Dropbox Install
AutoDCP — Additional Notes & Instructions
Note, Dropbox installers vary, some of these details are in advanced install settings, and or things may have moved depending on which installers you are using.
When installing for the first time.
Make Files Local
Make sure this is selected to insure any DCPs you make also end up on your local HDD, otherwise any new DCPs will only reside in they cloud and you’ll have to manually ‘syncd’ them later.
Backup Apps Emails etc.
Dropbox defaults to wanting to back up your entire email folders, applications, etc from your local machine. You are welcome to accept the defaults, but doing so is not necessary for AutoDCP, ie feel free to disable such features as you see fit.
Anytime after you have installed; from your Dropbox preferences.
On mac it’s in your ‘menu bar’, normally upper right (left of the wifi icon). On PC it’s in your ‘system tray’ normally the lower right of your screen.
Improve Upload Performance
In your Dropbox preferences Bandwidth tab, make sure both upload and download are set to “Don’t Limit.” For more details about what this does check out this Dropbox page: https://help.dropbox.com/installs/bandwidth
Make available offline
Ideally when you install you’ve set the “Make files local.” To confirm cloud files are also being sync’d locally go check it in your Preferences Sync tab, make sure its set to “available offline.” For details check out this page: https://help.dropbox.com/sync/make-files-online-only
One caveat, the above actually only makes it availble, you still may need to right-click the folder itself in your Dropbox account to actually “make it only.”
Dropbox working?
First make sure things are being sync’d, ie check your preference/activity, this is also where you can find the ETA’s on your files appearing on your desktop computer.
Next look at the files/folder in your Dropbox folder on your desktop. Anything with a cloud icon is up in the cloud, but if you want the file local it needs to have a green checkmark. For details on what the icons mean check out this page. https://help.dropbox.com/sync/sync-icons
In short you want green checkmarks next to all AutoDCP files, otherwise your DCPs are up in the cloud and NOT on your local machine.
Move Dropbox to an external USB
(Optional — PC Only) Video and DCPs are huge, you can move your Dropbox to another drive so its not taking up too much space on your internal drive. Check out the video or the article on Dropbox: https://help.dropbox.com/installs/move-dropbox-folder
If the USB drive is previously formatted NTFS, this drive can be directly connected to a theaters projection system, ie their show players are compatible with NTFS formated drives. Using Dropbox this way saves all the headache of manually downloading all your DCPs, as well as having a ‘show drive’ ready for the theater whenever you need it.
Technically you can do this on an apple as well, but it depends which macOS you are running. Apple has changed cloud-storage recently which eliminates being able to use an external HDD for any cloud service such as Dropbox, G-drive, OneDrive, or if its own iCloud. Below are the two options for Apple. Please note that regardless of which method you use, you will still need to copy the DCPs to a theater-compatible drive before giving them to the projectionist. In short, after Dropbox is sync’d, copy all the DCP’s to a theater-compatible drive, aka one which is formatted NTFS (your mac will need an NTFS plug in from a 3rd party like Paragon Software, in order to write NTFS drives.)
- On an older macOS support for external HDD’s still exists and you can configure Dropbox to ‘sync’ to it, aka via the instructions of changing your Dropbox location.
- On a recent version of macOS it may be possible to simply boot from an external drive which is large enough in the first place, aka install the OS on an external large drive, then boot from it and then install the Dropbox client normally. We have not tested external booting on a contemporary Apple OS, but here is a link to Apple about booting from an external storage.
Apple install
PC install
Other Helpful videos
Notes for Theaters.
Your clients asking to send files electronically but you know the headache dealing with downloads? Handling the various ‘links’, and or web delivery tools just does not work at the theater, too many interruptions, too tedious of a process. Such methods were not designed for DCPs. However, one of them works well (if you know how), and that is Dropbox, specially if you use AutoDCP app which will validate any delivered DCP’s BEFORE you load it on your TMS or showplayer.
Setting up things is pretty easy, here’s how:
- Install Dropbox client as described here on a PC
- activate AutoDCP app against the above Dropbox
- Find a spare HDD, reconfigure Dropbox as described here to sync directly to this spare HDD.
And that is about it, ie your account is now ready to receive DCPs from theaters or filmmakers. The next steps depend on how you want to work with the filmmakers or festival itself. The steps assumes you just want to either allow a few folks to deliver DCPs to you, or frankly all of them associated with the festival.
Setting up a festival (or theater) to deliver to
- Create a ‘festival’ within AutoDCP and share the ‘boilerplate/link’ instructions with your festival. Your festival will then paste this into the welcome letter they send out using Filmfreeway tools to their filmmakers. Or you can share the ‘bare’ link by coping it and giving it to your filmmaker directly, for instance if they are not part of a festival.
- DCPS will start showing up on your HDD ready for ingest into a showplayer or TMS. You can view the ‘projection report’ to get DCP specific details necessary for projection.
Installing Dropbox can be done on just about any PC which has a network connection to the internet.