Making a DCP, post 3

Victory! The smallest taste, but a good one.

After last week's close-but-no-cigar attempt, I realized I missed a critical last step in my DCP-making script. I had somehow spaced on creating the ASSETMAP and VOLINDEX XML files. Once I caught this, I rolled out a new DCP and brought it to the theater today. Plugged it in, and was pleased that the ingest feature recognized my disk. Instead of the properly-formatted DCP name, however, I saw a UUID in the ingest window. So there are still some kinks to work out.

Aside for the geeky: the UUID that appeared in the ingest window was the UUID of the packing list. I think there's an XML annotation tag or something similar I could have used in that pkl that would have made a better name appear in the ingest window.

Once we ingested the DCP, the next problem was that the CineLister elements window which lists all the DCPs didn't show ours. A reboot made it appear (my theory was that relaunching the program would re-scan the assets folder -- never got to test that theory but the reboot worked).

Aside: the list was sorted by the ContentKind tag, as in, feature, trailer, test, and so on. This is set in the Composition Playlist (CPL) file like so: test.

At this point my pulse quickened. Dave helped build a new playlist with the proper magic incantations to first show black then configure the projector to 2K flat, and we ran it. Though there were scaling issues (he said the projector was at 1k instead of 2k and that it was an easy fix), there was Leed, big as hell, climbing up the side of the tower from u2_01. That's the same shot that opens the online teaser. Heck, I'll embed it again. Too many posts without color recently.



A word on color: the color looked beautiful. I need a longer exposure to it before I say for sure, but thanks to Pavel and Wolfgang for the color transformation matrix they shared on the RedUser forum about DCPs. So far, it's worked great.

So this week I'm going to try and roll out a complete DCP, with 5.1 audio. I'll see if I can work out the kinks in the naming issues, but with luck I'll have more to report next week from the theater!