DCP

A DCP (Digital Cinema Package) is the theatrical master a cinema server ingests. It’s JPEG 2000-compressed, wrapped in MXF, structured with its own CPL/PKL (like IMF), and often encrypted — a KDM key unlocks it for a specific screen and date window. Its defining color trait is the encoding: a DCP isn’t tagged Rec.709 or P3, it’s X′Y′Z′, a device-independent encoding derived from CIE XYZ, so a projector anywhere maps it into its own P3 gamut consistently. You grade on a P3 (DCI-white) projector, then the deliverable is converted to X′Y′Z′ for the package. Full DCP mastering has its own specialist tooling, but recognizing what a DCP is — theatrical, JPEG 2000, XYZ — is core deliverables literacy.

First used in: 3.8 · Deliverables & QC