Error messages

[Peter Mork]

I run a lot of material that comes from independent or homemade sources, generally sent on Toshiba or other USB storage. Way too often for my liking, these drives are not recognized by my GDC projectors when I try to gurgitate them.

They used to reject the drives without telling me why, but since our certification got updated there's now a button that appears to show "Details". Except the detais it shows make no sense to me. See photo.

I believe the system wants NTSC-formatted drives, or Linux. FAT drives work too, Ex-FAT don't (seemingly). What else? Unfortunately people don't seem to realize this when they make these things.

Do these details provide any insight? Is there a line of code or a filename I can just change and it will work like magic? Please say sometning soothing, in plain English, not techie-talk. Thanks.

[Frank Cox]

What you say here is pretty much the case. The easiest way for you to deal with this might be to keep a ext (Linux) formatted drive, either a flash drive or a portable hard drive of some kind, and when someone gives you a drive that your server doesn't recognize then you can just copy it to your portable drive using your desktop computer and ingest from that.

That's probably easier than telling the guy who brought it in that it doesn't work and expecting him to come back with one that does work.

[Leo Enticknap]

Those messages are the Linux-based operating system (I believe it's Ubuntu in the case of older GDC servers) telling you that it cannot mount the drive, and suggesting possible command line remedies for forcing it to look for various partition and volume formats, none of which you can do through the GDC's VNC UI anyways.

Attached is the "letter of the law" document as to how a DCP distribution drive should be partitioned and formatted. If you receive a homebrew drive that won't mount again, maybe send this document to the supplier, and ask them to send you another copy of the DCP, prepared in complete compliance with what the document asks for? If they do what it says, your GDC will read the drive without any complaints.

When I worked arthouse/festival type scenarios, the most frequent problem with such drives that I would encounter were drives that had an EFI partition on the front, which stopped the server from seeing the actual content partition, or drives with exFAT partitions. This was because an Apple Mac will claim that exFAT can be read on "any computer" when you select that option (as distinct from HFS+, the Apple proprietary format that is the only other option when formatting a drive in Mac OS), and so some kid with a MacBook and DCP-o-Matic doing their first low budget festival entry was misled by MacOS to believe that if (s)he provided an exFAT drive, all would be well.

The highly condensed version of the spec document is that a DCP distribution drive should have a MBR partition table, not GPT, there should be only one content partition, which occupies the entire capacity of the drive, and that partition should be formatted as ext2 or ext3.

[James Gardiner]

A lot of the older systems that are tied to this specs in this document are no longer in use. I feel it needs a revisions, but I don't see a lot of motivation to do so.
I brought it up at the ast ISDCF meeting.
Most content is deliver digitally these days...

And strangely, NTFS is actually the easiest and most compatible apart from the specifics described in the ISDCF-document. But as its a proprietary file format, they will not recommend it.

[Leo Enticknap]

I believe that some very early GDC servers won't read NTFS, but apart from that, agreed: I've never encountered one that won't.

The problems, once again, are with GPT, EFI partitions, and MacOS. Deluxe and other larger distributors know what they're doing, and will always provide a drive that has been partitioned and formatted in accordance with the ISDCF spec. But many smaller mom-and-pop distributors, and individuals creating DCPs on an amateur or semi-professional basis, do not. So they buy a USB flash or hard drive from Office Depot or Amazon, which typically comes with a factory image consisting of a GPT partition table and a content partition that is either NTFS or HFS+ (depending on whether the drive is marketed as being for a Windows or Mac computer), and quite often some crapware on that partition, too. They then simply copy the DCP files onto this partition as they find it, ship the drive to the theater ... and, surprise surprise, the DCP server can't see anything on it.

The next hurdle is that creative types tend to like Macs, and MacOS can't write to NTFS partitions - just read them. So that's not an option. Sometimes they will try to reformat the drive, and MacOS will give them the option of HFS+ or exFAT, with a "helpful" pop-up window claiming that the latter an be read by "any computer" (or some such wording). AFAIK, Dolby DSS servers after version 4.8.something can read exFAT (assuming a MBR partition table and no EFI partition on the front), but I know of no other model of server that can

Point taken that the ISDCF spec document could likely do with revising, but it is what it currently is, and if its instructions are followed, a drive will be readable in a DCI-compliant digital cinema server; hence my suggestion that if Peter is supplied with noncompliant drives again, to return them and ask for a replacement that has been prepared in compliance with the rules. It takes a little knowledge to do so (e.g. installing Ubuntu or CentOS in a VM and using that to partition and format the drive), but if an individual or organization distributing professional cinema media cannot be bothered either to acquire that knowledge, or hire someone who already has it to prepare their shipping drives, that doesn't reflect well on the professionalism of their overall operation.

[Jim Cassedy]

AGGGAH! Peter- - I could write a book about this (as could many other people on this forum!)
In fact, I've even given a lecture on this topic to a student film class before they were going to
submit some of their entries to several film festivals. Having dealt with "home made" DCP's
at several festivals, and even getting some DCPs from semi-professional film makers, who
really should have known what they were doing, here are the most common things I ran into:

1) FORMATTING: which has pretty much been covered in the posts previous to mine here.
2) DIRECTORY INSANITY: Not having their content in the root or top-most directory, or
worse yet having their content inside of a folder within another folder, someplace on their
drive. One of the things that I've said in my student DCP lecture is to "forget everything you
think you know about conventional video file formats, and how they play back on computers"
3) GARBAGE FILES: Having other "garbage" files on the USB or hard drive they submit their
DCP's on. I've had usb stix & drives arrive with all sorts of ½-edtied versions, scripts and
editing notes in assorted text & pdf files, family photos, and you-name-it, in addition to the
DCP I'm supposed to be looking for.
4) NAMING- Quite frankly, suggesting that amateur and semi-professionals read the ISDCF
documents on formatting and naming convention, will make their eyes glaze over. To people
outside "the business" that document is somewhat bewildering. (and nothing makes MY
eyes glaze over worse than when I get a ½ dozen drives all named "My DCP" and I need
to sort them out)

The bigger festivals I work for just will not accept DCP's not formatted properly and ON TIME.
The smaller independent fests are 'somewhat" flexible, which is often very frustrating to those
of us who have to "make it work", often at the last minute. IMO there's only one thing worse than
those who say "we'll fix it in post" - -and that's those who think they'll "fix it in projection"
(I knew I was in trouble with one guy who showed up with his content and told me that I'd
have no trouble with it because he had formatted his DCP drive to "NTSC" )


BONUS FORMATTING PRATTLE:
While I used to pretty much be a die-hard "PC Computer" guy, several years ago I switched
over almost all of my video operations for reasons I won't go into here. ("Po-TAY-to, Po-TAH-to")
For my own DCP projects, I've installed a 3rd party program that can format USB sticks & drives
to FAT, FAT-32, Ex-FAT NTFS or any of the EXT formats on my MAC. (actually "MACs"I have
4 of them now), I've always found NTFS work almost universally. In almost 10 years, I'vee only
had one server/projector which had some oddball combination of software updates on it that
wouldn't recognize an NTFS drive.

The only slight issue I've run into on a couple of servers or TMS's is that the MAC leaves behind
a couple of extra, hidden files, which I think are used for indexing on a MAC, but which can make
some servers gag. (or at least hiccup a bit)
I've fixed that with a program called "USB CLEANER" that I've installed on all my Macputers,
which erases all that 'garbage' and deletes any other 'trash' on the external memory stick
or drive when it's ejected from my Mac. It's not free- - but it cost less than the price of a
cuppacawffee at Starbucks and IMO was well worth the price.

I'll close with repeating what I've said at last a ½-dozen times in previous posts on this topic:
"Just because somebody can make their own DCP's, doesn't mean they should"

[Dave Macaulay]

FAT32 works on all servers I've used, both read and write. You could conceivably hit the 4GB filesize limit with a DCP though... but it hasn't been an issue for me. NTFS reads fine on all those servers too but not writing, and the 256GB filesize limit won't be an issue.
No fruity filesystem can be read from or written to by any server I know of: they don't see a drive is present. A mac can format drives with non standard (for them) formats, I don't go near anything apple so I don't know how but when I explain to a content producer why their drive can't be used as is, they get me a replacement one that's usually NTFS. There are "spotlight" and maybe other hidden/system files on the drive but I don't recall them causing issues and they are easy to delete on a pc. I have had to move DCP folders up the tree a couple of times, again super easy on a pc.
Formatting EXT2 is no simple job on a pc. I've succeeded and failed: sometimes the permissions don't allow the server to read it or write to it. A program has to be installed to use an EXT drive, let alone format one.

[Gordon McLeod]

Another option is to FTP the content from a computer that can read the drive to the server

[Peter Mork]

Thanks to all who responded. You mostly didn't use too much technobabble for my brain to absorb.

Yes, I did say NTSC. I meant to do that, to see if anyone would notice. (Have pity on me, I'm an old film guy who barely keeps up with all these initialisms.) So, how do I prepare a Linux formatted drive I can copy stuff onto on a Mac or Windows computer?

[Carsten Kurz]

Stay with NTSC ;-)

It is far easier to use. On a Mac, you may need low cost NTFS software (e.g.Tuxera) to write it.

Writing Linux ext2/3 from Windows or Mac is pretty unreliable for large files. You could use virtual machines in both Windows and Mac OS to write ext2/ext3 from a Linux virtual machine, but altogether, it's even less intuitive.

In Windows, NTFS is the native file system, and should not cause any problems. Don't use external discs larger than 2TB. For small files like most trailers, the 'old' DOS/FAT32 format will work as well (max 4GB filesize).

Creating your own media doesn't solve your problem with content arriving in all sorts of formats. I suggest you use a (cheap) Mac to copy/transfer/check such media that is not detected by your GDC.


Forget using Paragon for Macs. It's crap.

[Jim Cassedy]

Yes, I did say NTSC.

Wow! Peter- - I actually didn't catch that in your post, and I want to make it clear that when I
wrote about "that guy" who told me about formatting his drive "NTSC", I was in no way trying to
shame or embarrass YOU. I really was talking about 'some other guy' and not you.

[Peter Mork]

It's fine. I've done worse.

Things were better back when... oh never mind.