DCP-o-matic - Make a DCP

This will walk you through the steps of making a DCP with DCP-o-matic.

You will need to begin by rendering your program and audio out to a media file. Audio is usually embedded, but it does not have to be.

After starting DCP-o-matic you will first need to make a New project before you can add any content. Under the File menu select New.

Enter the name of your project and choose a folder where you want to save your project file

The location you chose to save the project is where the DCP will render, so make sure it’s got plenty of space.

Usually, you will want the name of your project to be the name of the project name part of the DCP file you want to create as it will want to automatically use that info.

Once you have your project opened you are ready to add content.

You can use the Add buttons in the upper left of the window or you can drag and drop.

NOTE: You can add separate video and audio or you can add multiple files, like reels, to play one after another.

Once you have your content added you can adjust your crop and scale to fill the display area for the DCP.

It’s a bit odd to do. Fit to DCP will scale to the first border, so may leave unwanted black borders. Custom will not allow you to scale the image beyond the edge of the DCP.

So, if you have a source that is 4096x2160 it will leave black borders at top and bottom. If you crop the sides it will eventually fill out the top and bottom. To do the math, 4096-3996=100, 100/2=50. So, crop the top and bottom by 50 to fill the entire DCP container.

Under the Audio tab you will want to analyze your audio tracks by selecting ‘Show graph of audio levels.’ This can take a while. The longer the piece, the longer the analysis.

After the audio is analyzed you will see a ‘Peak’ read out. If it’s Red or Yellow you will want to adjust the gain down until it is Black

Then, if you need to, you can use the matrix at the bottom to map audio tracks to channels.

Then you can adjust the timing if you need to. You can trim leaders and tails off of a piece. And if you are working with multiple pieces, like reels, you can set up their timing and order.

Once you are done making adjustments for your source content you can make adjustments for your output DCP.

This is where you will set the file name output, metadata flags, and if you want it to be encrypted. There is a separate wiki for setting encryption.

In the name section I usually choose ‘Copy as name’ then adjust the front part to the name of the film.

Choose which Standard you want to use. SMPTE is usually fine, but if you want to have closed captions I have found that Interop is more reliable for that.

Under the Video tab choose if you want Flat or Scope, your resolution, frame rate, and data rate. I usually set my data rate to 230Mb/s

Under the Audio tab choose your Channels configuration.

Then, under the Jobs menu you can choose to Make DCP to render out your DCP. There are other options if you want to export a ProRes or h264.