feeling really generous, invite us to the premiere!
