Duplicating DCP's?

[Paul Lee]

Hi all,
We wil soon have a master DCP created. We are hoping to control costs by making duplicates at our facility. We're on Mac and use Paragon s/w to format and read linux format. Anyone see trouble with copying? We'd put it on Cru DX-115's using the Dataport and USB. Understand data rates are a little slow by today's standards, but will it work?

Thanks!

 

[Michael Winokur]

We made our own DCP and formatted a Sandisk thumb drive to linux ext2. We tested it on a 4k projector, worked perfectly. Don't see why couldn't make an infinite number of those. Once the drive is formatted it's just copying a folder.

 

[M Most]

As long as the DCP is unencrypted there should not be an issue.

 

[Roger Singh]

As long as the DCP is unencrypted there should not be an issue.

You can duplicate Encrypted DCPs as well, file structure is exactly the same as an unencrypted DCP.

 

[Paul Lee]

Ah, good point about encryption. So the keys still work after copy? Thanks!

 

[Todd T]

Unique keys are created for each specific DCP server.
Copies of the keys will be useless anywhere else.

 

[Roger Singh]

Ah, good point about encryption. So the keys still work after copy? Thanks!

Yes, the keys will work with the duplicate DCP. The encryption is in the MXF containers, The Hard drive, both physically and the filesystem is not encrypted.

 

[Kristin Stewart]

I wouldn't suggest to duplicate DCP's on drives formatted with Paragon. Sure, it can work on some servers and it sometimes help this way, but the main goal is to ensure 100% compatibility with all cinema servers. The DCI norm specifies a Linux Ext3 MBR (not GPT) partition. It's better to have a small laptop running Ubuntu for instance, and to format and to duplicate from there.

Kristin

 

[Paul Lee]

I wouldn't suggest to duplicate DCP's on drives formatted with Paragon. Sure, it can work on some servers and it sometimes help this way, but the main goal is to ensure 100% compatibility with all cinema servers. The DCI norm specifies a Linux Ext3 MBR (not GPT) partition. It's better to have a small laptop running Ubuntu for instance, and to format and to duplicate from there.

Kristin

I hadn't thought of that, thank you Kristin. So Paragon is not truly the same as truly using Linux?

 

[M Most]

I hadn't thought of that, thank you Kristin. So Paragon is not truly the same as truly using Linux?

No. And there are some specific format settings that are necessary for some servers (inode size, and one or two others) that are really only available in Linux fdisk, not on things like Paragon. Bottom line is if you want the disk to be readable by virtually all DCP servers, you should format the disk in Linux directly.

 

[Nick Shaw]

This is a very useful read for DIY DCP work :

http://www.knuterikevensen.com/?p=437

And my personal experience of Paragon was that it was painfully slow

 

[Matthew Riggieri]

Ubuntu in a VM running in parallels has worked flawlessly for me.

 

[Kristin Stewart]

No. And there are some specific format settings that are necessary for some servers (inode size, and one or two others) that are really only available in Linux fdisk, not on things like Paragon. Bottom line is if you want the disk to be readable by virtually all DCP servers, you should format the disk in Linux directly.

Exactly ;-) Don't bother with potential problems, a small laptop is quite cheap nowadays, you can even dual boot with Ubuntu on a Macbook Air for instance ;-)

 

[Paul Lee]

All very good stuff and thank you!