what do you guys think "DCP-o-matic"?

[Eric Sebalsky]

the latest version (formerly known as DVD-o-matic - baaaad name) is available for MAC as well now and the tool features "an input to DCP". but has anybody tried it yet? is it fully DCI compatible? a lot of "simple and fast ways of DCPing" are advertised these days but most of them do not run smoothly when it comes to playback on a real cinema server! i'm a little unsure. i have my 100% working workflow with openDCp, thanks guys - but is DCP-o-matic any good? do the developers understand DCP distribution and conversion?

[Stephen van Vuuren]

I have not looked at it awhile – at first, never could get it work but this new version is much changed and says it has encryption.

 

I will test it out when I get a chance.

 

stephen van vuuren

336.202.4777

 

http://www.insaturnsrings.com/

http://www.sv2dcp.com/

http://www.sv2studios.com/

 

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

–Stanley Kubrick

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[Eric Sebalsky]

yeah it looks promising. i will test it too, let me know what you find out!

[Stephen van Vuuren]

I did notice activity in the forum indicated some people have compliance/ingest issues.

[Terrence]

Originally, DVD-O-Matic was loosely derived from OpenDCP to create DCPs from DVDs... hence the name. Recently, it has begun moving toward a more general purpose application. I have heard from people that it is coming along in nice features, still a bit unstable (not unexpected at this stage), but improving. I've talked with Carl in the past and he is quite knowledgeable and a good developer. Due to limited time for development, I tend to maintain a philosophy of keeping OpenDCP focused and aligned with the digital cinema workflow. This generally allows for more stability, but at the cost of features.

It certainly doesn't hurt to give DCP-O-Matic a try and feedback will help make it better. As with any free/open source project... mileage will vary. :-)

[Eric Sebalsky]

what i like is the great scaling (different algorithms) and cropping functionality. no need to do all that during a TIFF conversion. it also features color space presets for sRGB/rec.709. at least creating a MXF should be fine, i'd probably build the DCP in openDCP though. but the encoding options (also some additional filters for framerate conversion and denoise) are intriguing.

anyone seen an output of this app on the big screen yet? how's XYZ conversion? clean

[Terrence]

It depends on your workflow and needs. In my opinion, the DCP creation phase should be about creating the DCP, not editing the content. Editing/cropping/color conversion/frame rate manipulation should already be done upstream where there are better tools and you have more control. Cropping should really be done on a scene by scene basis. In some cases, especially if you are doing a quick conversion, then I can see the value in those features. I've thought about implementing more convenience features in OpenDCP, but it just seems to me if you are doing that stuff in the last stage, you are opening yourself up to surprises. Again, it depends on what your prefer and that's the beauty of having different software to choose from.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

I completely agree with you Terrence. The best tools work when they are focused on a specific task. The only interesting thing it offers is KDM – but I worry about the packaging problems reported. If you send a KDM based DCP, the packaging needs to be perfect.

 

stephen van vuuren

336.202.4777

 

http://www.insaturnsrings.com/

http://www.sv2dcp.com/

http://www.sv2studios.com/

 

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

–Stanley Kubrick

 

[Terrence]

There are bunch of problems with KDMs. First, for most (not all) they have very limited use to begin with. The truth is most people are not dealing with high-value content that justifies the bag of hurt they bring. To manage the keys, you need an infrastructure in place to generate, deliver, and track them. You need to obtain the individual key of each server you want to play on prior to generating a key. Few theater owners are going to have a clue how to give you that information. The people who do have them, like Technicolor, are probably not going to hand them out to you.

Also, the whole KDM scheme is going to change anyway to incorporate more security and more complexity. Hollywood is paranoid and they feel the need to clamp down things even further by not just having keys for the digital server, but they want them for the projector. sound processor, probably even in each seat and everyone's eyeballs if they could. You know, because they are afraid somebody might design a device that pretends to be a projector, but is really a recording device.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Yeah, that’s exactly why I’m curious how they are doing this on a free application.

 

The only need I have for KDM’s for myself and couple of clients is DCPs that we need to send to theaters in China and India which require KDMs due to rampant piracy.

[Eric Sebalsky]

just a short review after usind DCP-o-matic for generating the MXF streams and openDCP for packaging. i broke down my workflow to half the time, i do not need to to involve a TIFF encoding step that resizes, interpolates or adjusts color space.

DCP-o-matic does a pretty good (and rather fast, 3fps on my imac) job. color space is on the spot if the source is a prores with the right specifications - i change the source gamma range in DCP-o-matc to 2.2, that's the native range of prores (along with deactivated linearization) and have the option of either resizing or letterboxing. the encoding speed stays basically the same.

i use 125mbps as bandwith (what i remember from openDCP), still too high for a standard 2K film. my rendered MXF has a closer look to the source prores file than when introducing a TIFF step via mpeg streamclip, afterfx or compressor.

DCP-o-matic can work with all 4 HT cores, so 8 threads. when surround is implemented in the prores it automatically understands it and streamlines it in the right way. my final DCP is about 80GB for a 80mins film. easy calculation and way less disk space.

since i do not trust the actual process of creating the DCP within DCP-o-matic, i use openDCP to wrap picture and sound MXF (most of the time i do the sound MXF in openDCP too) to a DCP. both easy dcp creator and player say, it's 100% legit and do not give any errors. DCP-o-matic uses openjpeg which they describe as rather slow. as i said, it's 3fps for the basic operation in my case and it took about 12h to finish for a 80mins film.

that's half the time it took me before and the outcome is the same if not slightly better due to better color resemblance (i can put the source gamma to 2.2 as i said). also: DCP-o-matic runs smoothly, openDCP does crash for me sometimes when working with TIFFs.

i'm fine with switching programs, i'm not saying, that openDCP needs to feature anything like this. it's great at building DCPs that just work. i didn't try KDM because i have no idea about that.

there is another freeware out there for mac and it's called DCPbuilder. but it has a rather unconventional and strange interface which doesn't suit me in any way. it also features any-input-conversion but is less trustworthy in my opinion. i do not need yet another app, just a working way of writing good DCPs.

there is still the issue of subtitles though which none of the above mentioned tools tackles well. DCPbuilder has the option of rendering them in if they are provided in an encore text file or similar. SMPTE subtitles are still only doable by hand and clipster i suppose.

have you guys checked out doremis cine player yet? it plays any 15secs in the evaluation mode, so unlike easy dcp player you can jump to any position you like. but its color space conversion is no where near as accurate as easy dcp player's and there is no surround to stereo submix. again, one has to use both if possible if there's no cinema around.

and last but not least, there is a new star on the horizon: finalDCP and finalDCP player. it's advertised as the industry's fastest encoder (it features a node based render manager similar to qmaster) and has a unique way of working with subtitles. never the less it has some trouble writing 100% accurate packages which leads to ingesting errors. it has been beta for a while but now it's out and rather cheap - not sure if it is as revolutionary as they say it is.

[Carl Hetherington]

Hi all,

I am the developer of DCP-o-matic.  If anyone has any questions about DCP-o-matic, or experiences problems, they are welcome to email me at ca...@dcpomatic.com

Best regards

Carl

[Ely Marques]

Very cool, congratulations for the initiative, not yet tested the creation of a DCP, but was unable to play a DCP who had already created with openDCP.

Another question is, why does not develop along with opendDCP there since it is open source?

once again congratulations for the initiative

2013/12/6 Carl Hetherington <c...@carlh.net>

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[Stephen van Vuuren]

Carl,

 

Nice to see you hear. I make DCPs for indie clients on low budgets and have been doing so for 3 years using After Effects for pre-processing & mastering visual, my DAW for pre-processing and mastering audio, then OpenDCP for MXF wrapping and packaging.

 

However, I’m curious about KDM support in DCP-O-Matic – how well it works and has it actually been field tested with release titles. Do you have tools for KDM management of sending out new keys, tracking keys etc.

I also was a bit concerned to see some people have ingest issues. Terrence has been great with getting people to test OpenDCP widely on as many systems. I’ve found that certain systems are super exact about XML DCI compliance and reject packages that play fine on mainstream Dolby, Doremi, Sony etc.. This is the most important aspect of DCP software IMO.

 

KDM would worry me even more from a testing standpoint.

 

stephen van vuuren

336.202.4777

 

http://www.insaturnsrings.com/

http://www.sv2dcp.com/

http://www.sv2studios.com/

 

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

–Stanley Kubrick

 

From: ope...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ope...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Carl Hetherington
Sent: Friday, December 06, 2013 9:27 AM
To: ope...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: what do you guys think "DCP-o-matic"?

 

Hi all,

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[Carl Hetherington]

Hi Ely,

On Friday, December 6, 2013 4:09:39 PM UTC, Ely Marques wrote:

Very cool, congratulations for the initiative, not yet tested the creation of a DCP, but was unable to play a DCP who had already created with openDCP.

DCP-o-matic cannot play DCPs, if that's what you meant.

Another question is, why does not develop along with opendDCP there since it is open source?

DCP-o-matic has some code copy-pasted pretty much verbatim from OpenDCP (related to the JPEG2000 encoding) but I don't think there is a whole lot of other common ground between the codebases, to be honest.  Maybe there will be more common bits in the future :)

Cheers
Carl
 

[Carl Hetherington]

Hi Stephen,

On Saturday, December 7, 2013 3:53:50 PM UTC, Stephen van Vuuren wrote:

Carl,

Nice to see you hear. I make DCPs for indie clients on low budgets and have been doing so for 3 years using After Effects for pre-processing & mastering visual, my DAW for pre-processing and mastering audio, then OpenDCP for MXF wrapping and packaging.

However, I’m curious about KDM support in DCP-O-Matic – how well it works and has it actually been field tested with release titles. Do you have tools for KDM management of sending out new keys, tracking keys etc.

The KDM support is new and has not received much testing.  I have tried it on a Doremi DCP2000 server, and it worked ok, but there are some people having problems on other systems at the moment.  Any testing is welcome; I think the majority of the DCP-o-matic users have little need for encryption.

There is some limited KDM management; DCP-o-matic will remember certificates for projectors, arrange them by cinema, and email KDMs to a selected list of cinemas.  Much more than that I think would be better as a separate piece of software.
 

I also was a bit concerned to see some people have ingest issues. Terrence has been great with getting people to test OpenDCP widely on as many systems. I’ve found that certain systems are super exact about XML DCI compliance and reject packages that play fine on mainstream Dolby, Doremi, Sony etc.. This is the most important aspect of DCP software IMO.

For some users, yes.  From the people that email me, the majority of DCP-o-matic users are creating DCPs for their own use in their own cinemas, so they don't have to worry that the receiver of a DCP will have difficulty playing it.  Ingest problems come up here and there and I fix them.  I'm only aware of one outstanding compliance-related bug at the moment.
 

KDM would worry me even more from a testing standpoint.

In that case I think you have two choices, as it stands: help me test it, or use something else :)

It would be nice to get some lists of reported successes of DCP-o-matic with different systems.  I'll get on that, at some point.


Best regards
Carl
 

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Carl,

 

Thanks for the info. The only system I have to test on is a Dolby DS200 system. I occasionally have access to IMAX digital when they are not too busy. My client DCPs have to be good to go, so I’m more interested in test reports – I would like to see you compile a list of what systems it’s been tested on.

[Carl Hetherington]

Hi,

I have started making a rudimentary list of tested systems here:

http://dcpomatic.com/compatibility.php

Regards
Carl

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Thanks!