|
|
This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Shipping out DCP drives after ingestion but before the show - a cautionary tale
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 05-03-2016 09:12 AM
I think a misunderstanding has developed here, because Frank is working in a fundamentally different theater environment from many of the rest of us: it's a small business of which he is the owner (and therefore he doesn't have to get anyone else's permission to, in effect, spend someone else's money on QC), showing only one or two features a week, using DCPs that almost always arrive with enough time to perform a real time screen check before the first public screening.
Given the prominence of his theater in a relatively small local economy and the extensive, negative PR that would result from a technical problem during a screening, Frank's policy makes total sense - and more to the point, it's actually possible to do it.
I am responsible for projection in an orgnanization that operates three theaters in two locations, 11 miles (and anywhere between 45 minutes and two hours' driving through one of the most congested metros in the world) apart. We typically screen between 20 and 35 features a week, consisting of double features on four or five nights a week in each house, and split roughly half and half between film and DCP. There is no projectionist scheduled to work on "dark" days. The budget simply isn't there to schedule one to perform real-time viewing of anything except titles relating to a high-profile show (e.g. with a VIP in attendance), and even if were, late arriving prints and DCPs, and/or KDMs that don't open until just before showtime would make it impossible to do that in many cases.
For a typical full-scale festival, you're looking at 60 to 100 hours of content playing over 3-5 days. Much of that is shorts, which are even more time consuming to tech check than features (because the basic technical information about each print or DCP has to be recorded and verified per title, whether it runs for 2 minutes or 200). Festival programmers often don't lock their programs until around a week out from the opening night, and only then do materials start to arrive. Every hour we spend tech checking their stuff is billed to them at union rates, and therefore is something they need to find the money for, and need to be convinced that it's worth finding the money for.
I didn't mean this thread to drift into an "isn't it hard projecting homebrew DCPs at fests" rant, but rather to point out a specific technical issue that often comes up at theaters that show arthouse content and do festivals (requests to ship out DCP distribution drives after ingestion but before the show).
quote: Carl Hetherington
I guess in an ideal world DCP authoring software would have an option to write the "distribution" disk in its entirety; i.e. formatting it with EXT2 and copying the right files into the right places.
That would be such a cool feature to have on DCP-o-Matic (hint, unsubtle hint)! As well as an "Upload to TMS when done" check box, have another one underneath it that says "Create distribution media on [pull-down to select drive]". If the Windows and Mac versions could then rewrite the partition table with a GPT one, format a single volume partition as ext2 or 3, with the correct inode size, then write the DCP files and set the permissions per ISDCF spec and dismount the volume, that would solve so many problems, because you'd effectively have an idiotproof way for PC and Mac users to produce totally ISDCF-compliant distribution drives. The only problem, I guess, would be if the user accidentally selected the wrong drive to nuke and re-write. You'd need a "Think before you click" popup in that procedure at the very least.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Tony Bandiera Jr
Film God
Posts: 3067
From: Moreland Idaho
Registered: Apr 2004
|
posted 05-03-2016 10:26 AM
Please don't get me wrong, I wasn't after Frank because of the fact that he does own his business and can, as Leo pointed out, take the time to QC his features..that is smart business and admirable. (If I ran my own cinema with a play schedule like his I would also QC every feature..)
What irritated me was the follow up post I quoted, and the bolded key points, which were, IMHO, very condescending and totally unnecessary. Perhaps he didn't mean them to come off as they read, but still....
The unfortunate fact is that not only has digital not lived up to the perfection it was touted to be, but the methods of distribution are problematic..something that, after all these years and literally millions of shows, you'd think would have been resolved.
All that said, one thing has become apparent though..the vast majority of showings (maybe even a higher percentage than in the film days) DO get on screen and run without any issues.
| IP: Logged
|
|
Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
|
posted 05-03-2016 02:02 PM
What Leo said above.
For whatever it is worth, the final tally on the aforementioned festival was that upwards of 17% of the DCP content that we played was unplayable as received. About half of this consisted of people who sent non-DCP formats (Pro Res, Blu-Ray, etc.) that needed to be converted and the other half consisted of DCPs that had issues. This does not include easily-fixable issues like HFS-formatted disks and such, though that would probably push the "unplayable as received" value to 20% or so.
This becomes especially problematic with material that arrives at the last possible day before it screens, when time to fix any issues is limited. I thought that one of the promises of D-cinema was that duplicate copies of the disks could be made cheaply, but people are still making festivals circulate disks from one festival to the next, often on short notice. And, for some stupid reason, people even want Blu-Rays returned to them (despite the issues of fingerprints and such and the fact that the return shipping cost probably exceeds the cost of burning another disk).
I really have no idea of how to fix this. I thought that DCP would be a step forward in reliability and quality from the various tape and optical disk formats of the past, but this has really not proven to be the case yet. I have seen a fair number of "coaster" DVDs and Blu-Rays, but the broadcast tape formats have generally been solid (aside from the occasional chewed tape and the time when someone sent us a dub of a 90-minute feature on a 64-minute tape).
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Buck Wilson
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 894
From: St. Joseph MO, USA
Registered: Sep 2010
|
posted 05-03-2016 04:48 PM
quote: Mike Blakesley
Even that doesn't guarantee anything. I had a movie once (forget which one) that "corrupted itself" on night 3 of our run. It worked fine for 2 nights, then on the third night it popped up that "Unknown CPL" message. As if the show was referenced in the play list but didn't exist on the server -- even though it was RIGHT THERE in the list of features.
Heck, I've had content straight up disappear in the middle of a run before. Sunday afternoon, "A customer says the movie hasn't started yet" Go and check, nothing in the playlist, content not even on the server. Gone.
quote: Frank Cox
I assumed that it was a standard practice across the industry -- if you have more screens you have more staff so you would just assign more people to do the pre-screenings or maybe put a staff member on an overnight/all-night shift on Thursday to screen and check the Friday releases while the complex is closed.
At least one of the top 3 chains in the country opens all the movies they can on Thursday night. ![[Mad]](mad.gif) We typically open 80% of our new releases at 7 and 10 on Thursday nights an I really really hate it. Just further making pre screenings impossible.
Frank, I don't, and probably most here, don't disagree with what you're saying. I would certainly pre screen every feature if I could, and absolutely without fail if I ran my own theater. But.... The way things are(shitty), we can't.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 05-03-2016 08:59 PM
quote: Frank Cox
If this was an issue of safety then nobody would allow it to continue.
Actually, safety issues frequently are allowed to continue, often until they kill a bunch of people. When I was a teenager my uncle gave me a book charmingly entitled Great Disasters, which includes gory and graphic accounts of a variety of them, including the Titanic, the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, the Morro Castle, the Quintinshill train crash, the Flixborough chemical works explosion, the DC-10s with dodgy cargo hold doors, and, in our business, the Glen Cinema fire. Of all the disasters described in that book, every one, with the possible exception of the San Francisco earthquake (and even then, I'm sure the death and injury toll was, erm, "enhanced" by buildings that didn't meet code and that sort of thing) were caused mainly or exclusively by safety measures that could have been taken but weren't. After the disasters, those safety measures were either introduced for the first time, or started to be enforced properly. But it took a large pile of bodies for that to happen.
But, as you point out, a DCP that won't play isn't going to kill everyone, and so the industry aims for a "press play and pray" reliability rate that justifies the cost of it, and no higher.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
|
posted 05-04-2016 09:56 AM
I probably do the drive-in version of Justin's procedures...
A question, though. Doesn't the process of copying the drive have some kind of integrity check? The only issues we've had, going into 4 years now, have been in the ingest process, and those features didn't make it into the playlist. That's happened only once that I recall, and was caught well before showtime.
I expect our features to be delivered by Tuesday and keys to be in the inbox by Wednesday, so we get going on Deluxe if that doesn't happen. I'm more concerned about key issues than anything else, but once they actually show up, we haven't had any problems with them.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic