DCP Image Converter
Its been sometime coming, since I have been experimenting and planning this for sometime now, but its finally nicely on its way. The whole concept was born from the desire to create my own DCP Packages for testing of stereo footage at our local Digital Cinema. It is effectively a Gui based front end to quite a few command line tools available online for the creation of DCP files.
This first phase automates the entire process of converting an image sequence to the cinema jpeg 2000 format. It can handle 2K stereoscopic and 2K monoscopic flat formats (not scope yet) and exports the image sequence ready for DCP Packaging. Currently the conversion from sRGB .tif takes roughly 1min 30secs for 24 stereo frames (effectively 1sec of film). When stereoscopic is enabled it converts each image stream independently considerably speeding up the conversion time. Originally these conversions took nearly 6mins per 24frames when run as a single process.
As it stands the converter takes care of a few XYZ colour space conversions, outputting a 12bit XYZ Image following the Cinema 2K specifications. I am quite interested in colour space so hope to expand this area in the future.
Roadmap
The roadmap for the next phase includes, Implementation of 4K Cinema standards under monoscopic conversion, MXF Wrapping for both Video & Audio, and the creation of the DCP Package xml files. Ultimately I hope it to be a full DCP conversion and packaging tool!
I am interested to know what other options may be needed, what colour space’s do most people work in, would the loading of a custom LUT be of value, should I investigate input formats such as DPX and EXR?
~C 
Related Posts:
Stereoscopy, Update
Hi Chris. Good work. I was searching for a DCP creator software. Found Doremi CineAsset, expensive. Found another one in development, from Digitall, good price but not available.
I was wondering if you have a HD 1080 version working. I have a CGi stereo short movie that would like to test in the theatre of my village. Doesn’t matter if soft works with a watermark, but more than 15 seconds would be great for projection! (CineAsset is limited to 15″ with watermark). I´m working with 16bits Tiffs sequences. Hope your answer! Best regards! RUBEN
Hi Ruben,
If you get in touch with me via the ‘Contact Me’ page I am sure I can give you some pointers to making DCP files. My app is still going thru a few development tweaks such as:
- Inputting DPX files
- Adapting for Scope (wide screen)
- and the final MXF Wrapping / Packaging
Chris
For those interested… Terrence Meiczinger of OpenDCP has been developing a similar system that is available at http://code.google.com/p/opendcp
Its a free open source DCP tool, that is GUI or command line based for Linux, Windows, or OSX. It does the XYZ color conversion, MXF wrapping, etc. It can also encode 24 frames in about 30 seconds on a decent system.
Chris
My film shot by DVCAM camera and edited with Avid Composer 5.
Is it possible to covert into DCP?
Looking to hear from you soon.
Hi,
its totally possible… DCP conversion however is a frame based so you will need to export, or convert your outputted video into an image sequence (tif being a good option), and a separated audio file for each Left & Right Channel (wav being the best choice here)
from there it comes down to the XYZ colour conversion, the Jpeg2000 compression, and MXF wrapping of those exported frames… finally everything being packaged with all the required XML files.
Chris