Need DCP for short film

[Douglas Underdahl]

Hello all -

A film I directed (shot on Epic X) is in need of a DCP for a film festival.

Can anyone recommend a service for this? I'm in NJ near NYC if that makes a difference.

Thanks

http://passaicfilms.com/

 

[Dermot Shane]

download DCP-o-Matic, and do it yourself... dead easy, reliable color managment, free

 

[Douglas Underdahl]

Thanks Dermot. That looks good.

I see also that Premiere has DCP as an export option. Just wondering - what does the projectionist expect? Can I hand them a USB drive with DCP file on it for them to ingest, or do I need a special drive? Film is 17 minutes, 1080 HD.

 

[Anthony Berenato Jr]

Thanks Dermot. That looks good.

I see also that Premiere has DCP as an export option. Just wondering - what does the projectionist expect? Can I hand them a USB drive with DCP file on it for them to ingest, or do I need a special drive? Film is 17 minutes, 1080 HD.

I've delivered Premiere created DCPs to local theaters for presentation a handful of times with no issues. You'll need a few things.

- A USB thumb drive that's USB 3.0 and has some decent transfer speeds.
- Paragon ExtFS for Mac or their Linux-based system for Windows.

In Premiere, make sure you use their presets for a Flat DCP at 24 FPS. For some odd reason the DCP preset loves to try to set things to 25 FPS, so keep an eye out for that. I had read once that Flat is the typical standard (probably because it allows for more screen coverage), but both will work.

Once you export the DCP, don't touch anything inside the folder. DCPs are very easily corruptible if some bits get overwritten by opening things.

Create an Ext3 partition on your thumb drive. Most of these projectors run a Linux based file-system, and DCPs are almost always delivered in Ext3 to insure that they are copied over correctly. I'm not sure the projectors are able to read an MS-DOS based system or not.

Copy the whole .dcp folder onto the root of the thumb drive. You'll see some weird folders in there like Lost+Found, but leave these alone. If you're on a Mac, I recommend using an app like Forklift to copy these files over - as it checks the integrity of the copy while it's transferring, just to make sure there are no issues.

 

[Douglas Underdahl]

Good advice, Anthony - thanks. I might just go with dcpforall.com .

If this was an ongoing thing, I would for sure consider doing it myself, but it seems like I only need a dcp once every year or so.

 

[Dermot Shane]

i've delivered, ummmmm maybe 20 -30 festival DCP's in the last year, mostly features, all went out the door on NTFS drives, zero rejections running in hundreds of theatres around the world, TIFF, Tribecca, Berlin, VIFF and a zillion smaller festivals.... not one has a problem with a NTFS drive

the linux / EX3 thing is vastly overrated in the indie / festival world, a bit of a red herring really....