ISDCF Forum

[cjflynn]

James at cinetechgeek posted a video that describes how to avoid creating a USB stick with hidden Mac files that might cause problems with some servers. The video shows the technique of installing VirtualBox and Ububtu 14.4 to get this done.
How to Read/Write to Cinema DCP disk on Mac or Windows

I've written an article that extends on his video – no knocks intended since his is accurate and concise, just what one wants in a technical video tutorial. In addition to adding background to the problem that James is attacking, the article details the installation of Wolfgang Woehl's Digital Cinema Tools package and an example of making a DCP using the dcinemaslides program from that toolset.

The DCP USB on a Mac; CineTechGeek to Digital Cinema Tools

[Carsten]

For Macs, there are a few tools around that allow to erase all resource-fork-files on a stick prior to ejecting it. I made some myself a few years ago using Automator - so called 'droplets', that let you drag a volume onto it, and it would then browse all folders on that drive and erase all occurrences of '._' files, then eject that volume. Back then, I restricted the search to MP3 or JPG images (so that MP3 players, cameras and photo printers would not run havoc on them), but it's even easier to erase all '._' occurrences. Of course this can be done manually in a shell, but a droplet is the easier and safer way for most users.

And of cause, this works not only on USB sticks, but also large size hard-discs with FAT/NTFS formatting - so also for short-films or full-length DCPs on larger discs. Never tried it on EXT2/3 formatted discs, but I assume it would work there as well.


Look at e.g.

http://pixelchimp.net/blog/pixel-chimp/ ... -mac-files

http://junecloud.com/journal/mac/create ... ction.html

BTW - James' tutorial on how to create DCP EXT2/3 drives in a virtual machine misses one important point - he creates a GUID partitioned drive, but industry standard and ISDCF recommendation is to create an MBR partition scheme.

- Carsten

[jamiegau]

gdisk does make GPT disks, but also creates a compatible MBR at the same time (For common disk type used in MBR which is what we are using in a DCP disk). I have seen no issues with this, but yes, this is technically not in accordance with the recommendations.. Note, GPT are compatible with much larger disks then MBR. Its why I use it.

Interested to hear if anyone has been using this method causing any issues.

James