DCP verification player

[Carsten]

Playing the audio in DOM has nothing to do with CPU performance. Carl commented on some issues that kept him from supporting audio so far. But he said he is considering audio playout for future versions.


There are some hints towards using FFMPEG to play DCPs, but, in general, I'm okay with the Doremi Cineplayer eval for a quick check. No subtitles, though, no 4k. But VFs.

- Carsten

[Cantar4]

[quote="Carsten"] he is considering audio playout for future versions.

so.., I will patiently wait for this version

[EDDEE]

For quick tests I use Stereoscopic Player Not a true DCP player but fine for go-no-go testing.

http://www.3dtv.at/Products/Player/Index_en.aspx

[Cantar4]

Playing the audio in DOM has nothing to do with CPU performance. Carl commented on some issues that kept him from supporting audio so far. But he said he is considering audio playout for future versions - Carsten

Hello Carl,
Would you give DoM users the possibility to buy -for themselves-
a fast codec of your choice to accelerate j2k operations to the point
a DCP can be made in hours not days ; and playback it real time with
or without audio ?

[Anders M Olsson]

Cantar4, have you considered using multiple computers for the encoding process?

If you're a collective, ask your members to bring their own computers, and you can set up an encoding LAN party. Everybody will connect to the network, start up their DCP-o-matic encode servers, and away you go. Your project will be ready in no time. It should work with any mixture of Windows, Linuxes or Macs.

Or failing that, you can purchase or borrow some second hand computers. With the right contacts you might even persuade someone to give them to you for free. They don't have to be macs, and they don't even need displays, keyboards, mice, operating systems or hard discs. Simply boot with the Server Live Image on CDs or USB-sticks. (The Server Live Images are out of order right now, but I'm sure Carl will fix that very very soon.)

Only yesterday, I set up three computers in a LAN, and encoded approximately 10 frames per second. A complete feature film was ready in 4-5 hours. So we're talking hours here, not days.

Two years ago, I borrowed seven computers, and managed to encode faster than real time, 24-26 frames per second.

[Cantar4]

Hi Anders, this is not possible on a film set. I will describe you the actual situation later,
e.g. 50 very busy people working in a remote farmland of the South-West of France.
The idea is to project the 'circled takes' (selected rushes) in the cinema theater of the
nearby village.

[Cantar4]

Hi Anders, this is not possible on a film set. e.g. 50 very busy people working in a remote
farmland of the South-West of France. The idea is to project the 'circled takes' (selected rushes)
in the cinema theater of a nearby village.

For the time being the datawrangler (DoP's third assistant) is testing the use of a daVinci Resolve12 Studio
w/ easyDCP running at 16fps on the Radeon R9M370X GPU of a 15" MacBook Pro laptop.

[Edit]: this fast enough solution is OK in terms of workflow but it's not yet put to practice since
the absence of KDM protection makes it unsuitable for the line producer.
DoM would be the ideal solution here, but its 3fps slow pace unfortunately shokes the dream.

[carl]

Would you give DoM users the possibility to buy -for themselves-
a fast codec of your choice to accelerate j2k operations to the point
a DCP can be made in hours not days ; and playback it real time with
or without audio ?

Possibly... does anyone know how much Kakadu actually charges for theirs? Last time I looked the pricing was rather opaque.

in this situation I would probably suggest just using a EasyDCP (or whichever is the fastest commercial program, I'm not sure). Or, as people have suggested, using a network render where you can get better-than-realtime if you throw enough machines at it.

Or if you really want to use DCP-o-matic you could render the video MXF using something quicker and then import it, which should speed things up.

One day in the glorious future perhaps DCP-o-matic will use GPU-accelerated rendering, but it's hard..., and there are only so many hours in the day

[Cantar4]

1
Probably Kakadu S75* is the fastest j2K soft codec around
(their demo w/Windows7 on an iMac is quite weird isn't?)
but if this software is as intrusive as their subscription site, and as intricated
and wordy as their pricing policy**, no way !
It appears not to be a plugin for the DoM mastered OSs but and expensive CLI***
for Ubuntu geeks, certainly not for film students and independant filmmakers !
neither for cinématheques' and festivals' volunteers who receive weird video files
and DCPs w/unreadable subtitles.
Furthermore, by promoting their latest soft codec (a GPU centric iPhone app),
they themselves aknowledge that CPU codecs are on the way out. Why spend half a week
introducing their S75 cash cow to polute the fresh air of the DoM open stable?

2
Easy DCP is not as user friendly as advertised, not always updated to the latest standards,
and much too expensive for DoM afficionados.

2'
as said to Anders Olsson, sharing many computers is OK for the calm atmosphere of a university,
but not for the hectic conditions of a film crew on location, nor for a projection booth.

3
That's why two weeks ago I asked the HandBrake developers to convert unencrypted DCPs to MP4.
It would allow festival projectionnists to x8 play the films received from deep China
while verifying the subs translation from chinese-english to John Florio's english.
They are waiting for the XYZ to RGB (YUV) converter of Libav12, see HandBrake forum :
https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=34990

4-- Yes, GPU harnessing is the only solution,
your fans could help you get some paid assistance like they did for the MacOS implementation,
we should asap talk about the glorious future of DCP-o-Matic.


*Copy-of-KDU-S75-Performance.pdf
**Kakadu-Licence-Terms.pdf
***Usage Examples

[Anders M Olsson]

HandBrake is indeed a very nice program which I use a lot. It won't convert from DCP, though.

Why don't you simply use ffmpeg to convert your DCPs to mp4's ? I do that all the time.

Some hints here:
https://olitee.com/2014/02/ffmpeg-conve ... quicktime/

One small error in some of the examples, though: I think you should replace "-profile slow" with "-preset slow".
(Or you could use "-preset ultrafast" if you're in a hurry. That will speed things up a bit, but perhaps not as much as you might think or desire.)