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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 :)

FinalDCP Player beta testers wanted for closed beta

A

Axel Mertes

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Hi All,

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.
 
Hi Axel, I bought finaldcp from your company more than a month ago but I don't know how to use it. Could you please send me a help menu for it. thanks in advance.
 
finaldcp help menu

finaldcp help menu

Hi Axel, could you please email me help menu for finaldcp. I have been waiting for your reply for almost two months now. I shall be very thankful to you. I have no clue how to use this more than $600 software. I bought it about two months ago.
 
Any update on when the beta testing will start?
 
Dave_S said:
Hi Axel, could you please email me help menu for finaldcp. I have been waiting for your reply for almost two months now. I shall be very thankful to you. I have no clue how to use this more than $600 software. I bought it about two months ago.
Click to expand...

Hi Dave/Davinder,

it took me a while to dig our your original email, as I did not get together you name Davinder and your other mails stating Dave, plus the name in the email account (thats the most tricky part on support - really!). Unfortunately your mail landet in the junk folder, as hotmail accounts are sometimes source of junk mails, the filter has apparently treated your mail wrongly. Sorry about that.

I dropped you an email that hopefully answers the important questions for the time being.

Best regards,
Axel
 
Hi Axel,
sorry about the name. Didn't know that simple name can confuse such a big software company ;-) though its the same email.
Hey when can we have dcp player ready for purchase?
kind regards
 
Dave_S said:
Hi Axel,
sorry about the name. Didn't know that simple name can confuse such a big software company ;-) though its the same email.
Hey when can we have dcp player ready for purchase?
kind regards
Click to expand...

Yeah, Dave, sometimes that mix on names dropping in for support make it hard to track.

We have sometimes an order from name / email a (the buyers wife, as he has no PayPal but she has), then a licensee name / email when adminstrating the installation, and then random other names / emails of co-workers. And last but not least mails that get under in either junk folder or the huge amount of mails on certain days. Trying to get a better tracking of those, but its ain't easy for such a small company as we are ;-)

The player should be in test in roughly 2 weeks we hope. Release soon after ;-) MAC and PC.

Cheers,
Axel
 
Hi Axel,
I just went through my email and I am very happy with your in depth response to my questions regarding Finaldcp. Thank you so much and my sincere apologies for not realizing the importance of name difference. Can't wait to get another great product from your company-Finaldcp player.
regards
Dave.
 
A heads up for everyone waiting for the beta:

We just had the first builds that can play DCPs on MAC & Windows, even on almost "normal" machines in realtime (depending on the hardware 1:1, 1:2, 1:4 resolution).
Colorspace conversion as usual, you know FinalDCP :-)

Seems we might even be a bit faster and earlier with the beta than expected.

Cheers,
Axel
 
I've also just pumped out a email notification to all FinalDCP users that new builds are online.

Missed to note that cropping is now working fine to, also from native RED R3D files.
RED Color 3, RED LOG, RMD files etc. are supported as well. You can transcode from R3D/RMD directly to DCP without any other tool. Great for dailies if required.


Much more stable version, here some short form:



New FinalDCP and FinalDCP FREE Edition build online

Dear FinalDCP user and prospective user,

we are very happy to present you a new release build of FinalDCP and FinalDCP FREE Edition, introducing some new functions and lots of minor improvements.

We have also fixed some important bugs, so you should not wait upgrading to the latest build. Don't stay with previous builds!

Please find here download links to FinalDCP including both MAC OS X and Windows version installers. You need to register, because we want to be able to reach you in case of updates or new builds.

http://www.MagnaMana.com/Products/FinalDCP/


Good News

We are working with pressure on another new build with subtitle support. We are still testing the subtitle version.

We are also having an alpha version of our DCP player, that is coming soon as well as a seperate product, for both MAC OS X and Windows. We took strong efforts to have fast playback speed even on average systems. You should be able to play DCPs fluently on workstations as well as laptops.

We will soon have a new professional RenderNode option with improved encoding speed as well. More details to follow soon.

SMPTE integration will be next on the list, including new frame rates.

We have some more yet unheard of additions coming, more on this when the time is ready. Just so much: Cool stuff!


Tips & Tricks

In the meantime we implemented some other minor new features and some bug fixes for FinalDCP, changed presets etc.
The new build should appear much more stable, especially in network rendering scenarios, but also on local machines. Seeing RenderNodes mysteriously closing should not happen anymore.
Some quick notes (as the manual is not yet ready, it will hopefully follow soon):

- 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.

- 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.

See here a screenshot of the visual feedback editor with the new proxy scaling option, providing clean and crisp preview.
Many presets have been modified to work for the majority of content "out of the box". You should rarely need to modify your presets.

Screenshot%20Visual%20Feedback%20Editor%20v5.png



Things changed & added

– changed visual feedback editor size to fit on 15″ MAC Book screens
– fixed a bug that could cause double UUID in PKL when repurposing project files
– fixed a nasty crash when closing the RenderNode
– fixed a bug in audio length reporting when audio is longer than video
– changed preset for color conversion in the visual feedback editor to “REC709″ and “Full range safe”
– added proxy scale resolution setting in the visual feedback editior (you find it in the top right corner of the left source preview window)
– improved scaling quality for the right projection preview window in the visual feedback editor
– fixed a bug where the saved “Resolution” setting was not correctly restored after reloading a project file
– fixed a bug where the saved “Aspect Ratio” setting was not correctly restored after reloading a project file
– improved playback speed in the visual feedback editor
– changed behaviour of “Enter” and “Return” keys in the editor to just perform a refresh, but not jump to frame 0 anymore
– the selected preset is now visible after re-opening the visual feedback editor (formerly only the “In Black”, “In White”, “Out Black” and “Out White” values have been set, but the preset itself was then forgotten, the result was correct, but the missing preset was confusing the user)
– same as above for the “Limit to safe white point” setting in the visual feedback editor
– fixed a bug where the data rate for Stereo 3D encoding could be doubled after re-opening a saved project file
– improved refresh of the “Digital Cinema Naming Convention” fields
– fixed a bug in the network rendering that could have closed the connection between RenderNode and RenderManager or FinalDCP and RenderManager
– dramatically improved network rendering stability (please report if you encounter any hang-ups between RenderNode and RenderManager)
– more detailed logging and debug information
– basic support for MPEG4 files (no audio support)
– we remind users not to use 44.1 KHz audio files, as these are currently not supported
– added functionality for subtitle support, not yet enabled for end-users (currently in internal testing)
– improved black listed frame handling, quicker resorting them to other RenderNodes


Install it over you old installation and check it out.

Known issues:

- We have two users who have problems on MAC OS X systems (one of them with Retina display). We have not yet been able to repeat these issues on our side. If anyone encounters such a problem we would be thankful to examine the problem in detail, preferably with a remote session, to track this down and fix the problem. It seems to be very rare, as we already tested quite a bunch of systems. However we need your feedback and help to improve stability. Thanks in advance for letting us know.

- If you ever find a non-working codec, send us a sample with just a few frames. We will look into it if we can add it. The easiest way is to use QuicktimePro. Open your non-working source file, set an in and out point ranging for just a few frames. Trim to new length and save as new self-contained file. It should be small enough to send it via email, dropbox, ftp etc. This will be very helpful for us.

Thank you very much for your interest in FinalDCP,

Your FinalDCP Team
 
Thank you So Much Axel.
Cheers
 
Hi Axel,
Please release finaldcp player as soon as possible. I need it urgently.
thanks.
 
Would love to be a tester, but got no reply to my email
 
Hi All,

we are *very* close to the first beta.

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
 
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