CSX Cinesend REALLLLLY SLOW

[Brad Sime]

Anyone else find the Cinesend CSX to be really slow? We are a single screen auditorium that can't really program too far in advance, and the amount of time it takes to ingest a film using the CSX is kind of crippling everything else we need to get done in preparation for other shows.
I've never been the type to leave the projector on over night (Christie 2210), but is that something I could think about doing to make things a little more efficient?

[Frank Cox]

Are you talking about getting the movie from Cinesend/Deluxe, or copying the dcp from the CSX to the cinema server?

If the former, then it depends entirely on your incoming Internet connection. I have a 50mbps service here right now and it usually takes between two and three days to download a feature, i.e. if they start sending it to me on Friday it's usually done sometime on Sunday; if they start sending it to me on Monday I usually have it sometime on Wednesday.

Note that the downloading process pretty much eats your entire Internet connection. I have a "secondary" 10mbps service here that I switch my computers over to when a Cinesend download is in progress, otherwise just trying to read a webpage on CBC or CNN becomes a painfully slow process. There is (or was) a setting you could access through the Cinesend Venue webpage to limit the bandwidth that a Cinesend download would take up but that seems self-defeating to me so I never did that. I prefer to have them just let 'er rip so I can get the movie in the door as soon as possible.

The process of copying a feature from the CSX to the cinema server takes about the same time as doing the same thing from a hard drive. I just start it and come back in a half-hour or forty-five minutes and it's usually either done or close to it.

[Mike Blakesley]

Interesting about the download speed. When I was talking to Deluxe about their eCinema setup, they told me the average download time for a typical movie would be about 6 hours, but that's with a 100mb internet connection which is required. Since the movie supposedly downloads as soon as your booking is in the system, we'd usually have a couple of days to spare, at least.

[Frank Cox]

I suppose that depends on what you define as a "feature". When you get stuff on Cinesend (and I assume this Deluxe ecinema thing since they're apparently either the same thing or going to be the same thing) you get everything that you would otherwise get on a hard drive that they ship to you.

So you'll get two or three trailers, a framing chart or two, a 2d version, a 3d version, Atmos, 5.1, 7.1, ocap.... and a partridge in a pear tree with each feature that you download.

When you get anything you get everything.

[Carsten Kurz]

We received around 1.3 terabytes with the latest Bond movie. They wanted to deliver a separate full 3D OV+VF package to us, while we do not even have a 3D system.