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Author Topic: Another digital disaster Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 02-06-2013 04:50 PM                        Exactly. I remember several fuckups from my days in the booth, but most of the time they degraded the show rather than stopped it from happening totally and utterly. One of the Jurassic Park movies (this would have been 1995 or 6, so I think it was the second) sticks in my mind - on the second day a drive in the DTS player died, and we discovered the hard way that the analogue track on reel 4 of the print was of the German dub. Inflicting 20 minutes of badly dubbed dinosaur growls in German wasn't ideal, but the bottom line was having to give out a few comps and free ice creams, not several hundred refunds. All of these DCP no-show horror stories such as the one reported in this thread seem to be caused by KDM issues, and you'd have thought by now that distributors would have relaxed the time windows on them and generally started trusting exhibitors more in an attempt to deal with the problem.  |  IP: Logged Jock Blakley Expert Film Handler Posts: 218 From: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Registered: Oct 2011 posted 02-06-2013 06:08 PM                     quote: Martin McCaffery Just curious. Is everywhere along the DCP production chain as heavily secured as the theatre? Is there some security operation that prevents the lab from running off unkeyed versions of the DCP for their own profit and amusement? Or is Hollywood still convinced that all of their bootlegging troubles start at the theatre? It would depend upon the data and staff security arrangements at each individual mastering facility, but there's nothing inherent to the D-Cinema mastering process that prevents the post house or lab from taking liberties with the content. I'm not sure whether unencrypted versions of the DCP would be the likely outcome, though. To make the DCP the lab has obviously got to have some form of Digital Source Master, which usually takes the form of a DPX or TIFF sequence at full resolution and full colour depth, along with the LPCM Wave soundtrack. The sheer size of the DSM is an inherent defence, granted, but again that comes down to whether the facility's security procedures allow staff to freely carry 4 TB drives in and out all day.  |  IP: Logged Dennis Benjamin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1445 From: Denton, MD Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-07-2013 08:17 AM                        quote: Louis Bornwasser A former customer of mine, who has converted to digital said today. "With film we had problems that we could deal with ourselves. With digital we still have problems. Only difference is that most of the digital problems we are powerless to solve ourselves." I think the above quote is the number one thing that most theatre owners are not prepared for. It's quite the learning curve for most people out there. Manny: I dealt with a key issue recently that had the key expiring at the start time of the feature. We called Deluxe, they recommended the theatre start the movie one minute early. I told the theatre owner to ask for a newly generated key. During the process of dealing with this I realized that Technicolor and Deluxe are handling their key generation completely different. Some keys are generated off of GMT, some aren't. In the case of the key I was just talking about, the key was expiring 5 hours off what it stated it was good until. But when I went into the .XML code of other keys, they didn't have the +/- 5 hours. Zero consistency.  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-07-2013 08:46 PM                     That's unfortunate. Was that a one-time snag, or is that sort of thing an everyday occurrence for you? Was it a sneak preview, or did you only have one screening? And are you saying that both Technicolor AND Deluxe are inconsistently using Z-Time? Or is one company using it and the other not using it? (Sorry for all the questions -- I just want to understand the situation more clearly.) Personally, I have only encountered a few instances where KDM's arrived with errors and needed some form of correction or revision -- maybe two cases. Maybe I'm lucky, but that doesn't stop me from having what I like to call "a healthy level of paranoia." So, as a precautionary measure, to aid in "catching" this kind of problem ahead of time, part of the info that I fill-in on my inspection report is: Date KDM rec'd KDM Start KDM Expire That's a "dummy check" for myself -- it reminds me to cross check the KDM with the play dates. Another good reason to record that info is...it could help explain why a film couldn't be thoroughly QC'ed before show time. ^^ Is that "healthy" paranoia? You be the judge...  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-08-2013 12:20 AM                        For what it's worth we've never had a problem with a KDM since going digital in June 2010. I'm quite surprised to hear that so many others seem to have troubles.  |  IP: Logged Rick Raskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1100 From: Manassas Virginia Registered: Jan 2003 posted 02-08-2013 06:40 AM                     I've been watching this thread with great interest and I feel that things like Manny's "healthy paranoia" are a direct result of the excessive paranoia exhibited by the distributors. There are plenty of opportunities for someone willing to expend the effort to pirate a copy of a film. The content providers need to re-examine their position on security and consider issuing KDMs that are good for a theater's entire run of a film and not locked so close to the first show. Of course, coding the KDM for a day or two prior to the run should be standard practice to allow for the necessary QC checks. Better yet, don't even bother to encrypt the content.  |  IP: Logged Louis Bornwasser Film God Posts: 4441 From: prospect ky usa Registered: Mar 2005 posted 02-08-2013 06:50 AM                        In the time since digital started more world premieres have been lost (for various reasons) than in the entire film era. Most notably, Disney had problems with no-shows technically in Hollywood at their premiere house. This is not to say that we didn't have problems with film premieres too, but they were resolved or made acceptable enough; in other words, they did run. Again, analog lends itself to repair more easily than encoded digital, where an outside agency is required. Louis  |  IP: Logged

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