GETTING TO GRIPS WITH MAKING A DIGITAL CINEMA PACKAGE (DCP) FOR FREE

I have shot 5 short films to date and this tutorial was made nearly ten years ago. Still has lots of useful and relevant info for filmmakers today.
At the time of making this, I had three short films in post-production. I'm hiring a 98-year-old picture house in Leeds for the event. The great thing is they have a 2K cinema projector working from a Dolby DCP Server.
So, how do you turn a short film into a Digital Cinema Package? This video blog goes into great detail and takes you through the whole process. The software I'm using is OpenDCP.
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Hi, I'm Danny Lacey and I started making short films back in 2009 when I picked up a camera for the first time.
What you are watching on my KZbin channel is my Film School. I made a pledge to share everything I was learning as a filmmaker; including scriptwriting, producing directing, editing and so much more.
I'm not going to lie - I want to be a successful film director and I'm as ambitious now as I've ever been. I'm working my way towards that first feature film project and I'll be sharing that journey right here.
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It would mean the world to me if you SUBSCRIBED and hit the NOTIFICATION BELL, I'll do my best to keep the content interesting and relevant! Thank you.

[@FelipeToledoCine]

The best video tutorial about DCP !!

[@DannyLacey]

+Felipe Toledo Thanks Felipe!! Seems like decades ago I recorded this. Glad you found it useful. Danny

[@FelipeToledoCine]

Saved my life mate!

[@Studio-qs6xc]

Danny, Amazing tutorial! You should be very proud. This has helped us so much with our production. I still revert back to it when I'm a bit lost. Please never take it down. Cheers!

[@BillStreeter]

Thanks so much for the breakdown. After watching this I realized that you can probably do all the file prep for this (TIF and Audio) in one step from FCPX. I'll work that out and post a video of the workflow. Thanks so much for laying it out.

[@EstudioInnovacionKansasCity]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, you are a hero to all the little filmmakers out there. When you saw your film start playing on the big screen I could feel all the excitement you must of felt. So happy for you!

[@rusign]

Hi Danny, Thanks, thanks and thanks again! Our daughter has made ​​a film for a festival. This had to be delivered as dcp. A company would make this for her, but there were some problems. When I said I could do it myself, I laughed at.. But this morning I tested two movies in a local movie theater, and guess what? At once succeeded! Thanks to your description! Thanks made, you made my day.. Regards, Rudy from the Netherlands

[@Axel569]

Danny I forgot to tell you thank you. Few months ago you saved my life by your tutorial. I just found link to your video in my old PC just to say THANKS BRO !!

[@ZarconVideo]

I just used this tutorial to create a DCP for my local Regal Cinema and everything worked fantastic! This is a great tutorial. On a side note, I can confirm that I used the NTFS format for the Hard Drive and it worked fine on the Linux server. The hard drive I used was also USB 3.0

[@seaesarce]

Even though you are using Premier/After Effects, this is the best tutorial about DCP I've seen. I am using Win10 PC with Sony Vegas 14.0 and editing 16:9 4K and 1080p. I will be doing a red carpet screening party showcasing the three shorts films. The films are completed so I cannot go back and re-do the ratios but moving forward, I will definitely try wider slimmer ratios. This tutorial gave me great insight on what I can do with what I have. At first, it was going to be a BluRay viewing, but I am happy that my 4K footage will be seen nicely in the theater since we shot the movie in 4K. Thank you again for this. It is helping a lot.

[@DannyLacey]

So pleased you found this video useful and congrats on your red carpet event. All the best!

[@timefilm]

Dude- this is possibly the greatest info video I have ever seen.

[@bertz2]

great it`s working perfectly. Thanks! Very good intuitive and useful video.

[@IanLaFleur1]

Great description! Thanks very much for your help!!!

[@AKompaniets]

Thank you a lot! It was very usefu for mel! People from UK always make brilliant tutorials!

[@WritersTerritory]

Hi Danny, thanks for the extensive explanation on how to create a DCP package. I had to go through it for the first time and your video really helped me a lot!

[@ivankjt]

Awesome video, learnt a lot and it was really fun to see the ending where you're at the cinema. Thanks for the vid, and all the best in your future films.

[@fabioaugustop]

Thanks man, I got lost in the Linux formatting but at least I got the whole folder with the six files (wich looked like the most difficult to me), it must be awesome to see your work projected at the cinema!, greetings from Colombia.

[@TrevorHughes]

Great Video and well explained. I have also learnt that you can update the files if you like me wanted to do some tweaking. after you have finished. :) just make sure that the file is the same name and same length. copy it in and away you go. next great thing is to be able to test at home. great video Danny.

[@Do.Hard.Things]

Danny, You are so fantastic! Thanks for the in depth tutorial! Love your work, my friend!

[@in.miscare]

Thank you very much, Danny ! Great step by step tutorial ! Best of luck :) Cheers

[@octaviolosil88]

What an amazing tool, and a very useful video. Thanks mate!! Now we can project on a big screen

[@FrameCrafts]

Thank you very much Danny Lacey for this wonderful tutorial.

[@abhishekmukherjee9187]

This is one great video, very informative. Keep doing what you are doing!

[@soundhound8473]

Thanks Very Much... wish your video million shares...

[@richardmichalak]

That is a really helpful, very clearly explained tutorial. Thanks so much.

[@vividdreaming1]

Great video, and it worked at the Vue cinema for me too. Thanks. A friendly projectionist is useful too!

[@Session2]

Fantastic tutorial Danny. Keep up the good work! Thanks

[@idrisodunsi1915]

Thank you DL that was really helpfull you should come down Peckhamplex for testing next time.

[@ednut33]

Thanks for the video! very nicely explained and done!

[@pictureinpicturez]

Grerat info there Danny, Thanks !

[@yoakhoge]

I just finished my first DCP! The film is 1h22min, 123.395 frames. As you can see from my previous posts this took some time. 5 days in total, rendering non-stop. I started on my 2009 MBP and finished the last 2 days on my Mac Pro 2.8 octo from 2008. I just want to post this info here so people dont start this process a day or two before their screening ;-) thanks again for the excellent walk through. Only problem I don´t have a way of testing it before I send it over to the UK for a screening

[@mjcreations777]

Loved it man, Thanks a Trillion...

[@yeayeawhatevasureokayy]

Amazing. Thank you Danny, extremely helpful.

[@robymeola9034]

one thing to point out is; with long movies, opendcp will appear to freeze when you press "create dcp". in most cases it's NOT frozen. A 2 hours movie "appeared frozen" for over 1 hour (on a 12core xeon Mac), then the "choose destination" window appeared, i pressed ok and in one second the "DCP CREATED SUCCESSFULLY" appeared. So, fear not. 99% of the times is not frozen, unlike you might have read in a few forums. Also there are a few choices to review your final dcp on a mac or pc at the moment, some are cheap and/or for rental, like Quvis, easydcp player and so on. just google it :-)

[@pmacaleavey]

Thanks for sharing bro, very educational

[@rodrigovicens7577]

THAT WAS A LIFE SAVER!!! THANK YOU A LOOOOOOT!

[@simonfjordheim4952]

@12:44 you have a aspect ratio of 1:2 (with 2048x1024). Not 1:1.85. As a digital cinema technician I feel I must correct you good sir :) Here are the three standards: FLAT | Aspect ratio: 1:1.85 | 2K-resolution: 1998x1080 | 4K-resolution: 3996x2160 SCOPE | Aspect ratio: 1:2.39 | 2K-resolution: 2048x858 | 4K-resolution: 4096x1716 FULL | Aspect ratio: 1:1.89 | 2K-resolution: 2048x1080 | 4K-resolution: 4096x2060 The last one is not used very often besides in edit. So in your tutorial for the sake of people making FLAT-films as well one should use the FULL-container.

[@yerrenv.st.annaland2725]

+Simon Fjordheim This actually was a tremendous help to me. Thank you!

[@simonfjordheim4952]

+Yerren v. St. Annaland Glad to help! Let me know if you're wondering about anything else.

[@yerrenv.st.annaland2725]

+Simon Fjordheim I sure will do :)

[@ElectricLabel]

Yes, that is very helpful, thanks.

[@MikasZukauskas]

thanks man. helped a lot

[@IronMan-ev1cw]

Thanks for uploading!!! Very useful

[@cratedigger89]

WOW. This is great! So helpful! You have no idea!

[@edry]

thanks for sharing danny!!

[@DiceProductions]

Thanks Danny! This was a huge help.

[@allenalesna]

I colleague of mine tells me that even a thumb drive could work flawlessly. Applies to short films and ads probably. Though a DCP is not really huge.

[@becerrazx]

Dude, thank you so much, your video help me a lot, really, you save my live. Thank you dude thank you so much.

[@aberavje]

this help me a lot, thx men. Saludos desde Tijuana.

[@brunogbrito]

Mannn, thank you soo much for this information, tomorrow morning I will test it in a sony 4k, and I'll post here the results, I will try linux and NTFS HD formats as well.

[@rodelvaliente]

awesome. thank you very much! more power!

[@VsLavaman]

At a recent SAW Video DCP workshop Edward Folger provided a link to a free JPEG 2000 plug-in for Premiere Pro from a company called fnordware j2k that can be used to create the sequence of JPEG 2000 files directly from Premiere. That eliminates the TIFF step entirely. This saves a lot of time and also provides the ability to create a lossless JPEG 2000 master of your sequence for archival.

[@ChristopherJuul]

Thank you very much for this! It has really helped a lot! I have one question, maybe you know.. In a blog somewhere on the net, a guy were talking about leaving the "DPX Logarithmic" unchecked...? It was something about it makes strange artifacts in the color in the RGB to XYZ conversion... or something.. he were working in stereoscopic.. Do you know what the DPX tap actually does? Anyway thank you again for a great video and I hope its possible one day to see your Host movie somewhere.

[@faldor]

Cheers for this Danny,

[@OliverHegarty]

Great video Danny! Good to see it worked out well for you. Will just say though that Premiere is a 32bit float capable NLE in both RGB and YUV color-spaces. You need to check the "Max Bit Depth" in the sequence settings.

[@Kirmm]

Brilliant work. Huge thanks for this.

[@JuvelTadena]

thank you Danny. I've learned so much.

[@mattcameronvideo]

Great work Danny, really helpful video.

[@fluidradian1965]

Great video!!!

[@ZoomFilmTV]

Great Video Danny, Well done !

[@RPGAllStars]

Thanks Danny!

[@vocazone5421]

Thanks alot Danny!

[@audios22]

very helpful. Thanks.

[@flavio76]

Great!!!!!! Thank you so much!

[@gravedance2000]

Through Stereoscopic player u can playback the DCP package.

[@an3832]

Thank you very much Danny :) that was a great help, can you make a video about how do you make the 5.1 surround 24 / 48 Audio soundtracks and what sound card are you using? Thank you

[@jamiejames33]

hiyee danny. love the vid. am gonna try my own DCP. just have a few questions to ask you if u have a way of messaging. Plus.. i need the tutorial on how to prepare the audio for dcp . cos thats my main concern. TQ TQ TQ

[@ltinker24]

Hello Danny, how are you doing? First off, thank you for making the above video, it taught me everything I needed to know. Wanted to know, how do you generate the sound files needed to convert for DCP. In regards to creating the (C,R,L,SL,etc.) category . So,that I can finalize that last portion. Which audio mixing system do you use or is there another simple and easier way. I edit with Adobe Premiere CS5. Thank you,for your help in advance.

[@erikals]

SuperCool..! :) wonder, did you guys use dolby, or another form of surround on this project ? (like lpcm 5.1)

[@johnlindsaygreen8547]

Hello Danny, John Green here. I saved your video regarding 'Making A DCP.' I was wondering since you posted this video in 2012, have there been any updates that I need to know about regarding a DCP? Thanks you!

[@zebatut]

i found out that you can take a look on what u did with Stereoscopic Player and JPEG2000 Video Decoder, the only thing it plays 8/10 bit color, so might have some issues there, but still thats better then nothing

[@itsayantube]

You are a life saver Danny. By the way can you tell me what to do if I want to make a 5.1 or just 3 channel (LCR) DCP, out of a stereo source file?

[@ahmedalhashimimusic]

Thank you Danny, your detailed explanation solved almost everything,one thing though, is there a way to check the DCP package on a PC? not playing it back, but just check it to know that everything is allright thanks again and take care

[@smdesigns2010]

Thanks A lot Mannnn!!!

[@LangmattFilm]

Hi. Try the Stereoscopic Player. This player can work with DCP files.

Thank you so much!!

[@LewisCostin]

Taking your project from Premiere and putting in AE to export 16 bit doesn't make any sense to me as Premiere is limited to outputting Millions of colors + via the dynamic link server. So why are you doing this?

[@piafP]

Great tutorial, thanks for doing this. On what phase of the process do u deal with the colorspace? I asume before exporting the TIFF?

[@film_magician]

awesome. thank you. you saved me $1000

[@yoakhoge]

Great video. I was just asked to make a DCP of a film I did a few years back. Thanfully I rendered to a new 3TB hard drive, as making TIFF´s from a 1h22m film will create 1,5TB in my case. That info could have come in handy in the film. You need big drives to do this (or amI doing something wrong?)

[@EveshkaGhost]

I premiered my first feature last year and had to make my own DCP with OpenDCP. 150 minute film, within the last 7 minutes towards the end, it seemed like a couple of frames stalled - but sound was ok and we agreed after so much trial and error that it was "good enough" and nobody would notice. This was fine on the dolby projector however - in the brighton screening,all was fine until that frame - and boom. black screen. audio cut out, like a power cut for 2 seconds, before it came back. it broke my heart. I'm trying to work out what went wrong, but I don't think I'll ever know. NeoDCP seemed fine. everything validated. maybe 185 mbs was too high - maybe I shoulda done 125? because there were major problems like this on the first attempt and that was at 250, so i toned it down. the horrible thing is, there is no way to really find out. maybe the unix drive which was hell to work with (since im using windows) was corrupted - but i just don't know. any advice on this stuff would be appreciated. It was in 2K, 5.1 sound, 24fps, 2.39:1 I have access to the dolby projector, but not the other one that i thought blew up!

[@DownPoorTube]

followed steps...... it almost worked/ I went to the theater sure it was going to but it said it wasn't seeing or registering the A/V file properly.... Gonna try again

[@jmalmsten]

I'm a bit confused about a couple of things. 1. Just for noting, 2048x1024 is a 2:1 aspect ratio, not as you say, 1.85:1. 2. is there a reason for going through that extra step of making it 2:1 and then just cropping? Isn't it just easier to go directly to 2048x858?

[@siavashyaz]

Hello I wanted to ask what you did to change color space? surely your video was sRGB or rec.709 but you had to present DCI-P3. did you in the final part (I mean rendering) or did you from the beginning? thank you

[@ilkansengul1187]

Very nice, thank you, for your video and explanations but i want to ask you a question, for example we have a 4K film (4096*1260 or 3840*2160 )and and want to make d.c.p. which parameter must be changed while use adobe premier and open dcp ? Good days

[@DaakinsProductions]

Sitting here in 2022 being so glad I can just export a 16 or 32bit TIFF sequence straight from Premiere Pro. XD

[@andros1984]

Thank you. I exported mono left/right channels from audition and OpenDLC claims they can't be loaded in because they aren't mono. (I checked and they are in fact one channel). How did you create your audio to work with this?

hey this is awesome, what camera did you use for this film?

[@bobspez]

I followed your instructions and created the 16 bit tiff files in Adobe AE. When I used opendcp to convert the tiffs to jpeg2000 files and compared them to the tiffs, the color of the tiffs was colorful and vibrant but the color on the converted jpeg2000 files was washed out with a greenish cast to the skin tones. What went wrong? ....Update ...... I looked on the opendcp website and one of the FAQ's had this question answered. It turns out the mpeg 2000 files created from the tiffs are xyz color space instead of rgb, so on an rgb monitor they show faded colors with a green cast. However the files do convert properly with proper colors to .mxf files and work properly in the dcp package files created by opendcp. In order to verify my dcp files worked I downloaded the free trial version of NeoDCP player (64bit), and the dcp package worked perfectly (I had tried viewing the video mxf file with the vlc media player but it didn't work). Even with the NeoDCP Player trial 1 minute limit and watermark, I could tell the dcp video and audio worked perfectly, and slightly sharper than an mp4 render I did of this project (probably because of the conversion to 16bit tiffs during the dcp creation process). Even though this video is more than 6 years old and the opendcp.org website forum hasn't had any activity since 2016, these instructions are working great in October of 2018. Well done Danny Lacey! P.S. The only part of the instructions that didn't work for me was changing the 1920/1080 2k HD video resolution to 1998/1080 to get the 1.85 ratio, instead of 1.78 ratio of standard HD. Changing that picture size stretches the width of the image (faces and people get fatter). So I left the image size at 1920/1080 when creating the tiffs.

[@JosueEscarlata]

Great tutorial! Thank you very much. I still got a couple of questions: If my native project is in HD (1920x1080) I'll need to upscale it to 2k? And, the "DCP deliverable" folder with those 6 files are the only thing the drive should carry, not the JPEG and the WAV but only the Mxf and the Xml files, right? Thanks again in advance.

[@DannyLacey]

+Atzuz 1920x1080 is technically 2k and yes on the 6 files. You'll find the folder with all the DCP files is surprising small in size (this freaked me out at first). Hope that helps, please let me know how you get on my email is [e-mail]

[@JosueEscarlata]

+Danny Lacey It did help. And precisely the size of the DCP files in your video was what surprised me. My current 5 minute PNG animation renders (which will be exported later as 16 bits tiffs) with the final edition, weight 13.1GB. I'm writing a document about all the technical and creative process for the animation project, and I'll be quoting your vid of course. And yes, I'll let you know how it all went. Thanks again.

[@GmuesFilm]

thanks!

[@T1t3Uf]

I have the same question but for stereo sound

[@contactsan12]

Lovely it helped a lot if problems arise i can discuss in mails any other medium ? its a pleasure to be associated with a person like ya and thanks so much for the Tut

[@DannyLacey]

+Samrat Mukherjee Hi Samrat, happy help if I can.

[@contactsan12]

+Danny Lacey thanks man my pleasure

[@robymeola9034]

Thanks so much for this tutorial. one question. If you preview your j2c files, do they look a bit strange in terms of color and gamma? is that normal? as the color space is different? Just to make sure the final dcp will look ok when played from the server as there is no way to preview the DCP on a mac... thank so much

[@tvkino]

thanks a lot!

[@jonathanjkemp]

Have you had any luck with the DCP export settings in the latest Premiere CC?

[@criscazor]

Hey Danny, Just came across your very old DCP tutorial, extremely helpful, though. Just have 2 quick questions, - as soon as I exported the dcp, my 2 MXF files were erased from my computer, is that normal? - I only got 5 files on the Master dcp folder, not 6 like you did, why is that?

[@simonhardenne]

Hi, thanks for your amazing tutorial ! On other video's, I saw people exported directly from DaVinci Resolve the JPEG2000 files. It can save time, do you think it's a good way to do it ? Or better exporting TIFF with AE ? Thanks ! :)

[@jacobalanis898]

Hey mate how can i play or convert a digital cinema package so i can watch it on my pc of dvd player thanks!!

[@kevinscholz8950]

Hi Danny, this video in general is amazing, really feel like I have an understanding of the at-home dcp workflow, so thank you, but right now I'm in the process of making a dcp for a feature-length documentary (2hrs 7min) and when I exported the tiff files from AE I woke up to a message that I'd run out of disk space - my output folder being on a drive with 400 gbs free! (think it made it about 30% into the film) Is this normal? I've read that major studio feature's dcps are only around 100-150gb when completed, but does it come down in size once converted from the tiff stage? How in the world am I supposed to export the tiff sequence without filling up a drive? Any help would be majorly appreciated. Going to send this to you in email form as well. Screening's next week and I'm trying my best to get this done!

[@rajpootdogra]

HI Danny,What if I want to make a DCP in MPEG2 format instead of jpeg2000 option?

[@extendedplayarcade]

The film I am editing is at 23.96 frames per second... I have only options on opendcp for 24 frames per second... I can't get the audio and video to be at the same frame rate... any suggestions?

[@edowulia]

dear Dany, thanks for your detailed explanation. I still have questions though, hopefully you can give me the answer. Will it work for 1920 x 1080 resolution (instead the 2K - 1998 x 1080) ? thanks a lot more in advance.

[@simonfjordheim4952]

+edo wulia Use the FLAT-container (1998x1080) and pillbox it.

[@Ultim8League]

Is there anyway to test if it’s worked before the cinema screening?

[@arcticyak]

Is the render from After Effects supposed to be an estimated 20+ hours? I'm assuming I did something wrong.

I have a question! My proyect is 23,98 fps. When I convert to 24p? directly in Open dcp mxf convertion?