Making a DCP Looks Easy… Until It Isn't

The first time I tried to make a DCP, it was a disaster.

I had very little experience with it, but I wanted to screen a film at the cinema. And since I've always been pretty handy with the technical side of things, I thought: "well, why not just figure it out myself?" That, without knowing it, is where my ordeal began.

You've probably already tried to make a DCP yourself

If you're reading this, chances are good that what comes next sounds familiar. Because creating a DCP looks simple. You sit down, open a program, hit export, and you're done… or so you think.

Online you'll find software like EasyDCP, editing plugins, or even DCP-o-matic, which is free. And they're excellent tools, truly. But what nobody tells you is what happens when something—however small—goes wrong.

Why a DCP fails: the minefield nobody warns you about

One wrong setting. A copy made to a drive that isn't formatted the way the cinema's server expects it. Audio that's poorly balanced or has the channels mapped backwards. A subtitle that's out of sync or exported in the wrong format. Any one of those things—just one—can make your DCP simply refuse to play.

And the worst part is where you find out: not at home, where everything looked perfect on your laptop, but up in the projection booth, with a full house and the screening about to start, when the server throws an error you don't understand. There's no "undo" there.

That kind of knowledge isn't something you pick up overnight. It took me hours, and hours, and days of trial and error to get to where I am today.

Hundreds of DCPs for film festivals

All that learning eventually turned into a craft. That experience led me to become Technical Director for several festivals, among them Lúdico, Equal Film Fest, and the Costa Rica International Film Festival (CRFIC) for more than six editions.

At those festivals I built and checked hundreds of DCPs: films from all over the world, in every format, with every problem you can imagine (and several you can't). Every error I caught, every screening I saved minutes before it started, every drive I had to rebuild against the clock—it all became knowledge. And that's exactly what we put to work in every DCP we deliver.

DCI-compliant DCPs, backed by SMPTE

I'm also a member of SMPTE (the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers), the body that defines the technical standards for film and television worldwide. That's not just for show: it's the assurance that every DCP we make follows the DCI standard—the same rules that cinemas everywhere run on.

So when you hand us your film, what you get back is a DCP that's safe, tested, and ready to screen, with no scares in the booth and no last-minute surprises.