Using DCP-O-Matic we make quite a lot of local material at our cinema including advertising, trailers, DVD/Blu-ray conversion, and conversion of video files submitted by film Makers.
I am using 4TB Ext2 and Ext3 drives in DX115DC carriers to back up files off a Dolby DSS220.
Files on these drives can be played directly from the server including encrypted DCPs.
DCP creation is being done on Windows and transferred to the server via smaller NTFS drives using USB 2.0, up to 2TB.
The DSS220 also has an eSata port so I have purchased a NexStar USB 3.0/eSata 3.5" drive case hoping to use USB 3.0 on the PC and eSata on the Server for faster transfer than USB 2.0.
A 4 TB NTFS GPT drive had problems connecting in this case as did a 4TB Ext 2 formatted drive. Also had problems with the NTFS in a DX115DC case. Is there a problem with the NTFS drive size and the GPT format? Should it be less than 2 TB and MBR? This drive case has the potential to improve our productivity handling our locally generated material. I did at one stage have a DCP playing directly from the NexStar, avoiding having to ingest for previewing. But eventually the server doesn't unmount the drive and requires a restart.
Copying off the server. I recently tried copying an in house made trailer off the server onto a NFTS USB memeory, after finding some of our files copied off the server would not play on our PC. I found only the _cpl xml and the two audio and video mxf files were copied. The Volindex, Assetmap and pkl xml files were not copied. So the trailer could not be played on Windows using dcpPlayer. However copying these files from the original DCP to the DCP folder on the USB memeory rendered the DCP playable again. This surprised me as the server copies then varifies the copy. Not sure what is gong on here. Is it something to do with NTFS memory format?
Drive Format, Size and Copying from Server
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Carsten
- Posts: 2807
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 9:11 pm
- Location: Germany
Re: Drive Format, Size and Copying from Server
I am not sure if I understood all your issues - but exports from Dolby servers always leave out Volindex, Assetmap and pkl. They are still accessible on the Dolbys file system, under 'generated packages', but only through the terminal or FTP. Better to save/backup DCPs beforehand off the distribution drives.
The reason for this behavior on the Dolby servers is that they do not need these files for ingest themselves - you can import such a stripped-down DCP without a problem into any Dolby server. And Dolby would never think people would actually use any other server than Dolbys. Call this sloppy.
Yes, some servers support larger drives than 2TB, but GUID/GPT is not advisable, as those drives usually contain a safety dummy MBR, which will lead other servers to think the drive is empty. If your specific server supports >2TB , NTFS, GUID, etc., that's fine, but you will get into trouble when trying this with other servers.
Some USB-bridges in USB-SATA cases also will not support drives larger 2TB, or with 4k sector sizes. In USB/SATA combo drive cases, that could mean transfer over SATA works, but not over USB.
Keep the 4TB GPT drives local to the PC and transfer everything through SATA/E-SATA to max 2TB MBR drives to DCI servers. NTFS is fine now towards most servers, but the official line is still ext2/3.
Here is the current ISDCF/DCI/SMPTE drive format recommendation: http://isdcf.com/papers/ISDCF-Doc3-Disk ... sShown.pdf
- Carsten
The reason for this behavior on the Dolby servers is that they do not need these files for ingest themselves - you can import such a stripped-down DCP without a problem into any Dolby server. And Dolby would never think people would actually use any other server than Dolbys. Call this sloppy.
Yes, some servers support larger drives than 2TB, but GUID/GPT is not advisable, as those drives usually contain a safety dummy MBR, which will lead other servers to think the drive is empty. If your specific server supports >2TB , NTFS, GUID, etc., that's fine, but you will get into trouble when trying this with other servers.
Some USB-bridges in USB-SATA cases also will not support drives larger 2TB, or with 4k sector sizes. In USB/SATA combo drive cases, that could mean transfer over SATA works, but not over USB.
Keep the 4TB GPT drives local to the PC and transfer everything through SATA/E-SATA to max 2TB MBR drives to DCI servers. NTFS is fine now towards most servers, but the official line is still ext2/3.
Here is the current ISDCF/DCI/SMPTE drive format recommendation: http://isdcf.com/papers/ISDCF-Doc3-Disk ... sShown.pdf
- Carsten