On DCP...

Poorly understood.

Its a new theatrical vocabulary... DCPs, DCDMs, KDMs, CPLs, PKLs... its a bloody alphabet soup I tell ya.

And the client expectation that these things are just another kind of Quicktime. Seriously? Not.

So I am cogitating... what does this newly announced feature of Resolve Ten really infer? And while I understand that the full implementation is likely to change or evolve as various agreements and licensing contracts are worked out, what is the length and breadth of the Resolve user base usefulness?

At what point does a colorist per se want to get involved in the online process -- mastering, versioning, generating every release deliverable known to man? Should we really just be cranking out a TIFF DCDM and pass that along to the DCP/KDM generator (and tie up their work station for a couple of days), or commit yourself to a long-term relationship with releases and distributors? Because making that package is just step one of many, depending on the level of the release. And what are you going to be able to invoice for the favour?

If you look at the various DCP creation options currently on the market, they range from "free" shareware, OpenDCP, which sort of works, to some of the biggies, including EasyDCP, which turns out to be Blackmagic's choice to partner in this business workflow. But what is it that you will really need to "seal the deal" and have a happy producer walk out the door with their (maybe) CRU Linux disk containing a playable movie?

Fraunhofer currently offers a "Bundle" containing their Creator+ software and Easy DCP player. The price tag is about Euro 6.545,00 (in German) including VAT. (But it does also include the KDM Generator, so you can author encrypted DCPs, which, if you are serious about this, you are going to want to do.) You are also going to be tied to this thing for the rest of your possibly unnatural life, receiving certificates, creating keys and continuously updating them for every. bloody. time. the movie is going to be shown. in. every. theatre. it. goes. to. Sorry to go all "Shatner", maybe its a Canadian thing.

Do you really have to encrypt your package? No, not really, but commercial distributors probably won't want to touch your property, and for sure, every projectionist on the planet is going to freak out if the drive doesn't arrive with a KDM. That's just experience.

And how much can you charge your client? You and I know that the going rate for a feature, somewhere between $4500 and $6000 is a bargain, compared to what a composite distribution film print used to (and still) costs... if you can find a facility that still produces them... but if you mention $4-6K to an indie producer (who probably whittled you down to a couple thou for the grade) they will quite literally look at you like you have just gone completely insane. They will be all over you if you offer to make the price somewhere equivalent to an HDCamSR master, with the proviso that it will be plain vanilla, no encryption, it-is-what-it-is.

The bottom line then for me, the part where you figure out whether things like eating or having a warm place to lie down at the end of the day, is important -- sure, the Fraunhofer stand-alone software is not wildly out of line with (for example) MacCaption HD Enterprise, but... so my talking point is - what is it that the average Resolve user wants or expects to be able to do with this extra appendage -- is it worthwhile, and how will the -probably- tiered license work? Do you want the whole hog, or....you know the expression, 'in for a penny...?'

Put another way... $US 8,076.28 to accessorize your $995 Resolve license? Or free Lite version?

Next up... GenArts Sapphire plugins.

jPo

It's just a mater of time.

I remember many years ago, when we made the first DVDs - was almost like a black art and our customers paid something like 100 bucks a minute just for the encoding. Digitizing and authoring came on top of that.

Today every Joe Shmock and his kid brother are able to encode MPEG2 in realtime on a laptop. Authoring is a breeze with a gazzilion free programs.

Same will happen to DCP. Fraunhofer is already laughable expensive for what they deliver, most free packages are 90% there (if not more). Even if you need encryption, there are some pretty cheap packages.

The crucial part is IMHO the quality JPEG2000 encoding and colorspace transformation. Once you have your JPEG2000 the rest is not much more than a text file in a few containers.

From what I understand, with Resolve 10 you can do the Jepeg2000 part, even without a Fraunhofer license.

I plan to take the Jepeg2000s and use any of the free/shareware packages to go from there.
For most of my jobs (commercials, short films) encryption isn't necessarily.

Actually it is a joke anyway, since about every movie got ripped from the original DCP - encryption or not. It's about as useful as the encrypted DVD/BluRays - never stopped even a school boy from ripping it. But yeah, clients will expect it.

I guess within a year we gonna have several free/shareware programs that can do that to.
If you need it now, there is a version of DCPBuilder that does encryption for a few bucks.

... well...

Yes you can do it yourself, but still you might not be able to make the 1000s copies needed for distribution.

I will leave that for the distribution company. Stop at the DCDMs (XYZ tiffs 16 bits ) or the original colorspace/original master size. Less headaches.

If you think in a different way, assuming that your movie get distributed, there are already deals in place where the distributor want to do his own master with the new logos, might be also with a lengthened picture and whatnot and start from the DCP is a royal PITA...