The Department of Moving Picture Technologies of Fraunhofer IIS has announced that Soho Digital Cinema to simplify distribution workflow and ensure adherence to screening rights. The integration of the easyDCP KDM Generator in SDC’s MEL a web application for KDM management and distribution enables SDC customers to create their own KDMs through the SDC website. DCPs and KDMs play an integral role in the digital cinema distribution workflow. A KDM is an encryption key for digital cinema packages sent to specific cinema servers in theaters that have been granted performance rights to display a film. The KDM Generator creates KDMs to unlock the DCPs for screening according to the time window or validity period set by the distributor. The KDM Generator software is part of Fraunhofer’s easyDCP Software Suite that simplifies and ensures quality control for post-production mastering and playback of DCPs for post production houses worldwide. With Fraunhofer’s easyDCP KDM Generator SDC’s MEL creates KDMs for encrypted DCPs and sends them via email to any cinema in the UK regardless of command line user interface or cinema server. This makes the process for distributors as easy as looking up a theatre name selecting a film specifying the KDM dates and hitting send. The projectionist is emailed the KDM within seconds. Important to SDC’s MEL is the application’s use of SDC’s database where all public certificates for digital films shown in UK movie theatres are stored and maintained. ”After surveying every cinema in the UK to have a comprehensive public certificate database SDC needed an easy way to create KDM files for our customers ” said David Margolis managing director of Soho Digital Cinema. “We chose Fraunhofer IIS because they not only understand today’s challenges for the digital cinema distribution environment but are already developing the solutions that will simplify the workflow of the future.” SDC’s MEL has already been used extensively with several releases in 2012 such as films with Momentum Pictures Revolver Entertainment and Artificial Eye. The film lab plans to increase its database to the US and Europe. With Fraunhofer IIS’s easyDCP KDM Generator it is possible to generate hundreds of DCP’s within a single run. The system currently produces 6 000 KDMs a day and will be accelerated to do more in the future.“
