Kingston SSDs and QNAP NAS are powering the DCP workflow for Digital Theaters

Projectionist Ryan Carpenter discusses the movie theater industry’s shift from analog film to digital projection, how this affects the quality of showings, and the hardware necessary to make it all run smoothly. Digital projection is both easier to transfer & run and more stable than analog film projection. DCPs (Digital Cinema Packages) are encrypted and sent by studios to theaters. Commonly, these packages have been dispatched on physical hard drives by courier, since an average feature film is between 150 and 250GB. These drives take about the same amount of time to transfer the film’s file as the run time of the feature. Obviously, this can sometimes be an issue. While increasingly theaters receive files via digital download, they still need to transfer them onto hard drives so that they can interface with the projector. With QNAP and Kingston’s SSDs, the drives can be loaded directly onto the QNAP, and the files transferred directly from the QNAP to the projector. This process makes projects such as film festivals far more straightforward. Smaller film companies are not always capable of producing DCPs. However, with the tag-team power of QNAP and Kingston SSDs, it’s possible to receive an uncompressed file and turn that into a DCP, simultaneously writing it to the QNAP with Kingston’s drives. When finished, it’s easily sent to the projector. The innovation of QNAP in this context means that you don’t need personnel on-site in order to manage DCP pitfalls. You can remotely create a DCP by logging on to the QNAP server, which is capable of connecting to cinema servers in the same or even other theaters. This represents a substantial leap forward in terms of efficiency. However, QNAP servers are more than capable of connecting with others, in order to synchronize data. Ryan has found working with Kingston and QNAP to be very positive, with both companies highly responsive to any queries he has, and the overall quality of their products being consistently high. Got questions about the video or Kingston products? COMMENT or contact us on SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: Instagram: Facebook: LinkedIn: