This Is How New Movies Are Delivered To Cinemas

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It seems a lot of Reddit users have expressed an interest in the inner workings of cinemas.

So this movie theatre employee has provided photos and a pretty in-depth description of how a film is actually delivered to audiences, and here it is…

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This is a Peli 1300 flight case, which most hard drives containing the DCP (Digital Cinema Package) are shipped in.

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On top, are details of what is on the hard drive. There are no specific rules about what to put here. On this one are the aspect ratio, sound format and duration of the film,  The labels are a little worn, as a result of it having recently finished touring the festival circuit.

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Inside is a CRU DX115 caddy. This contains a standard Western Digital 500gb hard drive, Linux formatted in EXT3. Here, it is slotted into CRU’s accompanying Move Dock.

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Depending on the theatre’s set-up, the caddy (right) may slot straight into their server, but if the theatre is unable to slot the drive directly into their server, the Move Dock is a separate external dock that allows the drive to be connected to the server via a USB or SATA connection.

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Beneath the caddy are all the cables for the move dock to work. .

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And finally, this is the contents of the DCP folder. It contains: Video (MXF) Audio (MXF) Packing List (XML) Composition Playlist (XML) Asset Map Volume Index.

So, that’s whats behind all those enormous, Imax, 3D, mind-blowing, experiences. A hard drive. Simple really.

UNILAD