One of the greatest fears when we start moving a film is having problems with the projection copies, especially with the DCP copy. It must be acknowledged that this format is becoming increasingly stable and has improved significantly. As its use has become more widespread, problems have decreased, both on the part of laboratories and projectionists.
In the early years, it was common to encounter errors, especially during ingest (the process of copying the DCP to the projector). Now it is very unlikely for these types of errors to occur, especially when we are already in the middle of the distribution process and the copy has been screened at several festivals.
If you have a DCP that has already been reviewed, it will almost certainly work well in practically all cases. Once the copy is already in the projector and has not produced an error, you will not have problems with the projection (unless the color is not right; in that case, it is not a problem with the DCP copy, but with the grading process and color conversion).
In this post, I have compiled some of the errors I have encountered over the years; some of them still occur, but with less frequency, or at least, I am clearer on what to do to solve them.
#1 The DCP projector does not read the hard drive
This is one of the most common errors you can encounter. In most cases, it occurs when the hard drive is not properly formatted.
The file system specified by the DCI standard is Linux EXT3, although DCP servers can also read the Windows NTFS format (I have come across laboratories that deliver copies on hard drives formatted in EXFAT).
To solve this error, you simply have to format the disk and make a new copy. You can review the post I published on making copies: How to easily make DCP copies.
#2 When I connect the hard drive to the projector, I see the DCP copy folder, but an error appears and I cannot ingest it
In this case, the DCP folder might be inside a subfolder. Copies are read directly from the root folder and can cause problems if they are saved in other folders.
To avoid this, you must keep the DCP copies in the root of the hard drive, without copying them into other folders.
#3 DCP problems at the programming level
There are other problems you may encounter that have the same solution: regenerating the XML programming structure. Most of these problems can be summarized in three cases:
- The folder appears but is empty.
- Ingest begins but the copy is interrupted.
- Once ingested, the copy produces an error.
These problems originate from an issue in the packaging of the DCP and in the XML files, where the copy’s programming data is located.
To understand this, one must be clear about the structure of a DCP copy:
For a DCP to function correctly, it must have all the files you see in the image. If you have subtitles, a folder should appear where the XML file with the dialogues and the font for the text are stored.
If any of these files are missing, such as the VOLINDEX or the ASSETMAP, or if other XML files are poorly configured, you will have problems with the ingest. This also happens when you try to modify some of these files manually.
To solve these problems, the best and safest approach is to repackage the DCP and generate a new structure. To perform this process, keep in mind that it is not necessary to re-compress the video and audio; it is only a matter of generating new XML files.
Therefore, it is not necessary to make a new copy from scratch; instead, the already created video and audio .MXF files are used to generate a new DCP. You can also try this using the free program OpenDCP; the process only takes a few minutes, as nothing needs to be encoded.
How the problem is identified
To know what the problem with our copy is, it is important to speak with the projectionist directly. Sometimes, when talking to festivals, the copy shipping coordinators tell us “there is a problem with the DCP copy.” But… what type of problem? It is very important to speak with the person performing the ingest to understand exactly what is happening and find the appropriate solution.
Although new problems can always arise, I hope this post has helped you, especially in having answers and being aware that the solutions are simpler than they might seem at first.
I would love to receive your comments and hear if you have encountered any of these problems.