Leslie is correct that the DCP creation platform is not relevant. 

But I think it is a mistake to follow the advice of submitting your work on the opposite format of what the festival have asked for…even if they asked in an odd sort of way.

It is true that some software versions of some media servers will accept FAT32. But there are some that don’t and the festival seems pretty specific about what they want. They do that because there is only one formatted drive specification that all cinema systems must use. 

That is the EXT2 that Leslie mentioned. 

And, make certain that if someone makes this drive for you that they make the inode size 128, since that is in the DCI and ISDCF and SMPTE specifications. 

And, if the drive was originally formatted in FAT32, you’ll be limited to a 4 Gig file size, regardless of the size of the drive. First format in exFAT, or leave it with NTSF if that is what it was bought as. 

Here is what I do.

The ISDCF document gives the following command line in a linux type system.

mkfs -t ext3 -I 128 -m 0 /dev/xddN

with xddN being the drive ‘name’, which is most often something like ‘sdb1’ – you can find that name by the command 

sudo lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL

Then unmount with 

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

And here are two other formatting commands that work. Myself, I prefer the last one since it allows me to name the partition as it is being made.

sudo mke2fs -t ext3 -I 128 -L DCPs 0 /dev/sdb1 – slightly different command set

sudo mkfs.ext3 -I 128 -m 0 -L your-chosen-name-of-drive /dev/sdb1 – this one adds a disk name (change "DiskName" to 'my_dcp_drive' or whatever name you want to give it) while formatting and partitioning...change that 'sdb1' to the proper partition number.

Formatting the disk is not so quick – Those Superblocks might take a few minutes to assemble.  

Follow up by giving permissions to the drive with: (755 is usually recommended, but I use 777 for myself)

sudo chmod -R 777 /media/Your_Login_USER_NAME/your-chosen-name-of-drive

You might find that you need to change ownership 

sudo chown owner:owner /media/owner/your-chosen-name-of-drive

I usually put my name twice, such as 'cj:cj', then '/media/cj/ctt_dcps'

I hope this helps. I’d hate you to have a black screen after getting this far. Good luck. Tell us how it worked out and what you ended up doing.
 
C J Flynn
Cinema Test Tools
 

On Jan 10, 2017, at 15:45 000PM, Leslie Hartmier via DCPomatic <dcpomatic@carlh.net> wrote:

No, the platform you use to create the DCP is not relevant.  They may be wanting the content on a EXT2 drive.

If it is small enough, you can provide it on a USB thumb drive formatted using FAT32. (Most USB drives come formatted that way.)

Leslie
Sent: January 10, 2017 4:28 PM
Subject: [DCP-o-matic] DCP for Linux

Hello

I've used DCP-o-Matic on a Windows machine to create a DCP for a short film I made.  Worked great.  I entered the short film in a film festival and got accepted.  They are asking me for a Linux compatible DCP.  Do I need to create the DCP on Linux for it to be Linux compatible?

Thanks

Joseph 
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