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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 :)

Digital Cinema Package

As far as I know, in general there isn´t an difference on which system you do the playback of your DCP. When it follows the rules of a 3D DCP, then every 3D system should be able to play it properly (Xpand, RealD, Dolby3D/Infitec etc.). That´s the point of a standardized package like DCP.

Ok, the truth is that every 3D system has more or less problems with ghosting, what means that the glasses cannot seperate the two pictures completetly (depending on the amount of contrast between the frames etc.). So the 3D DCPs in the past had to be tuned for the specific display technology, a process called "Ghostbusting" (not so good for a standardized distribution of a DCP). As the developement of the Cinema-Servers is still in progress, ghostbusting will be implemented in the software / hardware and will be done during playback.

But in this thread the main topic wasn´t on 3D DCP, more on how to generate a DCP in general. Pavel´s script is made for 3D (as far as I remeber). There are some points you must pay attention to when doing 3D DCP but in general, the workflow is similar.

Hope this was useful for you,

best regards

Felix
 
For a RED user that wants to make a DCP I have these tips:

2048x1024(2:1) is not a standard preset on a digital cinema projector, neither is 2048x1080. 2048x858 (Scope 2.39:1) and 1998x1080 (Flat 1.85:1) are.

The new Fraunhofer Easydcp Creator can make 25 fps SMPTE DCPs. I have tested this on the Doremi DCP-2000 server and it works. AFAIK all servers will play 25 fps SMPTE DCPs soon.
Made a description on how to this here

The new Fraunhofer Easydcp Creator can also bypass the RGB->XYZ conversion so a image sequence graded for digital cinema can be used.
This makes the jpeg2000 encoding even faster.

Don't use 8 bit image sequences.
 
Thanks Knut. So, if I have a 1.85:1 film, I should render it as 1998x1080 right off the NLE, right? As for a 1.78:1 film, crop it to 1.85:1?

There are quite a few steps in the encoding process yes. EasyDCP is too expensive for many of us. I wish there were an encoder that would encode directly to JPEG2000 from the video file.

Vegas Pro has DPX, TIFF and JPEG output, amongst other image sequence formats. I wonder if these would help. It is about time they included a JPEG2000 DCP compatible render! Would save us so much trouble! Vegas Pro does have JPEG, like I mentioned. Maybe someone can tell us exactly how different JPEG is from JPEG2000.

PS: Ok, Vegas Pro does have a JPEG2000 option, after all! It is under Quicktime 7. So it encodes your video as JPEG2000 frames and writes it to a .mov container/file. Now, the question is, how do I proceed from here? The JPEG2000 frames are inside the mov file. Also, I am not really sure how compatible these are to the DCP standards.
 
The specification for JPEG 2000 is very powerful and flexible, you can have a gazillion different kinds. Nice primers at http://www.intopix.com/pdf/JPEG 2000 Handbook.pdf and http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000211.shtml for digital cinema related notes (Bitrates, tiling, markers)

So for cinema you need a dedicated codec that outputs the right codestream and the right markers etc. I'm guessing, but Vegas Pro's JPEG2000/mov output won't be usable directly for cinema authoring. They would let you know very clearly.
 
Interesting, the 25fps option in easyDCP. Would be nice to know, if the cinema servers will have to be updated to support it reliably or if they could always play 25 fps but not officially supported...would you start to use 25 fps more often in future? I think people who produce for cinema regularly (commercials etc., not to mention films) are used to produce in 24 fps, maybe the 25 fps option is more interesting for people new to the subject, short films which haven´t been shot exactly for the cinema...

Concerning Jpeg2000: does anybody know, if the people from the CUDA powered converter will make a version of their software which can create the needed j2c files? Are there any news?

And at last a noob question:
Chris Perry writes on his blog "making a dcp entirely with open source tools" that the encoding process of the pictures "must be run one frame at a time, but it's very easy to distribute ranges of frames to multiple processors if you have them". Ok, does that mean that there is a way to start multiple encoding processes simultaneously on one machine equipped for example with a dual or quad core or do you have to use multiple pc workstations side by side, feeding them with the ranges of frames?

Sorry for the stupid question but I haven´t used command line tools much before...and for example the jpeg2000 encoding with the image_to_j2k only uses about 45 to 50 % of my cpu capacity.

Thanks for help

Felix
 
Felix, if you're asking about CUJ2K: no news so far.

A shell script can fire off a number of threads (or background jobs) to segment the workload. It depends on your box's architecture whether this will improve the overall runtime. Kernel scheduling, hyperthreading, core throttling all play a part.

Running background jobs can be as easy as
$ job1 &
$ job2 &
 
Subhadip Sen said:
Vegas Pro has DPX, TIFF and JPEG output, amongst other image sequence formats. I wonder if these would help. It is about time they included a JPEG2000 DCP compatible render! Would save us so much trouble! Vegas Pro does have JPEG, like I mentioned. Maybe someone can tell us exactly how different JPEG is from JPEG2000.

PS: Ok, Vegas Pro does have a JPEG2000 option, after all! It is under Quicktime 7. So it encodes your video as JPEG2000 frames and writes it to a .mov container/file. Now, the question is, how do I proceed from here? The JPEG2000 frames are inside the mov file. Also, I am not really sure how compatible these are to the DCP standards.
Click to expand...

JPEG is DCT, and JPEG2000 is wavelet, so very different indeed!

Not 100% on this, but I believe QuickTime's JPEG2000 implementation is only 8-bit, so not really any good for DCP. And if your export from Vegas was RGB QuickTime JPEG2000, it would need to be converted to XYZ and re-compressed for DCP, so it would be no better an intermediate format than anything else, and indeed worse than many others!
 
Yes, I did a bit of research, and indeed, the QuickTime JPEG2000 is not quite the DCP standard. It is about time they added a DCP compatible JPEG2000 image sequence though! About time!

CUJ2K does sound interesting.
 
Wolfgang, thanks for the explanation.

CUj2K really seems to be very fast, in their Benchmark they compare it with encoding speed of the proprietary Kakadu 6.2 encoder and CUj2K does very well. I think I´ll also write to the team in Stuttgart if there is any hope that the needed functions will be implemented in CUj2k.

One thing concerning DCPs of long movies:
Does the film have to be cut into reels (I read about 20 minutes each reel) or is it possible or advisable to make a DCP with a "solid" movie of 60 minutes or even more? Will there be any syncronisation problems during playback?

Thanks,

Felix
 
Reels are not mandatory. 1-reeler DCPs are perfectly valid.

But, although a tad counter-intuitive in the age of digital, the reel concept has a number of benefits: It facilitates file-handling (feature length work has ~150.000 frames which makes file browsers cringe and trackfile sizes huge) and allows random-access of trackfiles (like play a part of a trackfile in reel 1, play another part of that trackfile in reel 2 etc., see <EntryPoint> and <Duration>).

Actually this reuse of trackfiles is something I'm going to put to good use in a pet project of mine, a tool to create digital cinema slideshows. I love slideshows :)

What makes me shudder when I think DCP and slideshow is the apparent inefficiency: Storing/Encoding stills for the entire run of a slide (apart from faded and crossfaded frames) would be nuts, wouldn't it? Sparse assets (via reels) to the rescue: Make minimal length trackfiles and replay (next reel). Actually, I should test what happens with 1-frame reels, not sure about minimum reel length (trackfiles are 1 second minimum).

I'll post cinemaslides here in due time, of course, still needs some love. Would anyone be interested to test and play?
 
I'll post cinemaslides here in due time, of course, still needs some love. Would anyone be interested to test and play?
Click to expand...
I can play it with DSS 200. It's interesting are you making some kind of automation tool for slideshowmaking. Or it's just a provement of a concept?

Chris Perry writes on his blog "making a dcp entirely with open source tools" that the encoding process of the pictures "must be run one frame at a time, but it's very easy to distribute ranges of frames to multiple processors if you have them". Ok, does that mean that there is a way to start multiple encoding processes simultaneously on one machine equipped for example with a dual or quad core or do you have to use multiple pc workstations side by side, feeding them with the ranges of frames?
Click to expand...
I can show you the way to distribute. Btw, i haven't used it, but it should work. For linux it's just a meter of SSH execution. You just have to put you source material in a shared folder.
The problem is windows machines. There is a freeware tool for console remote execution named PsExec (from systernal's PsTools). It helps you to execute your file on a remote machine (you have to know it admin's password for it).It can even temporally copy your execution file on a remote machine. Anyway you still need shared folder for source material and jp2000 files.
 
Pavel, cinemaslides is a ruby script to create digital cinema slideshows. For example

$ cinemaslides --montagepreview --type preview,dcp --size 2k --aspect flat --black 5 --transition_and_timing crossfade,1,5 --title "feature title" --annotation "package annotation" --issuer "package issuer" image1.tiff image2.jpg image3.dpx ...

will display a thumbnail montage of images (to check how images fit onto the targeted plane), create a full length preview of the slideshow (to check how timing sits etc.) and create a 2k flat DCP with 5 seconds black header/footer and 1 second crossfade transition between 5 second slides.

No audio yet, no 3D yet, no subtitles yet. Needs linux, ruby, imagemagick, mplayer, asdcplib, opencinematools, a jpeg2000 codec (openjpeg or kakadu, which is available for non-commercial purposes) and, like I said, some love, too.
 
Wolfgang Woehl said:
Pavel, cinemaslides is a ruby script to create digital cinema slideshows. For example

$ cinemaslides --montagepreview --type preview,dcp --size 2k --aspect flat --black 5 --transition_and_timing crossfade,1,5 --title "feature title" --annotation "package annotation" --issuer "package issuer" image1.tiff image2.jpg image3.dpx ...
Click to expand...

That sounds great! I don't know how you are achieving it, but maybe editing the Composition XML to create a loop between each 1 second slide could be an option.
 
Pavel, it's entirely possible that cinemaslides will run on windows (in a properly setup cygwin environment) and mac boxen. Keep in mind, though, that it's early alpha (like pm alpha). It won't do anything nasty but it will choke on typos in options, the occasional off-by-one bug should be hiding in there, stuff like that. Ping me if you want to try this.

Augustin, like I mention in the response to Felix' question about reels: Sparse assets (minimum-length trackfiles played in a sequence of reels) are the obvious thing to do with DCP slideshows. Coming up. Right now cinemaslides does the nutty thing: Create full-length trackfiles and therefore quite large DCPs. Not that it matters much in playback. It's just not efficient, let alone elegant.
 
Oh, btw, one kind of bass-ackwards side effect of how cinemaslides does things is that you can create the usual motion picture DCP. Like

$ cinemaslides -t dcp -x fade,0,0.04167,0 [image_sequence]

The -x option specifies the kind of transition and timing parameters: Fade-in/out for 0 seconds and show each slide at full level for 1/24 seconds. Think of a Kodak Carousel going 24fps-berserk.
 
Hey Wolfgang. I've been struggling with trying to get a Linux workflow for DCP slideshows going for a while now and I'd love to take a look at cinemaslides to get some help and inspiration. Happy to test and play.
 
Hey guys. Just wanted to thank you for the great discussion. Took me couple of weeks to create my own stereo DCP, but now it's all good, and we got it succesfully played on the Dolby DSS100 last week.

I tried to gather all the thoughts into one article on DCP creation. Check it out:
http://www.stereofinland.com/?page_id=49

Comments are welcome.
 
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