I'm in. I have noticed a few recent lines on mantis about this recently. Can you tell us how this works/what it is doing in detail? - Carsten -----Original-Nachricht----- Betreff: [DCP-o-matic] DCP-o-matic Disk Writer alpha test Datum: 2020-03-30T00:35:45+0200 Von: "Carl Hetherington via DCPomatic" <dcpomatic(a)carlh.net> An: "dcpomatic(a)carlh.net" <dcpomatic(a)carlh.net> Hi all, I'm hopefully not-too-far (TM) away from having a very alpha-quality version of a "disk writer" tool for DCP-o-matic. This is a thing which can format a drive as EXT2 and copy a DCP onto it from Linux/macOS/Windows. Since the potential for disaster is fairly high with this tool (i.e. unrecoverably destroyed hard disk partitions) I am hoping to find some brave and interested parties to test it out in a sort of "closed beta" arrangement, rather than making it available to everybody in the normal test version. If you are interested in helping out with testing, drop me a line! All that's really required is an understanding that the software might destroy any data that happens to be on any drive connected to the computer that you run it on. So if you have an old machine that you could tolerate re-installing, that would be ideal! It doesn't need any great CPU power. If you have access to a cinema to test your copied drives, even better! I hope everybody is keeping as well as can be expected given the current state of the world. Kind regards, Carl _______________________________________________ DCPomatic mailing list DCPomatic(a)carlh.net http://main.carlh.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dcpomatic  _______________________________________________ DCPomatic mailing list DCPomatic(a)carlh.net http://main.carlh.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dcpomatic

On Mar 30, 2020, at 5:14 PM, Carl Hetherington via DCPomatic &lt;dcpomatic(a)carlh.net&gt; wrote: Hi all, There is some platform-specific code to find available drives and open them as devices that DCP-o-matic can write raw data to. Then there is a library called lwext4 (https://github.com/gkostka/lwext4 <https://github.com/gkostka/lwext4>) (that I have tweaked a little) which can make an ext2 filesystem given a place to write the raw data. So the DCP-o-matic Disk Writer just asks for a DCP and a drive, then formats the drive as ext2 with the required inode size, copies the data and verifies it. It seems to work on Windows and Linux and I am just working on the Mac version. The two main concerns I have are: 1. does it destroy users' data? 2. does it *always* either a) make a valid DCP drive or b) give an error. If we are confident that (1) happens rarely and (2) happens mostly then we will probably have a useful tool. TBH one of the main motivations here is to remove a source of error that can be blamed on DCP-o-matic, and to simplify the explanation of the DCP-making process to truly be "put your file in, click the button, get a drive out". All the best, Carl _______________________________________________ DCPomatic mailing list DCPomatic(a)carlh.net <mailto:DCPomatic@carlh.net> http://main.carlh.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dcpomatic <http://main.carlh.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dcpomatic>