We don't need your entire DCP to tell you whether it will play. We need its structure and metadata, and that's what we check. Press play. It works.
You upload your DCP's metadata (CPL, PKL, ASSETMAP) directly, or run a small local utility that reads the package structure on your own machine and sends us just what we need to validate. No multi-gigabyte upload, no storage costs on either side.
We validate against SMPTE Bv2.1 and Interop conformance: package structure, CPL metadata integrity, frame rate and encoding parameters, audio channel mapping, subtitle/CCAP track presence, and (for encrypted DCPs) KDM validity.
You get a pass/fail report per title, with specific, non-technical explanations of anything that failed and why it matters for playback.
Festivals: failing titles route back to the filmmaker automatically. Filmmakers: if you'd rather we just fix it, we offer a full wrap/repair service.
A DCP that previews fine in VLC can still fail on cinema server hardware. That's because DCI-compliant playback follows a much stricter spec than a general-purpose video player. We check for the gap between "plays on my laptop" and "plays in the booth": malformed CPL metadata tags, non-conformant JPEG2000 encoding, and packaging errors that silently break ingest on specific server models.
SMPTE (current standard)Interop (legacy)Encrypted (KDM-gated)Unencrypted
Most festival submissions are unencrypted, so KDM validation is a secondary check for us. We support it for filmmakers and festivals who need it.