Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Jay and Silent Bob -- all reels not SRD?

This is topic Jay and Silent Bob -- all reels not SRD? in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 08-24-2001, 10:21 PM:

I just finished watching Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in an auditorium equipped with Dolby Digital (auditorium 6 at Carmike 10 in Huntsville) and THX certified.

Two of the reels did not play in digital sound (maybe 3 and 5 -- I know there was one between the two that did not play in digital). I mentioned this to the manager on the way out and he told me that those two reels did not play in Dolby Digital and seemed to indicate that those reels did not have a DD soundrack. I'm sure if this were the case that someone here would have mentioned it in the Trailers and attachments forum or in here somewhere. He even said, "I don't know why they did that, unless they just ran out of money or something."

Can someone here please verify that this movie has the DD soundtrack on all reels?

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 08-24-2001, 11:21 PM:

This has happened before. I ran "Air Force One" which had a Dolby SR-D track on the first two reels- then none on the remaining six reels. The printer forgets that sometimes the distributor does not want an SR-D track, and turns on the recorder.

Although I think Jay and Silent Bob is released by Miramax, who's films usually have an SR-D track. So, maybe that manager is covering up a problem. We didn't get it, so I can't verify.

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 08-25-2001, 12:12 AM:

We screened it last week before the sneak & all of our reels played in SRD. Could have been an exciter lamp going bad in the penthouse or just a couple of misprinted reels.

Posted by Christopher Duvall (Member # 284) on 08-25-2001, 05:11 AM:

We have it as well and it is running fine. I think John is right that the manager may be covering up something but I have also seen things like missing SR-D tracks in reels. So who knows?

Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 08-25-2001, 10:25 AM:

Evans: Either it drops out of digital at the reel changes or the theater got bad reels. Sounds like the manager doesn't want to check it out.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-25-2001, 10:48 AM:

The sound negative contains all analogue and digital tracks and prints them in one pass so it is odd that one is missing. If the printer light failed then there would be nothing at all

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 08-25-2001, 01:38 PM:

quote:
Evans: Either it drops out of digital at the reel changes or the theater got bad reels. Sounds like the manager doesn't want to check it out.

It definitely dropped out of digital at a reel change and went back to digital at the next reel change, then dropped out again at the next, and came back at the next. I saw the reel change cue marks before each drop/comeback.

I was going to fill out the form on the THX WWW site (1-800-PHONE_THX equivalent), but "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" was not a listed movie for this service.

I tend to believe at this point that the theatre must have gotten some misprinted reels. On my quality review, I gave the theatre the benefit of the doubt since I have seen no pattern of such problems in this auditorium before.

There was one oddity with this presentation that may be unrelated to the sound problem, but I'll mention it anyway, just in case. Some flat trailers were played, then the scoep changeover occurred and after the changeover, the aperture plate was out of whack, showing the DTS timecode and part of the soundtrack beyond the left screen edge, and part of the right edge of the image was being cropped. THe imag ealso went out of focus at the scope changeover. I went out and told them (since I did not want to watch the movie this way and I didn't want the other Jay and Silent Bob fans to have to watch it that way either) and the problems were quickly corrected. There was no sound interruption at these points, so I assume this to be unrelated to the DD dropouts/comebacks at reel splices.

This theatre has been well-maintained and the presentation quality has remained high since it opened in 1998, so I'm not going to be harsh on this theatre until I see more of a pattern of problems develop.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

Posted by Stefan Scholz (Member # 147) on 08-25-2001, 02:36 PM:

Somertimes printing staff forgets to turn on the exposure for a digital format. Could happen. With multiple format prints this should nmot be a big problem, asw at least 1 format willplay. I remember another film, the title I forgot, which had an SRD track, but all zero data bits. So it played DD nicely, without sound. Defaulting to Analoge brought the sound back. Someone at the recording facility forgot to route the DD recorder,or more likely it was SDDS only, and they did forget to turn off the DD exposure.

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 08-25-2001, 05:27 PM:

Yeah, sometimes for political reasons (not techinal reasons) the distributor does not want a particular digital track. I'm pretty sure that problem with the aperture plate (showing the DTS timecode) was unrelated to the sound problem.

It could take a few showings to recognize there's a problem with either the print or the sound system. They might of had to screen the feature in a different house than the one it opened in, so wouldn't notice a system problem. Although, now that they know they should get it resolved quickly.

Evans; for a litte test, you might go there again very soon to see if it's been fixed. I think is very fair to give them a bit of a break, since that theater's past reputation has been good.

For a bit of history; At theaters made before DTS came into use, the installer did not have to be too pickey about filing the aperture plate, since there was a little "black" space on the edge of the printed image frame. Now that DTS uses that area, I notice you can see it on the edge of the masking at "pre-DTS days" theaters. We had to refile several plates to get rid of it.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-27-2001, 03:02 PM:

Gordon said: "The sound negative contains all analogue and digital tracks and prints them in one pass so it is odd that one is missing. If the printer light failed then there would be nothing at all"

Although the sound negative carries all four tracks (analog, Dolby Digital, SDDS, and DTS), separately controlled light sources are usually used on the printer. So the printer light for one of the tracks could have malfunctioned for one or two reels. Looking at the print itself would answer the question.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Ken Jacquart (Member # 369) on 08-27-2001, 08:42 PM:

Here's my guess... perhaps the alignment or video amplitude is on the hairy edge of playback. Quite often there are slight differences in paramaters from reel to reel including lateral, azimuth, focus, density. Albeit slight, if the reader is on the edge, this might take it all the way over. My first priority would be to check the video amplitude level. Anything over 2 or 2.5 volts should play, 4 volts is cool... If video amplitude is low, crank up the current, otherwise replace the LED. I haven't heard of any problems with this print so far.

ken

Posted by Bob Ferreira (Member # 102) on 08-28-2001, 11:59 PM:

We watched our copy last week before the opening and all the reels played in digital fine here too, so it wasn't like they didn't put it on there because they "ran out of money" Obviously someone doesn't care for Kevin Smith and the View Askew team...