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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

DCP encoder + player NEW

Beta testers wanted for closed beta of MAC and Windows DCP Player

Beta testers wanted for closed beta of MAC and Windows DCP Player

Luis Otero said:
Not good news at all... :-( We have been counting on it since its announcement. Really disappointed.
Click to expand...

Hi Louis, all others,

we are looking for beta testers to apply for a closed beta of our upcoming DCP player software for both MAC OS X and Windows.

Please drop me an email to sales(at)magnamana.com with the topic "[FinalDCPPlayer-Beta]" and your contact address, hardware, OS version and if you have, which DCP encoder you have.
 
No, Gabriele, that's the problem, otherwise it would be a great alternative to EasyDCP. Axel, have you planned to expand the features of Final DCP to SMPTE frame rates, and KDM encryption ? If yes, when ?

Thanks,

Kristin
 
i see ,
one thing that is not clear to me is : the KDM , is basically ""just a simple"" password in order to view the content ?
is it something that once the distributor acquire the content can change ?

here the scenario , let's say i have to deliver to the independent company the final Movie (still no distribution ) and i deliver with KDM , what happen when a distribution company buy the film and release multiple copies ? the KDM change ?
sorry for the ignorance but i never created or delivered DCP and now that cheaper packages are showing up , i guess is better start knowing about it
thanks
g
 
Kristin Stewart said:
No, Gabriele, that's the problem, otherwise it would be a great alternative to EasyDCP. Axel, have you planned to expand the features of Final DCP to SMPTE frame rates, and KDM encryption ? If yes, when ?

Thanks,

Kristin
Click to expand...

Yes, we will add those features step by step. Right now we implement subtitles. Beside that we will have the player. Both developments are running side by side, there is no specific order.

Once we have the subtitle version done, we will continue with SMPTE and additional frame rate implementation. KDM will be the last to tackle.

One thing:
KDM is most often overvalued in terms of its use, from my perspective.

I understand that big commercial releases with hundrets of copies go for KDM, however for most of the smaller productions, independent movie makers, documentary movie makers etc. KDM is more of a burden than a feature. I simply don't recommend to use it at all for this kind of content. Most producers are happy if they find a slot in a theater to play their content. Having to create and handle KDMs is unnecessary hindering the playback handling in that context. And I believe most can trust the theaters. If someone want to make a piracy copy of content, he/she will find a way anyway.

More and more festivals tend to ignore KDM handling whenever possible, due to the troubles they experience when actually using KDMs. KDMs (Key Delivery Messages) are quite similar to PGP keys. You may lock the content to a specific display device, in a specific time frame etc. . but once you make a mistake the movie won't play at all. Getting a correct KDM "in time" is in such situations almost impossible, which could lead to a director sitting at a festival in a full theater and his movie isn't shown. We know quite some festivals that experienced this on an almost regular basis, year by year. In fact I know festivals who will no longer allow KDM content at all, due to this. It happens when communication fails, or devices fail/got changed in the meantime, or theater rooms have been switched to satify the visitor amount etc. As I said: It can be a nightmare.

KDM is somehow like if you had a DigiBeta in a numerical lock locked case. You can bring it whereever you go, but to unlock it, someone else need to send you a number key, everytime a new key. In the age of tapes no one would have wished for this really.

Anyhow, I am not saying that KDM is bad, but users should think twice about if they NEED KDM for their productions or not. If the source key messages get lost, the content can no longer be opened at all, almost never. You can even lockout yourself if you have no open master somewhere...

Btw, the Academy Awards don't accept DCPs with KDMs... ;-)

Regarding time frame:
Subtitling hopefully in feburary. SMPTE possibly in march. KDM after that. Player beta within first quarter 2013.
 
Gabriele Turchi said:
i see ,
one thing that is not clear to me is : the KDM , is basically ""just a simple"" password in order to view the content ?
is it something that once the distributor acquire the content can change ?

here the scenario , let's say i have to deliver to the independent company the final Movie (still no distribution ) and i deliver with KDM , what happen when a distribution company buy the film and release multiple copies ? the KDM change ?
sorry for the ignorance but i never created or delivered DCP and now that cheaper packages are showing up , i guess is better start knowing about it
thanks
g
Click to expand...

I know of several cases where distributors required OPEN MASTERs to build the DCPs and KDMs themselves or from their own partners.
Honestly I would wonder if a distributor would allow you to give him an encrypted content for which only you have the chance to create KDMs for (which from your pespective would be interesting, of course).
If fact most charge resonable amounts for KDM creating/handling etc.

There are various levels of KDM security and what you can restrict or not. Its also planned that keys may get generated automatically from centralized servers (TKR = Theater Key Retrieval). Right now most of this is more in a conceptual phase, than real business.

Basically, adding the encryption to the content isn't the real problem. Its more that the information you need FROM the theater side. You need their specific hardware dependent key infos, which they often don't have themselves!
I know cases where theaters lease their equipment. To rule out delayed payment of lease rates, the keys are controlled by the lease company.
There is - and I count that as a design failure - no existing central database of all the equipment informations. It would be fairly easy to get this done, if simply all vendors would share the hardware key part and have it in a central database.
Big KDM creation / distribution companies have such databases build on their own "the hard way" and sit on that informations, because thats what they make their living from.

Not to talk about the Virtual Print Fees...

However, we will add it, but given the feedback from our userbase so far, its not the highest priority.
 
Thansk Axel for your kind and precise answer. Yes, I agree 100% with you regarding KDMs. But some clients are asking for them, so it's a service we need to provide ;-) And competition with EasyDCP wouldn't be a bad thing for everyone ;-)

You can add us to the beta testers of your player if you need more people ;-)

Best,

Kristin
 
Hi Kristin,

yes, of course, sometimes KDMs are simply a service needed - that is why we will add them. Its just not number one on our list, because in many if not most cases our clients go away from KDMs after explaining how they work and what can go wrong, especially on festivals.

And yes, competition is always nice to have from a customer perspective. As a posthouse - thats our main job and business - we are a service provider as well and know exactly what you are talking about. Thats how FinalDCP was born - because of needs we had that we couldn't fill affordably with other packages.

Please drop me an email to sales(at)magnamana.com with the topic "[FinalDCPPlayer-Beta]" and your contact address, hardware, OS version and if you have, which DCP encoder you have.

Btw, I just got asked if we will support SDI output? The answer is yes, we aim at supporting Blackmagic Design and potentially AJA SDI cards. It will not work out of the box, but we have tons of these and there are many reasons why this makes a lot of sense to us (and others too, of course).

Cheers,
Axel
 
Axel Mertes said:
Btw, I just got asked if we will support SDI output? The answer is yes, we aim at supporting Blackmagic Design and potentially AJA SDI cards. It will not work out of the box, but we have tons of these and there are many reasons why this makes a lot of sense to us (and others too, of course).

Cheers,
Axel
Click to expand...

SDI support i crucial to screen it back ( QC) . What do you mean when you say "it will not work out of the box"?

thanks

g
 
Just sent a request to Beta.
 
Gabriele Turchi said:
SDI support i crucial to screen it back ( QC) . What do you mean when you say "it will not work out of the box"?

thanks

g
Click to expand...

Hi Gabriele,

I mean that SDI support will likely not be in a first version of the player, however its planned for a later release. The good point is that there is already SDK experience with the BMD stuff at hand, so its not that much out of reach at all. Its just a matter of priorities.

Cheers,
Axel
 
Thanks axel ,
Look forward , in my opinion SDI play out is a minimum requirement , otherwise you are forced to screen a movie (or whatever the content it is ) on a computer monitor Ethernet big screen projector or big plasma ..

g
 
Gabriele Turchi said:
Thanks axel ,
Look forward , in my opinion SDI play out is a minimum requirement , otherwise you are forced to screen a movie (or whatever the content it is ) on a computer monitor Ethernet big screen projector or big plasma ..

g
Click to expand...

I agree with the SDI out. We have Kona cards in every system and it would smart to design the software to utilize the power in those cards (or BMD cards) to help with DCP playback. Since these card are good at scaling it seems like it would be easy to get them to scale 2k down to 1080.
 
I think we will do BMD cards first. However, we will get there, step by step.

See the other thread about some news.

The player is pretty close!!!
 
Dear colleagues,

I am new with FinalDCP, please help me :
- What do mean two (L and R) green buttons for Video in "Reels" section?
- How I can/must operate with them?
- When I put 5 reels (ProRes4444, 2048x1080, 25fps) and try to render DCP, FinalDCP renders the second reel first and stops on the first one. Warning: "RenderProcessV2 quit unexpectedly", is appearing. Also "QT DEBUG:ERROR: "Process closed connection" is written in Log. However, I can render each reel separately, one by one - FinalDCP can create a DCP from single reel.

Thank you.
 
Last edited:
Ihor Podolchak said:
Dear colleagues,

I am new with FinalDCP, please help me :
- What do mean two (L and R) green buttons for Video in "Reels" section?
- How I can/must operate with them?
- When I put 5 reels (ProRes4444, 2048x1080, 25fps) and try to render DCP, FinalDCP renders the second reel first and stops on the first one. Warning: "RenderProcessV2 quit unexpectedly", is appearing. Also "QT DEBUG:ERROR: "Process closed connection" is written in Log. However, I can render each reel separately, one by one - FinalDCP can create a DCP from single reel.

Thank you.
Click to expand...

Some quick notes:

- The buttons at L&R tell you that both eyes will see this video track. For Stereo 3D you just need to drag and drop the right eye video file/sequence onto the already imported left eye video track (filename field). It will add a second track (not a second reel!) directly below the left eye video track. On the right side in the L/R columns you can then alter the eyes by clicking on the buttons.


- Select your video track and press “e” key. It will open the visual editor. Top left is the source + histogramm, top right is the target X’Y'Z’ processed image, back converted according the selected target color space in the very top right pulldown menu. Currently there default is a preset for colorspace using REC709 full range source “Full Range Safe” conversion. This one limits the target brightness to the lowest common possible in the X’Y'Z’ space. You can also change source gamma (default is 2.2) as in europe many colorists use 2.35 or 2.4 as gamma for REC709 encoding. You can also select the proxy resolution for both previews in the pulldown on the top of the left preview window.

- When you want to import non-embedded audio as individual seperate files and need a speed change (such as from 23.976->24 or 25->24), then please double click in the “Source FPS” coloumn of each audio track. It will change into a pulldown menu and you can select its source speed. So FinalDCP will now when you have 25fps source speed that it will slow down to 24fps during conversion. We do this conversion without pitch correction, as there is no pitch conversion algorithm that is equally good for music, singing, speech and sound effects. Many of those introduce audio artefacts. So we decided against it and use just waveform speedup or slowdown, changing pitch but introducing no artefacts.


- Audio is currently only supported at 48KHz and 96KHz. Please avoid using 44.1KHz audio.

Player Beta will start *very* soon.

However, we will launch another product this week, a faster RenderNode on a professional speed level.
You will all be able to test it probably during this week, as it will come with the FREE Edition for testing as well. I run 4K encodings at nearly double realtime (>40fps) on my small 10 nodes farm. I can do 2K 3D HFR in faster than realtime now (>130fps).

So stay tuned. Everyone who has send an email will be informed the moment we start. No one will be left out as of now!

Cheers,

Axel
 
Dear Axel,
Thanks a lot for your explanation.

One problem remains:
- I drag and drop 5 reels (ProRes4444, 2048x1080, 25fps, embedded audio) and start to create DCP, FinalDCP processes the second reel first and stops when try to process the first reel. Warning: "RenderProcessV2 quit unexpectedly" is appearing. Also "QT DEBUG:ERROR: "Process closed connection" is written in Log.

I thought that something wrong with a video file - the first or another reel. But tests showed that each file/reel could be separately rendered in DCP.
Does it mean that FinalDCP can process only one reel?

Thank you,
Ihor
 
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