Can I Convert DCP To MOV/MP4/ProRes, etc?

[Jim Cassedy]

A couple of years ago, I had made a festival DCP for a film-maker friend.
He recently suffered an unfortunate computer crash, and the original Pro-Res files
of his film were lost. Is there some way to convert the DCP files back to ProRes or
some other video format? If there's no way to do a direct file conversion, I assume
that since it's unencrypted, I could always play it back on my server at home, and
use the same SDI-to-HDMI converter I use to feed a my monitor to record it.

[Jason Sharp]

You can use DCP-o-matic to export as prores.

https://dcpomatic.com/manual/html/ch09.html

[Jim Cassedy]

D'oh! I didn't realize DCP-O-MATIC could do this. THANKS!

[Marcel Birgelen]

If it's unencrypted, Davinci Resolve should also be able to directly import DCPs.

Keep in mind though that there usually is a quality gap between the original ProRes files and the exported DCP, unfortunately.

[Randy Stankey]

Keep in mind though that there usually is a quality gap between the original ProRes files and the exported DCP, unfortunately.

I agree. You're probably going to suffer some generation loss.
Assuming that the video was originally edited in ProRes then converted to some other format (MP4?) some resolution/precision would have been lost. (Spatial Resolution, Temporal Resolution and Color Precision.)

Converting back to ProRes, will get the video into an editable format but you'll never get that resolution back.

Basically, think what would happen if you started with a photo in Camera RAW format, converted to JPEG then converted back to RAW.

If you're careful, you can probably get the image/video to look close to the original so that 90% of viewers wouldn't notice but not likely to get back to what you had to start with.

[Jim Cassedy]

Thank you all for your informative input. I used the DCP-o-MATIC conversion method, since it
seemed to be the easiest way to go for me. ( I do have access to a DaVinci system, but it's tied
up in use most of the time) Fortunately, my friend only wanted the short to add to a 'résumé reel'
so "as long as it looked good", 100% quality was not absolutely necessary. In fact, he was so
satisfied with the end result, he asked if I could also transcode a feature length film he had
done some work on. The short took only a couple of hours. The feature took overnight.
(14hrs to be exact- - using a spare, old [ 2012 ] mac-book pro I had sitting around here)

It also occurred to me last night, that since < I > made the original DCP for him a couple of years
ago, I most likely still have a copy of his original Pro-Res 422 source files that he lost on a hard
drive that's presently in storage with some furniture & equipment that never got moved to my new
apartment last year .But for now, he's pretty happy I was able to do this for him.

- - - & he owes me (and I guess all of you too) a big lunch!

[Carsten Kurz]

Both Prores and DCP use a very similar compression scheme, and while direct transcoding is not possible between the two, they are on par as far as compression quality at similar bitrates are concerned. As such, there will not be a huge compression loss involved.

- Carsten

[Scott Norwood]

ffmpeg can do this, too. Example:

ffmpeg -i pix.mxf -i track.mxf -vcodec mpeg4 -b 20000k video.avi

It would require more work to deal with multiple-reel features, reels with head and tail leaders, multi-channel sound, etc.

[Mark Strube]

The newest version of Handbrake can now directly convert from MXF video files inside of a DCP, both 2K and 4K. It automatically handles the color space conversion as well with very good results.

However, you'd have to handle the audio file separately. It's a pretty fast process, though. Audacity, for instance, with the FFmpeg import library can import MXF multi-channel audio and convert to whichever format you choose, including simply outputting to LCPM WAV to keep the audio uncompressed but in a friendlier container. I prefer using 5.1 FLAC for archival purposes. Finally, you simply mux the audio and video together with something like MKVToolNix. Note that this process does not account for any audio delays since it's not reading the DCP XML info, so, if a delay is needed, you'd input that manually during the mux.

[Justin d'Entremont]

Is there any free solution for playing back unencrypted DCPs on a PC or mac? A lot of times I'd like to be able to preview trailers and promo clips without having to load them onto a server, make a playlist, and watch them on the big screen.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Yes! https://dcpomatic.com/ includes a player.

[Justin d'Entremont]

Yes! https://dcpomatic.com/ includes a player.

I have D-O-M, but I never realized this! Thank you Harold!

[Marcel Birgelen]

You need a recent version, which also includes the beta for the player. It's still a bit buggy and drops more frames than e.g. NeoDCP, but on a high performance computer you should be capable of getting smooth playback.

There is also VLC, which includes some reasonable playback capability for unencrypted DCPs nowadays.

[Carsten Kurz]

The recent DCP-o-matic player is out of beta (2.16.x), and has options to optimize playback performance for either frame rate or resolution. It now also supports OpenGL for faster playback (especially on high res Macs). It has a lot of other benefits, e.g. SMPTE DCP compliance testing/hash checks.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Haven't tried it on a Mac yet. It works fine on my workstation, but bugs out on my notebook, whereas NeoDCP will handle it just fine. I guess NeoDCP has some more mature hardware acceleration support, especially for the DirectX stack, but that's probably what you pay for. OpenGL support always has been somewhat problematic on Windows, especially with integrated video cards.