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Topic: HATEFUL EIGHT 70mm - all discussion
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Daniel Schulz
Master Film Handler
Posts: 387
From: Los Angeles, CA USA
Registered: Sep 2003
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posted 01-16-2016 08:52 PM
quote: Scott Norwood
Was the "reel 13" thing designed to prevent reel-to-reel houses from cutting the intermission short, since the "reel 13" timecode would prevent an early changeover into a lower-numbered reel?
No, Reel 13 is just by custom the first number used for alternate reels. The system doesn't care what the numbering sequence is.
Normally of course the timecode reel number corresponds to the actual reel number. Alternate reel numbers are then used for things like censor cut reels or international reels where something has changed (alternate reel 1s with different logo builds for different territories are very common). The DTS timecode system allows for 15 reel numbers, and for reasons no one can remember we can't use Reel 15. Reel 14 was reserved for all trailers. So if a feature is reels 1-X, any alternate reels are assigned alternate reel numbers starting from R13 and counting down.
So for a random example, a disc might contain OV Reels 1-6, Reel 13 = UK Version Reel 1, Reel 12 = China Censor Cut Version Reel 4, etc. The goal is to have one disc set that contain all reels, including the alternates, so that we wouldn't have to inventory multiple disc sets of the same movie.
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Daniel Schulz
Master Film Handler
Posts: 387
From: Los Angeles, CA USA
Registered: Sep 2003
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posted 01-17-2016 02:05 AM
quote: Joe Redifer
How long can a reel by in the DTS/Datasat system? Can you have, say, 2 "reels" for a two hour movie? Or one reel per disc? Or are they limited by 20 minutes for some reason? Is there a reason that the system uses "reels" at all? I see no need for DTS/Datasat reels to match real life film reels. Just as long as it sees the timecode it plays the proper spot.
Brad's answer above re: changeovers is part of the answer. There is also an absolute mathematical limit to the length of a DTS reel, but to be honest I don't remember what it is - around an hour or so I think. I remember there being one or two one-off special venue shows that came to us as a continuous long-play printmaster, and we had to create an arbitrary "reel change."
The real reason for the DTS reels has to do with the film-based workflow. The entire post-production process was (and still is!) built around ~20 minute reels. In the early days of DTS, print masters were delivered as reels of 6-track magnetic film. After sound mixing transitioned to the digital era, print masters were delivered on DA88 tape, Tascam MMR8 or Akai DD8 MODs, then hard drives, then as electronic files transferred over network,, but those master sound elements still came as distinct reels, each of which matched the 35mm film picture reels.
Even in the digital cinema era, DCPs are still typically delivered as reels, or perhaps I should say "reels." This seems archaic, but makes some sense. If a change needs to be made, it is easier to re-author and re-encode 20 minutes out of a 2-hour feature rather than have to re-author and re-encode the entire file. I'm sure in the future filmmakers will wonder why "reels" are around 20 minutes long, and no one will remember why.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 01-17-2016 12:08 PM
quote: Daniel Schulz
There is also an absolute mathematical limit to the length of a DTS reel, but to be honest I don't remember what it is - around an hour or so I think. I remember there being one or two one-off special venue shows that came to us as a continuous long-play printmaster, and we had to create an arbitrary "reel change."
A contractor who does some work on our audio racks occasionally told me about this once. I think he said that that the reel length limit is 1,600 frames or some similar figure. He was installing a special venue system - 15/70 IIRC - and hit a problem whereby about halfway through the movie, the audio would stop and then restart at the beginning. They eventually diagnosed the problem as being that the "reel" length exceeded the maximum allowable in the DTS system.
quote: Daniel Schulz
Even in the digital cinema era, DCPs are still typically delivered as reels, or perhaps I should say "reels."
Although the DCP system does give you the option to do that, it is actually done ver rarely, in my experience. Most of the DCPs that I receive (including almost all of the Deluxe/Technicolor ones) simply have one large MXF file each for the pic and sound. The ones that are split into reels tend to be archival rereleases, in which a reel of DCP corresponds to a reel of scanned film element.
The splitting into reels feature is a bit like VFs and XML-encoded subtitles: it isn't used very much. I don't know if the reel break feature is subject to flakiness and unreliability in playback on some server/media block/projector combinations, like XML subtitles are, but it certainly doesn't seem to be used very much.
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Adam Martin
I'm not even gonna point out the irony.
Posts: 3686
From: Dallas, TX
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted 01-17-2016 12:31 PM
quote: Leo Enticknap
Most of the DCPs that I receive (including almost all of the Deluxe/Technicolor ones) simply have one large MXF file each for the pic and sound.
I don't know where you're coming up with that idea, but nearly every wide release DCP I've ever seen has been done in reels.
Just last night I was evaluating the DCPs of numerous wide release DCPs, and they were all broken into reels: 13 Hours, Alvin & the Chipmunks 4, The Big Short, Creed, The Hateful 8, Joy, Point Break, The Revenant, Ride Along 2, Sisters, Spotlight, and Star Wars TFA.
quote: Leo Enticknap
The splitting into reels feature is a bit like VFs and XML-encoded subtitles: it isn't used very much.
I don't know where that's coming from, either. In the above listed DCPs, they all had VFs for 7.1 audio (where applicable) and/or open captions (for hard-of-hearing).
The recent release "Youth" even had timed-text ("XML") open caption subtitles (for foreign spoken language) and timed-text closed captions in the same DCP.
I *will* give you, however, that for brief on-screen language translation, it is common to just burn-in the subtitles.
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