D-Cinema FAQs A few of the most common D-Cinema questions we are asked at SDM

What is a DCP? A DCP is a Digital Cinema Package. It is the format required by digital cinemas all over the world. It is designed to be a digital equivalent of a film print. A DCP contains the film picture as JPEG2000 wrapped into MXF (Media Exchange Format) along with audio, HOH tracks, XML subtitles and more. A DCP, when it reaches the cinema, is ingested into a Digital Cinema Server. Once verified, it is played back from the server to a Digital Projector. The DCP usually reaches the cinema on a CRU DX115 hard drive. These are specialist hard drives designed for digital cinema equipment and they can be purchased or hired from facilities such as ours. Short films, adverts and trailers can be sent digitally over broadband. For large distributions features can be sent via satellite. What is Encryption? A digital cinema package can be encrypted. This is an anti-piracy measure and it means the DCP can only be played back with the use of a KDM (Key Delivery Message). This is a small XML file we send to the cinema via email. It is ingested onto the Digital Cinema Server along with the DCP. The KDM will only work on the server it has been made for. It contains the time and date when the DCP can be played back and, if required, an expiry date. How do you verify your DCPs work on any digital cinema server? All our DCPs are tested on industry standard Dolby servers and carefully checked for data integrity. When master drives are copied, each clone is verified sector for sector on an industrial hard drive duplicator. Our process has proven reliable for many years and we are trusted by some of the world's biggest film distributors. What equipment do you use to generate DCPs? We use DVS Clipster, which is the choice of major film studios all over the world. Clipster is second to none in terms of encoding quality, speed and features. How long does the process take? We always ask you to allow 48 hours for DCP creation. But if your deadline is tighter, we can sometimes accommodate depending on how busy we are. We also offer an overnight service. Speed also depends a lot on what format you wish to submit. The quickest formats include QuickTime ProRes and HDCAM SR. What if I have subtitles in more than one language?

That's easy. We have the unique ability to make suplemental DCPs with different languages without re-encoding the entire film. Get in touch with us for costs and further explanation. Can I supply the final DCP hard drive? We have a strict policy of only supplying DCPs on industry approved CRU DX115 hard drives or our own tested USB flash drives. These are designed specifically for digital cinema use. If you can supply one of these units, yes. If not, you can either hire or purchase drives from us. We format all our drives as Linux EXT2 as described in the DCI standard. Will you keep a copy of my DCP? Yes. Active masters are kept in our library so they can be copied very quickly. Non-active masters are kept on our archive server for three years. After this period we will contact you to offer you an extended storage period. We will always securely delete your data at your request. I'm confused by colour space. What is it? That's a big question. Here is the long answer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_space A very short answer might be this. Colour space describes the paint palette used to produce a digital image. So different colour spaces represent different palettes. Are you part of Soho Screening Rooms? SDM is part owned by Soho Screening Rooms. We work on the same premises and we do all our QC checks in their cinemas. Can I see a demo of your work? Yes. If you are in London, pop into Soho Screening Rooms any time and we'll do our best to accommodate. If you are abroad and you have access to a D-Cinema projector, we'd be happy to send you an example DCP. Will you encode my film for free? Im afraid not. But we do great discounts for film students and charities. Will you sponsor our film festival? Maybe. Get in touch with us. We have a lot of ways we can help film festivals. I'm confused by all the terms. What do they mean? Here is a quick Digital Cinema Mastering glossary Digital Cinema The process of converting a film into a Digital Cinema Package. Mastering Digital Cinema Package. A DCP can be thought of as just another film format like DVD or Blu-ray. It is the format used by digital cinemas all over the world. A DCP consists of a bundle of files containing the various elements that make up a film picture, sound, subtitles and metadata. This bundle is fed into a digital cinema server from a hard drive so that the film can be projected. Digital Cinema Distribution Master. This is what is fed into our system and converted into a DCP. The DCDM is a master version of the film that has been prepared for digital cinema encoding. It conforms to the correct aspect ratio, colour space and sound format to be converted. Soho Digital Media generates its own

DCP

DCDM

DCDMs so you don't have to. Colour Space The available colours used to create a digital image. Read more about colour space here The colour space preferred by the film industry because it mimics the natural light response of film emulsions. Also, log images are optimized for the perceptual range of the human eye. This means they make more efficient use of the available data that makes up an image. The colour space used for Digital Cinema because it is more future proof than other colour spaces and integrates efficiently with the gamut used by Xenon digital projectors. Here is a fantastic film that explains more about XYZ colour... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0-qoXOCOow A commonly used video colour space. EXT2 or EXT3 is the Linux formatting used to create DCI-compliant hard drives. The "brains" of a digital cinema projection system. The server passes the decoded image data onto the projector. Look up table. A file that describes to a computer how to convert the colours in an image. A LUT is useful in digital cinema mastering to convert between colour spaces such as LOG to XYZ. A type of LUT used by DI facilities to show how a film will look when it is projected. We like to use 3D LUTS so that we can ensure that the film is displayed from the DCP exactly as it was in the grade. The digital cinema initiatives. A rulebook for everybody working in the D-Cinema industry. You can see it here http://www.dcimovies.com/ Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers who also set standards followed throughout the D-Cinema industry. http://www.smpte.org/home/ Describes the shape of the projected picture. D-Cinema normally accommodates for 1.85:1 (known as "Flat") and 2.35:1 (known as scope). Confusingly, 2.35:1 is actually 2.39:1. But it has somehow become traditional to refer to it as 2.35. So, in a 1.85 picture, the width of the image is 1.85 times greater than its height. And in a 2.39 picture (or 2.35 depending on what you want to call it!) the width of the image is 2.39 times greater than the height. Scope gives a much wider "epic" feel. The frame rate required for digital cinema. 24 "Progressive" frames per second. This means that, unlike television, a D-cinema frame should not contain any fields. Fields are two images that make up a single frame of a television picture. Ideally, a cinema film should never be shot using fields. But there are ways a television picture can be "de-interlaced" to use for cinema projection. This is a service we can provide. An uncompressed image file format similar to Cineon (see below) Cineon. An uncompressed image format Invented by Kodak to be used as a digital equivalent to a frame of film. Another uncompressed format. There are many others, TGA, PIC, SGI, EXR and many more. They all do roughly the same thing and we can use any of them. A Gigabyte. 1000 Megabytes. A film in DPX form usually takes up around a

LOG

XYZ

REC709 EXT2/3 Server

LUT

3D LUT

DCI SMPTE

Aspect Ratio

24P

DPX CIN TIFF Gig

Terabyte (1000 Gigs). A feature length DCP usually takes up around 70 Gigs. KDM Key Delivery Message. A message we send to cinemas that contains a code used by the projectionist to "unlock" an encrypted film.

A security measure used to stop digital films being stolen. We are able to encrypt Encryption DCPs so only certain cinemas can play them at certain times. The film is unlocked with a KDM (Key Delivery Message). Digital intermediate. A term that refers to the a celluloid film when it is in the stage between being scanned and printed. The DI stage is when all the grading and digital effects are applied. Grading facilities are referred to as DI facilities. Confusingly, with digital workflows that originate and end in a digital form, we still use the term DI, even though the film is digital throughout every step of the process.

DI

A codec used by Digital Cinema to compress the film images. Jpeg 2000 is a little more advanced than standard JPEG because its compression artifacts are softer JPEG2000 and less blocky. Jpeg stands for the Joint Photographic Experts Group http://www.jpeg.org/ 2K An image that is 2000 pixels wide. Although it isn't ever exactly 2000 pixels. A Scope image is actually 2048 pixels wide. A Flat image is 1998 pixels wide. Same as 2K, just double all the numbers. 4K is a super high res form of Digital Cinema. Not all cinemas accommodate it yet. 2K remains the most common form for now. Although 4K is likely to become more popular in the future. Most servers can downscale 4K DCPs to 2K. A system used to compress and decode (CO-DEC) digital images. Popular Codecs include MPEG2 , H264 and, in the case of digital cinema, we use JPEG2000. 2.35:1 aspect ratio. It gives films a wider more epic look. 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Used more for trailers, adverts and lower budget films.

4K

Codec Scope Flat