how much "production" work do you do as an exhibitor?

[Carsten Kurz]

As for DCP packaging, ZIP is kind of pointless, and also can cause (used to cause?) problems on Macs (when the Zip file was over 4GB and created on a Mac, the file format was corrupt, and could only be unzipped on a Mac...I haven't seen this in a while, so it might be fixed by now).

7-ZIP for windows is able to decompress ZIP files larger than 4GB. Although I really only recommend ZIP for trailers or shorts, unzipping a 150GB DCP is a real pain. I like ZIP for small DCPs, it keeps the file and folder structure intact and provides a minimum of file integrity checking. We get all our trailers as ZIPs.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Could a DCP be enclosed in an ISO or a DMG package before being uploaded to a cloud server?

There is certainly some overhead involved in the process but I think it would keep remote entities from messing with files and directories. Wouldn't it?

I suppose you could compress the image after creating it. You wouldn't save any space from compressing the images because they are already compressed but, since an ISO/DMG contains a complete copy of files and directories, including unused space, ZIP-ing the image file would compress that part, at least. Right?

Further, a ZIP would further block other entities from messing with things. Right?

You would have to teach your client how to create a disk image and compress it. Then, of course, somebody would have to do all that...and get it right. It would, potentially, take a lot of time.
At the receiving end, somebody would have to reverse all of that before the program could be played. Again, more time and more complexity but, the idea is to prevent other problems during the transfer.

Would it be worth it?

ISOs or TARs would probably be the better methods, provided people know how to make and handle them. ZIP tends to keep the files intact if done before the upload side, but causes a lot of processing for not much reason. It is just the one most people are familiar with. Even with these methods though some consumer services will split the file, which "should" be transparent to your unzip process, but kinda depends how the service split it.

If you had raw folders on the service, and attempt to download them as a batch, often it will attempt to zip/compress on their end, causing a host of other problems (such as leaving large files out of the zip, and outside the original folder structure), beyond just the excessive wait time, etc.

Signiant/MediaShuttle seems to handle the files well, but requires software installs and browser plugins, last time I had to do one it didn't work in chrome but did in firefox. The signiant downloads my boss grabs for me are constantly incomplete for some reason, I don't know if his computer is sleeping or suspending on him or what the story is.

But like Scott says, speaking of one-off distributions and not services like Deluxe "e-Send", all this often involves an EXTRA transfer or two, (often over slower USB speeds), eating lots of time... unless you are fully configured with a NAS to use as the target download folder and a cinema server that has that location as an ingest scan. All doable things but not everyone does them.

My issues with downloadable DCPs are that a) this doesn't scale to festival levels of data, b) there is no standardized method used for it (as noted: http/ftp, Google drive, Dropbox, etc.), and c) Internet connectivity is not 100% reliable, and no screening venue that I know of that isn't part of a larger institution (college, etc.) has redundant Internet connectivity.

I imagine lots of venues have redundant internet, but only for the POS systems. Not redundant broadband for the production/booth offices.

Downloads definitely DO scale fine for HUGE festivals (we exhibit one), but require festivals have their shit together on QC and set up delivery mechanisms that are up to the task (usually not free to the festival). The smaller startup festivals just don't know what they don't know! It's kinda up to the people that do know to steer them in a better direction each year.

Any festival worth their salt should be handling the submissions and QC on their side, and then providing whatever methods work best for the venues, be it CRU drives, FTP, SimpleDCP synchronized rsync/ftp deliveries... but ideally something that can be ingested from directly without a extra transfer step. If there are some non-DCI venues involved, they may even have to deliver files too?

And even if doing download/sync delivery, a decent festival would have them all on CRUs/USB too as backups too "just in case" of something like an internet outtage or slowdown, when the shit hits the fan they'd start running them all over town like the not so old prior methods.

If it was me doing it, and it was a single venue festival, and that venue preferred DCPs via CRU, I'd just give em the drives (which I'd have handy anyway).

[Randy Stankey]

I wasn't necessarily recommending compressing the files, alone. Compressing a DCP probably won't save you much space. Most of the files in a package are already compressed. Compressing them again won't save much space. In rare cases, it could even corrupt files. It doesn't happen very often but it has happened to me in the past.

The reason I thought about compression is because an ISO/DMG contains a lot of empty space. A disk image is a virtual copy of an entire volume, its data, directories and any empty space in between. Compressing an image file would be more for saving space that way.

Yes, I agree that the time needed to compress a disk image of 50 to 100 GB then to decompress it on the download end could take longer than it's worth. Then, yes, size limitations might come into play. I didn't think of that.

Whether it's an ISO or a DMG image file makes little difference to me. I know that they are different formats but, for all practical purposes, they are identical to me. My computer can deal with either, almost seamlessly. Same goes for ZIP, TAR and a few others. Back in the day, an app called "Stuffit" was the big thing for file compression.

[Ryan Gallagher]

News to me, but Windows 11 now supports TAR and TAR.gz, RAR, 7z, zip natively (as well as ISOs, not sure about DMGs which are a Apple equivalent). TAR was missing on windows for a long time and WinRAR was the default share-ware app of choice to cover all those non native ones for eons.

Apparently the 7-zip app or DMG-Extractor will cover DMG on windows, but are not gonna be in the normal toolkit of Windows users.

But really having to extract something is like adding a copy step. Fundamentally would be nice if they just came down as a directory structure, assuming they landed in a place that the cinema server has access to for ingests, only two steps. Download then Ingest, and ingest can also be automated to auto-ingest usually.

Because of the directory structure preservation requirement, and avoiding extra steps ideally:
(ignoring the distribution "services" that are basically bespoke custom versions of these existing technologies such as e-send and SimpleDCP)

As exhibitors that means pulling them down via ftp, sftp, rsync, or tools like signiant media shuttle that preserve structure.

As content providers that would mean only tools like media shuttle, or uploading them to a venue hosted or controlled FTP/sFTP site.

There is also the conundrum of how IT is managed at cinemas. Our small non-profit outsources most of their IT/Security and/or uses a lot of cloud platforms. On my nicest booth machine I don't even have permissions to install needed applications without roping in our company IT person. Royal pain in the heat of trying to get a show ready day of. If I download something to the desktop it is not accessible to my other counterparts (personal logins), and even worse, get's immediately synchronized to a cloud folder, which is to be avoided if dealing with 200GB DCPs. We've resorted to using Users/Public/Downloads which do not get sync'd and we both can access, but is not exactly the most secure place to put things!

[Scott Norwood]

The Deluxe box sounds pretty neat. If only something like that could be extended to allow for third-party content not delivered from Deluxe (which will never happen, of course), that would be ideal.

So, from this thread, my conclusions so far are as follows:

- DCP distribution is moving to non-physical formats and cinemas will have to deal with that now and in the future, but that the current state of this is fragmented and in need of improvement/standardization
- DCP creation is/should remain the domain of the lab and postproduction industry, and that DCP conversion of file formats (including editorial work) is not something that cinemas should normally be expected to provide for rentals, festivals, etc.

After all of this, projectionists still get screwed. This job has never required more knowledge or skill. All of the old formats and technologies are still with us (16/35/70mm film, etc.), but knowledge of all of the above is now necessary, too. I have not surveyed this, but I suspect that inflation-adjusted pay rates are worse than ever.

[Tim Reed]

I'm an FT/hourly union projectionist though, in a booth that still uses one,
Location: Austin, Texas

Ryan, is John Pryzborski still around? He was the BA there (I think) when I used to service theatres in that town. (Geez, that's been 40 years ago now!)

[Ryan Gallagher]

Ryan, is John Pryzborski still around? He was the BA there (I think) when I used to service theatres in that town. (Geez, that's been 40 years ago now!)

He was around for my first decade while I was in other departments, he is long ago retired and living the good life elsewhere (I forget where he relocated).

Other names you ma recognize that have done time as projectionists: John Maloy is still kicking around but also retired, Mary passed after a battle with stomach cancer, and John Stewart is hanging on after his strokes in hospice care.

Hope your health is well! I’ll DM you sometime for more banter about back then!

[Leo Enticknap]

So sorry to hear about John. I met him during a visit to Austin in, I would guess, '06 or '07.

[Armand Daiguillon]

The issues described are not really for most regular theaters - these are issues you run into when you host film festivals or work with indie productions.
We host several festivals at our theaters, i've found that for our "short film" presentations, half of those film makers do not even know what a dcp is - and when they look into it they find professional companies that will make a dcp out of their 20 minute film for $2000+ .... its crazy. We convert these for free as part of our fee to the festival. Any full length films we would charge a nominal $50 fee since it is time consuming. But as to the original question if theaters should be "expected" to offer these services ? As a general exhibitor ...no. But if you are going to get involved with film festivals than get used to it

[Ryan Gallagher]

Very much agree with Armand. But I think what a lot of independent cinemas are experiencing is branching out their uses of their rooms (intentionally or accidentally). Live events and presentations have their own host of content problems worthy of a separate thread.

But I expect many run into these issues with private film events, be it a private party type screening or a local filmmaker or film group hosting something.

Delivery methods and formats are likely to have all the same pitfalls as Indy festivals. It is probably also out of scope to expect these event organizers to be familiar enough with DCP to deliver that way. Premier and Resolve can certainly output DCPs for free, but there is a bit of a learning curve, as there is with DCPomatic. Converting a Blu-Ray to DCP has an even higher learning curve and technically is asking the client to do something against DCMA too. If it is beneficial to the booth to convert that is one thing, asking a party organizer to do it is another entirely.

i say just tack on a an appropriate media handling fee if you are willing to do the work at all, including downloading from clouds. Trigger a second tier if they are really asking edits or post type work to be done.

[Randy Stankey]

... i say just tack on a an appropriate media handling fee...

That's what we did at Mercyhurst. Any multimedia had to be delivered at least twenty four hours prior to the show. It had to be ready to play. If it wasn't ready to play, the customer was charged $50.00.

Any material to be played had to be on a CD, a DVD or a movie file that would be plug-and-play. If it was not, we would make it into a playable format for an extra $50.00.

[Ryan Gallagher]

That's what we did at Mercyhurst. Any multimedia had to be delivered at least twenty four hours prior to the show. It had to be ready to play. If it wasn't ready to play, the customer was charged $50.00.

Any material to be played had to be on a CD, a DVD or a movie file that would be plug-and-play. If it was not, we would make it into a playable format for an extra $50.00.

Your two tiers of fees covered distribution hiccups and format conversion. I expect if they really wanted post like changes too that would logically suggest a 3rd tier, if anyone is willing to do them.

[Randy Stankey]

You're right. Those charges were just for making the customer's existing media play. If the customer wanted any editing or content creation, we would do that for an additional fee which depended on what they wanted to do. If it was a simple "cut and paste" job, we might just let it slide. If they wanted complex editing or content creation, they paid by the hour.

We didn't advertise the fact that we could do that kind of work because, if we did, we'd be spending all our time in the computer room, making videos and PowerPoints for every Tom, Dick and Harry that walked through the door instead of putting on shows.

[Leo Enticknap]

After all of this, projectionists still get screwed. This job has never required more knowledge or skill. All of the old formats and technologies are still with us (16/35/70mm film, etc.), but knowledge of all of the above is now necessary, too.

Scott nails it. As others have described, projectionists working in arthouse, indie, mixed use venues, and festivals, are often now expected to take on media preparation tasks ranging from, at the mild end of the scale, figuring out how to ingest a DCP that arrives on an HFS+ drive or has to be downloaded, to actual "content creation" ( - to me, that phrase evokes a Daily Mail clickbait story with a photo of a 20-something blonde in a swimsuit, holding a cocktail in one hand and an iPhone at arm's length in the other, taking a selfie) at the other. The rapidly falling cost of hardware and software has made this technically possible, while at the same time both distributors and festival organizers are looking to offload more of their technical costs onto exhibitors (no longer shipping DCPs on physical media and requiring exhibitors to download being the obvious one). I saw the beginnings of this trend during my last couple of years at the American Cinematheque, and tried to make sure that it was made clear to festival and other private rental customers that if these services were asked for, it was agreed in advance what we could and couldn't offer, and what we would charge for what we did. But there were times when things were agreed to without my input, followed by arguments and pushback from management when the cost of delivering them in equipment and labor became known.

I guess the name of the game is to be clear what you can and can't offer (based on your equipment and skills base), and charge for what you can at a rate that enables the guys and gals who do the actual work to be paid for it fairly, and for you to invest in and maintain the infrastructure they need to do it with.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Now you've heard of one.

I have Internet service from both of the companies that provide that in the town where I am. So if one of them is down (rarely) or something big is getting downloaded on one of the services I can just use the other one.

It's not difficult to set up and it's not super expensive considering what's at stake when you're trying to get your shows set up.

I just have two routers set up as separate gateways and on my desktop computers I just have this script to switch between them:

....

How about load sharing between the two ISPs? It might be difficult if fetching a single file (like a zip), but it seems that a multifile fetch of a DCP could be split between the two ISPs.