Digital Cinema Package (DCP)

Long gone is the ubiquity of film projection in cinema. Today, if you want to project your movie for an audience in most movie theaters, you’ll need a DCP. A DCP, or Digital Cinema Package, has replaced 35mm film projection. A DCP is cheaper to create and deliver to film festivals, film markets and cinemas, is more secure than a physical film print, and can be screened all over the world.

Why choose DCP over Blu-ray? Blu-ray is a consumer format, intended mainly for home use. Conversely, DCPs are a much more powerful, secure, robust and stable solution meant for professional, high-end exhibition in theatres.

Video Quality: Both Blu-ray and DCP formats are capable of similar resolutions (Blu-ray is 1080 while DCP is 2K, and Blu-ray can be UHD while a DCP can also be full 4K). However, the video quality of a DCP, which uses a much more efficient and higher quality video compression than Blu-ray, is far superior. DCP color is also superior. Reds pop, blacks will be darker, whites will be more vibrant, etc. In other words, DCPs just look better.

Audio Quality: Nearly all Blu-rays will have the audio compressed, degrading the sound quality to an extent. DCPs use uncompressed, full-quality audio. DCPs just sound better.

Stability: Blu-rays are susceptible to scratches, cracks, smudges and other damage. Since the picture and sound information on a Blu-ray is read from the surface of the disc, that means your screener could be damaged very easily, without you even noticing. That means you might be halfway through screening your film when it skips, freezes or crashes. DCPs, on the other hand, are robust checksum verified packages stored on a tough hard drive. They are ingested by a digital cinema server that verifies their integrity prior to screening. That means the cinema server makes sure there are no issues with a transfer of the DCP data into the system. Additionally, Blu-ray players read the disc at about the same time the picture and audio is displayed. That means a projectionist can accidentally bump the player (causing a skip/freeze) or power off the player in the middle of a screening. With DCPs you won’t have that concern.

Security: Both DCPs and Blu-rays can be protected against copy. A Blu-ray, however, can be played on nearly any home player and be “ripped” or illegally copied fairly easily. A DCP, on the other hand, can be fully encrypted. That means only the permitted venues can screen the DCP at a set date and time (or date/time window). Outside that permitted location and time, the DCP cannot be screened, viewed, ripped or converted in any way.