Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: DTS without timecode

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Posted by Mike Rendall (Member # 1499) on 12-03-2002, 09:41 AM:

I posted this message on rec.arts.movies.tech with no success so hopefully some of the techies who hang out here could help?

I used to know a way to make a dts6D play the contents of the cd-rom without using the time code. This used to involve putting a normal AT PC keyboard in the socket at the back, when the discs had finished loading the OS and application into the dts unit (signified by the flashing system light) you could just press a sequence of keys followed by a number representing the track no. on the disc.

The problem occurs now that I cannot remember the sequence of keys, I think it was Escape followed by Space, then the track number, but having tried that it no longer works. If you put the dts disc into a normal pc and try to run dts.exe it quits before you can read the menu properly that appears on the screen, I assume if you put a ISA video card into the dts6d unit you can watch what is happening? (I thought you needed a video card in a 486 for it to complete the POST? - or maybe I am wrong, or dts have rejigged the BIOS?)

The reason for this is that it is quite nice to hear the THX tags for demonstration purposes (after all it is a student cinema) and listen to all the comedic american cinema chain idents.

Posted by Karen Hultgren (Member # 395) on 12-03-2002, 11:35 AM:

Mike, I think I sent you an email yesturday. Did you not receive it?

Karen at DTS
khultgren@dtsonline.com

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 12-03-2002, 01:16 PM:

There was a discussion here with the title "Playing With dts Menus" or something similar. Just do a search with "dts" and "keyboard" and you will find some answers.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-03-2002, 02:15 PM:

Karen, since this question constantly keeps being asked and every time you answer it via email, will you please just post it here once and for all? The forums shouldn't be used as a sort of phone-in service where the answers to the problems are not posted, for that does no one any good down the road when searching the archives at midnight on a Saturday.

Posted by Mike Rendall (Member # 1499) on 12-04-2002, 03:12 AM:

I have now managed to find the answers ( Thanks Michael and Karen ). I have posted them below if anyone else is interested also.

To make a dts 6d player run without time code....

<Cut from a post from Antonio Marcheselli >

To test sound system in one of our theater I usually connect an old AT keyboard to the DTS 6D, load a disk, wait for "system" led blinking.
Then I press "ESC" in keyboard, to return on main menu.
On main menu I have:
1. Play with timecode
2. Play without timecode
3. I do not remember!
I select 2 and Enter. Wait to have the track list.
I select the track and I press enter, the player goes in Digital and I can hear the soundtrack in the theater without print.
I enjoy myself listening all THX trailer, sometimes!
I have to do all these operations without see any screen of course. I think that with a VGA card onboard you should see also the screens. IMHO a VGA card could be useful because the screen "play with timecode" contains many many useful information: number of break, status of the player, etc etc.

<End of Cut>

The new question I have is.. Now that it is very hard to obtain new 486 motherboards, what technology are the new 6d's being shipped with? are these pentiums or did dts buy up a warehouse full of 486s?

Posted by Shaun Flichel (Member # 1435) on 12-04-2002, 03:29 AM:

IMHO I dont think DTS has Intel or AMD or any other processor. I think they have their own made for such a product and therefore the video card and keyboard is all in their plans to diagnose, correct me if I'm wrong Karen. To me, sound off a CD is Truely digital so in that case I love DTS, Except we are still waitin for a replacement from our company and another unit is looking NFG, still a few bugs to be worked out, I would really like to see a cooling fan in the 6d's though, not just the power supply fan, the components do heat up and I think this is where most of the problems occur, add some breathers in the top with an additional fan. But thats my opinion.

Shaun

Posted by Patrick de Groot (Member # 858) on 12-04-2002, 04:35 AM:

>>To me, sound off a CD is Truely digital so in that case I love DTS
Well, it's just as digital as Dolby Digital is. DTS also uses compression algorithms, only the results are bigger files and so the sound quality is higher some say.

I've read somewhere that Dolby Digital on DVD uses a higher bitrate (higher quality) then SRD on film... Is this true?

And why isn't there yet a followup of DTS (dvd)? There is a lack on competition in this area. Dolby has a monopoly (noone may use there techniques, or they have to pay licensees with restrictions on usage)

It is time for some open standard (at least the decoding part, as with mp3) But Dolby will not develop this nor will DTS...

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-04-2002, 09:48 AM:

The motherboard is a 486 with a specific bios to allow it to boot off a rom disk with Dos

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 12-04-2002, 10:13 AM:

I believe the older ones were 386's. Audio decoding is in hardware so computing needs are minimal.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 12-04-2002, 11:04 AM:

quote:
And why isn't there yet a followup of DTS (dvd)? There is a lack on competition in this area. Dolby has a monopoly (noone may use there techniques, or they have to pay licensees with restrictions on usage)
It is time for some open standard (at least the decoding part, as with mp3) But Dolby will not develop this nor will DTS...

Why should dts switch to DVD? The system as it is can deliver up to 200 minutes of 6-channel audio in very good quality. Then there is the compatibility issue. All the existing units would have to be upgraded. I don`t think theater owners would be very enthusiastic about that.
There will also never be an open standard. Why should Dolby or anybody else make their products available for free? They have developed the system, and they are a professional company, not a charity.
As it is now, most of the cinemas have digital sound, so there wouldn`t be a market for any new system even if there is still a little space available on the prints...

Posted by Mike Rendall (Member # 1499) on 12-04-2002, 11:24 AM:

I thought dts were at some point going to go with DVD drives in their new systems, that way they can have just one disc to contain all the audio for a film in as many languages that they can fit on the disc! (as well as the subtitles)

I suppose, if they use DVD then they will no longer need to use compression so it will be a loss-less digital sound format.

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 12-04-2002, 12:15 PM:

quote:
IMHO I dont think DTS has Intel or AMD or any other processor.

The first DTS-6's used Intel 386SX processors. Later models used Intel 486SX-33 processors (I have seen them with my own eyes- no fans or coolers needed on the early processors)... Motherboards were plain old ISA PC boards- the ROM-DOS is on one of the proprietary DTS hardware boards.

This approach would definitely keep manufacturing costs way down as 386 and 486 processors (today as opposed to 1993) are virtually worthless (in the PC marketplace), as are older ISA-only motherboards.

Karen, is DTS still using the i486 or have they gone to Pentium I's now?

-Aaron

Posted by Karen Hultgren (Member # 395) on 12-04-2002, 01:49 PM:

There is no reason to switch to DVD on DTS players for cinemas at this time. Due to the way we presently encode standard 5.1 sound for cinemas, you won't gain any higher quality on with a DVD disc vs. a CD-ROM disc.

Don't confuse or compare software for the home market with the cinema. They are completely different and not interchangable.

Karen at DTS
khultgren@dtsonline.com

Posted by Karen Hultgren (Member # 395) on 12-04-2002, 01:55 PM:

Brad, I did not post a response to playing DTS discs with a keyboard connected to the player since Mike sent me a private email before he posted here. I saw his question again after I already sent him a response.

Karen at DTS

Posted by Karen Hultgren (Member # 395) on 12-04-2002, 01:59 PM:

Actually, we do use DVD discs for our DTS-CSS units (cinema subtitling, captioning, & narration system).

Karen at DTS
khultgren@dtsonline.com

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-04-2002, 03:00 PM:

No biggie Karen. I just want to make sure that when someone asks a question on the forum that it is resolved either here on the forum, or is resolved off of the forum and the proper solution/answer is posted so that it is archived. Lots of people turn to the search engine on this forum for an answer to a technical problem, and when something is asked and not answered, it only wastes people's time, wastes bandwidth and such practice is against forum policy.

By the way, please edit your posts instead of posting repeatedly. [Wink]

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 12-04-2002, 08:55 PM:

I thought this topic was going to be about running DTS disks without timecode _on the film_ which I only recently learned is done fairly often in the large format world. [Smile]

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 12-04-2002, 10:49 PM:

Just wait for that "timecode converter" so you can mod your DA20 to output timecode to feed your DTS decoder, thus gaining the ability to play DTS on a hypothetical print that has DTS discs and Dolby Digital, but no DTS timecode.

No hypothetical example for why you'd want to do this comes to mind... [Eek!]

--jhawk

Posted by Antonio Marcheselli (Member # 373) on 12-05-2002, 09:56 AM:

Karen,

With DVD you could have some advantages:

- Just one disk for ALL movies
- No compressed sound, as many channels as you want
- All kind of extra (subtitles, trailers, demo, setup and more)

Yes, the price is that all actual units has CD-ROM players...

Bye

Posted by Karen Hultgren (Member # 395) on 12-05-2002, 11:56 AM:

Thanks Antonio. I think you misunderstood my comments. I said the way we "CURRENTLY encode sound for movies" you'd get no extra benefit from DVD vs CD-ROM discs.

At present, only the DTS-CSS system uses DVD discs and drives.

Karen at DTS
khultgren@dtsonline.com

Posted by Antonio Marcheselli (Member # 373) on 12-06-2002, 05:37 AM:

Karen,

Yes, of course. With the current code the benefit would be just the one disk for all... In this case the DVD format won't be so needed!

Why don't you install DVD players? They are compatible with CDs and in a near future with a software upgrade you could change the entire player in a different one. Just a tought...

Bye

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 12-06-2002, 12:11 PM:

Decoding isn't done by software, it's done by the hardware. So it would really be a hardware update, that is if they could make compatible hardware to update the current players with.

The one disc advantage (using DVD) really isn't an advantage anyway. If one disc gets shipped to you, you'll almost always get the second. Plus it's a lot easier to run across town to copy someone elses disc to CD-R than it is to a recordable DVD.

Posted by Karen Hultgren (Member # 395) on 12-06-2002, 12:59 PM:

We don't presently use DVD drives on our standard players because all the players have and support CD-ROM drives. It is not like the CDs you buy at your local music store. CD-ROMs contain software and are like the discs used to download programs onto computers. You cannot play a CD-ROM disc with a DVD drive and visa versa on our players. For now, we are sticking with CD-ROM for cinema discs.

Karen at DTS
khultgren@dtsonline.com

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 12-06-2002, 04:34 PM:

John, that would be pointless.

What would be useful would be a timecode generator driven by a sprocket-driven shaft encoder (pulse generator) that could easily attach in place of the existing TC reader. This would enable workprints which of course have no TC to be played in any theatre without the hassle of bringing in mag dubbers (or dubber + MUT). Just put the audio on CD/R's. The TC generator would be a small PDA sized box with a few keys for entering a reel number (or telling it that the show is going to run as a single strand. And a button to push to indicate that picture start is in the gate. Then when the projector rolls so does time code and so does the DTS player which would be entirely standard. This is one area where the fact that DTS is a double system actually works to advantage.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-06-2002, 05:04 PM:

JSK makes a reader that looks like a DTS reader but has a sprocket and it generates biphase and timecode

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 12-06-2002, 05:37 PM:

Kinoton E-series projectors can also be configured to generate biphase.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 12-06-2002, 11:55 PM:

Yeah, Steve, I know it's pointless...perhaps I failed to get the tongue-in-cheekness of the word "hypothetical" across.

I'm under the impression that DTS supports reading SMPTE timecode instead of DTS timecode. Presumably Karen or someone with some special venue experience (Jan? Gordon?) could tell us more about how this works, but presumably the SMPTE timecode doesn't encode a feature serial #, so it just plays the current feature (and trailers are unsupported)?

Apparently jumper block W1 on the D422 board has two relevent settings:

code:

W1 Position	Function
1	SMPTE timecode enable
2	Don't read user bits

not sure what position 2 really does, but it means something else when 1 is disabled.

[...goes away and does some research...]

Ah yes, here we go. The SMPTE timecode spec includes an idea of timecode bits, and then extra "user bits." If "ignore user bits is unset," the DTS 6D expects the user bits to contain the serial number. Also, it appears that DTS reels become SMPTE hours, and there is a 9 reel limit. So 10 minutes into reel 2 would be SMPTE timecode 02:10:00.00.

How to generate SMPTE timecode? Well, presumably there are a bunch of timecode generators available. DTS makes one, the E175 timecode convertor. It can generate DTS timecode as well as SMPTE timecode, actually, and it reads a biphase input. And you can even program it with a serial number to use on DTS timecode. "So there you go."

It's all about marketting now. Of course, the E175 manual is dated 1999, so it looks like the marketting could use a bigger push. Not too many people who run seperates, I guess... Might be cheaper to build your own SMPTE timecode generator though (or your own DTS timecode generator, it's not obfuscated...).

--jhawk

Posted by Karen Hultgren (Member # 395) on 12-09-2002, 12:58 PM:

There is a unit called the E175 that is a timecode converter. It can convert SMPTE timecode to DTS. It can also convert TACH to DTS or SMPTE timecode.

This unit is used for special venue and not in "standard" theaters. There is no need for it in "standrd" theaters.

With specical venue, we sometimes have to convert sound material that uses SMPTE or TACH for sync. In these cases, the DTS reader is not used. Instaed, the E175 sends timecode info to the player.

Karen at DTS
khultgren@dtsonline.com

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 12-10-2002, 05:21 AM:

BTW, what exactly IS bi-phase? I am aware that it is a transmission method which uses phase shifts rather than pulse modulation, but is that it? Or are there other differences to timecode?

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 12-10-2002, 07:24 AM:

Bi-phase is what many shaft encoders put out: On / off pulses (duty cycle: 50% on / 50% off), so many per revolution (typically mounted to film equipment so they put out 50 or 100 pulses per frame). There are two output lines each carrying an identical pulse stream offset by 90 degrees. Which is leading and which is lagging identifies the direction of rotation. Typically voltage levels are TTL (about 0-.5+ for off, 4.5-5.5+ for on).

Posted by Karen Hultgren (Member # 395) on 12-10-2002, 12:46 PM:

The bi-phase you are referring to is what we call "TACH". It is used on many shaft emcoders to sync up the mag sound track with the picture track (as when running a "double-system" screening). The DTS-E175 can use that as a start to send DTS timecode to the DTS player.

Karen at DTS
khultgren@dtsonline.com

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 12-10-2002, 01:40 PM:

Karen, has that gained any use as a way to run double system previews as I've long advocated or is it pretty much a special venue thing?

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-10-2002, 03:20 PM:

The JSK timecode generator will provide a tach to DTS with a special eprom in it

Posted by Karen Hultgren (Member # 395) on 12-16-2002, 03:09 PM:

Hi Steve,

Right now, the E175 is used on special venue only.

Karen at DTS
khultgren@dtsonline.com

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-16-2002, 03:24 PM:

Two links to JSK products of interest
http://www.jskengineering.com/product%20pages/prod05.htm
http://www.jskengineering.com/product%20pages/prod01.htm

I have several of the generators and find them very reliable

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 12-16-2002, 03:40 PM:

Wow, people actually add extra sprockets to the film path to add shaft encoders? I was under the impression that most double-system work involved adding shaft encoders to already-present driven shafts.

--jhawk

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-16-2002, 10:22 PM:

Adding a shaft encoder is not as simple as it might appear
The number of pulses per frame must match the device being driven
any where from Westrex/RCA standard of 48Hz to 960Hz for Magnatech to 2400Hz for MTM (in quadrature as well)
This usually entails drilling a hole in the back cover of the projector and machineing a new shaft and attaching a timeing pulley to drive a shaftencoder of the correct number of pulse per rev
The new JSK allows a software adapation Far better

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 12-16-2002, 11:45 PM:

That's why the idea of a sprocket with a couple of pad rollers in a device not unlike a DTS TC reader that bolts atop a projector has a lot of merit for a temp setup to run a preview off DTS disks.

Not that the normal hookup, especially a temporary one, is that big a deal. On a Century a pulley goes on the front of the shutter shaft and the encoder bracket can hang off one of the back cover screw holes.

For a Simplex with a 5-Star there is a shaft reducer that goes on the rear of the motor drive pulley (drill and tap three holes or just swap the pulleys with one so modified. Shaft encoder mounts to a stud which screws into one of the back cover thumbscrew holes. For a permanent installation the latter is done along with a back cover that has the lower right part cut away. For a Century or older Simplex with a front shutter shaft a bracket to mount the encoder more properly atop the machine is easily fabricated. I've put them on Super Simplexes and E-7's that way. And removed them from DeVry's! Century is similar but I didn't actually make that pair.