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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Topic: Arclight LA Star Wars Disaster
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Tony Bandiera Jr
Film God
Posts: 3067
From: Moreland Idaho
Registered: Apr 2004
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posted 12-21-2015 12:43 PM
quote: Randy Stankey
My point isn't simply a film vs. DCP issue. It's about the broader issue of physical systems versus virtual systems.
Assuming competent maintenance by concerned operators being equal between the two, I prefer to have a higher chance of error or malfunction from a physical system if I can have a better chance of recovering from a problem than to have a lower chance of malfunction from a virtual system but have slim chance of recovery.
(Bolds added by me).
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I have run shows with BOTH platter feed and takeup out (takes some coordinated spinning but can be done with some effort) have used a MUT to drive a takeup or feed deck (just watch and regulate the speed), have changed gears fast enough to save a show, replaced diode stacks (if you ran a theatre with rectifiers prone to diode failure and didn't have a a rebuilt replacement stack assembled and ready to go you weren't too smart...) as changing the whole assembly is a 20 minute job max.... In other words, a theatre that had good projectionists and knew the history of the equipment was prepared for any failures and rarely lost a show. Only in extreme cases would a screen be down longer than one half hour to 45 minutes..not enough to lose a show totally. (In my service days I managed over 500 screens and can count on one hand the number of shows totally lost over two years.)
Digital cinema in general HAS proven to be pretty robust (except for the GDC servers and horrid Solaria 1 Series) but the point still remains: How many theatres out there have software experts that can diagnose and fix the cause of freezes and crashes? How many theatres have someone who know how to replace a light engine or integrator rod if they fail? (Or have spares on hand?)
Further, other than a hard drive going bad where the RAID software SOMETIMES gives a warning flag, how many digital system failures are able to be headed off by advance warning signs? Almost none.
Compare that to a film system: Unusual noises (intermittent, gears/belts, motor bearings, platter motors, rectifier humming/buzzing louder than before, etc.) visual cues (jumping, weave, flicker), tactile (Projector turns over by hand tight, motor running hotter than normal, pad rollers loose, etc.) ..all these things give a good projectionist clues that something needs to be fixed soon. (Even some not so good projectionists and managers knew to call someone when things didn't look, sound or feel right.)
Let's compare that to digital....:
Other than lamp flicker or taking more time to strike (both often symptoms of needing to change a bulb, which in many cases is harder to do than on a film lamphouse) in the digital world there is often little or no warning that something is about to go bad...I am sure that if Arclight had gotten a warning that the DCP was going to freeze (or the file had somehow gotten corrupted) they could have re-ingested the show to hopefully prevent what happened..but guess what? Unlike a damaged film print, there was NO WAY to know this was about to happen. And worse, they have no way of knowing if it is going to happen again..on that screen or any others that were ingested from the same hard drive.
Until we are all equipped with personal USB ports and software to physically and tactilely link up with the server and projector, we will NEVER have the ability to deal with potential breakdowns as well as we were with film equipment.
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Buck Wilson
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 894
From: St. Joseph MO, USA
Registered: Sep 2010
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posted 12-21-2015 05:29 PM
It seems many times, there is no "fix" to digital problems. You can see the symptom, but not the problem as opposed to with mechanical film systems where you could see/hear/feel/smell the problem before the symptom even began.
With digital, it's almost always "Restart it and hope for the best" "just a glitch" "maybe a software update will fix this intermittent problem that we can't figure out or know when will happen"
I'm not saying film was perfect, but problems were very cut-and-dried, easily fixable, and then you were done.
You literally just never know with digital.
We had a problem where on our 2nd largest screen, any given feature would stop randomly for about 4 minutes. Exactly enough time for a customer to be bothered enough to go complain about it, an employee relaying the message upstairs, and the manager running to the screen TO FIND NOTHING "WRONG". Not every single show, but probably every other show at least. For weeks. Weeks of ruined shows. Many passes handed out. Many attempted and failed "fixes". Ended up having to replace the whole server which was only 3 years old.
We have issues like this all the time. Grey static. Failed starts. Playback randomly stopping. CONTENT LITERALLY DISAPPEARING. You just can't predict it and there's not much you can do.
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Dave Macaulay
Film God
Posts: 2321
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-22-2015 08:10 AM
I agree, show disruptions are very rare. I haven't heard of a show stopped - except for power failure or lamp failure - in the sites we service. Fail to start is still rare but more common and generally operator error.
We had a spate of weirdness with series 1 projectors that would flash (usually to black) in shows. That's been pretty much eliminated.
Doremi servers will play fine with 1 of the 3 RAID drives missing, but may stutter or stop if the 3rd drive is bad in certain ways: removing (in diagnostic tool) a failing RAID drive fixes that problem until a new drive can be installed.
I watched the Arclight videos, there's no indication of what actually went wrong but apparently the operator couldn't get the show restarted at the right time, showed some much later content and gave away some of the ending. No SW fan could have any uncertainty about the ending anyway - the good guys were going to win - and I don't know exactly what was "important" revealed, like just who has been killed off... but that is 100% operator error.
Complaints about bad convergence, flickering lamps, dark images, poor focus - these are complaints about the management and staff. Management has chosen to avoid maintenance costs if they don't have regular technical maintenance to do convergence and cleaning, or don't replace lamps when they get flaky. If management has actually decided to pay for staff trained in projection, the staff are not doing their jobs if the image is out of focus or misaligned,
Mechanical failure on film systems wasn't unheard of. Many problems would "only" damage the fragile film and, although the show would go on, there would be unrepairable annoying scratches or missing parts where severely damaged film had to be cut out - permanently in that print. We may all be perfect professional projectionists ... but damn! I had very few used prints come in with no damage.
A film breakdown could cause serious delays but hey, the film would start again where it stopped!
Digital cinema haters will of course blow every shortcoming and failure out of proportion. Count on this though - film is not coming back.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 12-22-2015 10:31 AM
I'm a computer guy. I think the idea of digital cinema is like the next best thing to titties and beer but the way it has been implemented, today, is like a black box with magic fairies inside. You push a button and movies come out as if by magic. But, if the magic fairies get tired, you can't make a movie and the only thing you can do is call somebody on the phone. The unseen voice on the other end of the line can help you, maybe, half of the time.
Digital cinema might be cooler than the other side of the pillow but I ***HATE*** working on a black box!
I was forced to throw out a perfectly good machine that cost $50,000 and replace it with another machine that cost $250,000 and which is almost as good as the one I threw in the dumpster.
They didn't even buy me dinner, first...
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