Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Dual inventory print hassles...again!

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-02-2003, 02:02 PM:

From the FITA thread on "X-Men 2"

quote:
Some prints DO have SDDS, but not all.
One of our prints had a reel that was not SDDS, but the rest were.

Why oh why are they doing this? Is Sony now charging by the quantity of prints made? Does anyone have an insight to this decision to suddenly make dual inventory prints?

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 05-02-2003, 02:14 PM:

Brad it's like going back to those Dolby A and SR print inventory days.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 05-02-2003, 02:21 PM:

Probably another squabble among the "big boys" or somebody just screwed up at the plant.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 05-02-2003, 02:47 PM:

Aren't the soundtracks all printed at the same time?

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-02-2003, 02:58 PM:

Yes, all soundtracks are on one sound negative (analog, Dolby Digital, SDDS and DTS). But licensing fees could vary by the number of prints made, so they may choose not to print one of the formats by turning off the printer lamp for that area. Another possibility is that lab QC might find some defects in one of the digital tracks, and negotiate having those prints sold for use only in areas not needing that track.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-02-2003, 03:08 PM:

Another reason might have been that the SDDS track has smaller pixels (or "fixels") and therefore is more difficult to print, or the prints can not be copied with the same speed as without the SDDS track. Maybe they decided to print a pile of reels without SDDS so they could print them at higher speed which of course will also have affected the image quality.

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 05-02-2003, 03:33 PM:

Fox had dual inventory of prints on "Die Hard: With a Vengeance"
There was SRD/DTS/SR prints and SDDS/DTS/SR prints.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-02-2003, 04:45 PM:

Perhaps there were multiple sound negatives? Maybe someone decided to make SDDS prints at the last minute and only the later prints have SDDS tracks?

Anyway, why was there a need for dual-inventory Dolby A and Dolby SR prints? If I were the distributor, I'd rather take the risk of having SR prints being played in A (which happens all the time even today and doesn't sound offensively bad) than risk having Dolby A prints being played in SR (which sounds terrible). Anyway, the theatres that didn't upgrade to SR probably didn't (don't) care much about sound quality, anyway.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-02-2003, 05:12 PM:

I have seen Fox screw around with Quad Format prints before. I have some frames from a single print of "Strange Days." Some of the frames have SDDS soundtracking on them while some others clearly do not. Just SR/SRD/DTS. Weird.

I'm wondering if the "opening in 93 countries 5-2-03" push has anything to do with the sans-SDDS thing. The United States has the prevailing majority of SDDS installations. So many theaters in Europe, the Far East and many other regions are heavily installed with Dolby Digital and DTS to a lesser extent.

John's probably right though. Licensing fees on print count seems like a likely culprit.

At any rate, in checking the Dallas and Oklahoma City newspapers today, I saw a good number of ads CLAIMING their shows of "X2" were in SDDS. I'm not taking any chances. I'm finding a theater with DTS or Dolby Digital.

Posted by John T. Hendrickson, Jr (Member # 849) on 05-02-2003, 06:32 PM:

All three of my prints had no SDDS. If my memory serves me correctly, they were print #'s 2886,2887, and 2888 out of the ETS depot in Rahway, NJ. Not a problem, since we have DTS.

I did remark to some of my people that I hope the folks up the road (our competition) had either Dolby Digital or DTS as well as SDDS, or they would be [bs]

out of luck. [Smile]

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 05-02-2003, 08:01 PM:

Reel 1 of the print I just saw looked VERY different from reels 2-7. Reel 1 was very grainy and had a washed-out look, no blacks. As soon as reel 2 started it looked 100% better for the remainder of the movie. Whatever that means.

Posted by Patrick McDonough (Member # 1363) on 05-02-2003, 11:15 PM:

our print was fine, no problems at all

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 05-03-2003, 01:51 AM:

Has anyone noticed whether or not the SDDS prints are only printed on 2393? I have an SDDS print on 2393, anyone have one on 2383?

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-03-2003, 01:58 AM:

All of the prints I handled were on 2393 and no SDDS.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-03-2003, 08:09 AM:

Not a 100% sure, but I think the license fee for SDDS is the same regardless of how many prints you make. There is a one-time fee for the encoding, at least that`s how it is here.
Maybe some labs are still not equipped for SDDS or maybe some prints were made outside the US? I wonder if many American prints are made in cheap labs in Mexico or somewhere else outside the US?

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 05-03-2003, 09:34 AM:

I had heard somewhere (but I could be wrong) that Sony is now only charging, like, $1 to license SDDS. This tends to make sense, since they seem to have given up.

I'm wondering if the reason some prints don't have SDDS is because the labs in those areas have decided not to maintain their SDDS recorders.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 05-03-2003, 09:56 AM:

Once the sound negative exists with SDDS on it (which should be true if there are _any_ SDDS prints), isn't printing SDDS just a matter of having the lamp on in both SDDS areas? I would think that would be basically zero maintenance.

Facilities to actually record the SDDS track on the sound negative are probably more complicated, but again, tht should only happen once.)

Perhaps, though, the effort required to QC the SDDS tracks after prints are made is significant...

--jhawk

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 05-03-2003, 10:24 AM:

We had both prints on 2393, and both prints without SDDS. Which reel(s) does the SDDS track appear on? Is it a REAL track or just a strip of blue on the edges? Could it be that the attatched trailer is in SDDS but the feature isn't, and so that explains the "presence" of an SDDS track on Reel 1?

I noticed the SDDS stopped after the attatched trailer, and never showed up again on the print.

=TMP=

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-03-2003, 10:52 AM:

quote:
isn't printing SDDS just a matter of having the lamp on in both SDDS areas?

Like I said before, without the SDDS track the print can be done at higher speed. Probably for some releases they decide to have the SDDS track only on some prints so they can do the other ones at higher speed.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-03-2003, 12:32 PM:

Here's a visual of the difference between an actual SDDS track and just a field a blue-ish ink on the edges.

This was the situation on a single print of "Strange Days". Some reels had SDDS and some did not. Fox is pretty wierd about how they handle SDDS. Kinda lends prudence to the idea of only screening DTS and Dolby Digital for Fox releases.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-03-2003, 03:57 PM:

That is actually a good example for a misprinted SDDS track.
Look at the S track (on the left side near the other sound tracks) and compare it to the P track (on the right or picture side).
Note that the vertical dark outer edge of the S track is too thin. It should extend to the outer edge of the film like on the right side. It should also be uniformly dark, not getting lighter towards the edge as seen here.
This edgemark and the very fine transparent line between it and the actual data blocks is there for horizontal synchronisation. If it is printed as badly as here, the camera might not find sync, the track might fail and force the system to go into digital fallback.
Also note that the inner edgemark is too thick and extends practically into the Dolby Digital data blocks.
This was printed on a very badly aligned machine.

In most cases when you have a failing SDDS track, you will find similarly misprinted tracks. The misprinted outer edgemark can often be seen with the naked eye if you hold a white piece of paper under the track. This occurs most often on the P track, but in this example it is the S track which is affected.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-03-2003, 05:19 PM:

Poor AMC.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-05-2003, 12:56 PM:

I have heard that AMC have equipped all their screens with SDDS. Apart from the cited example, do American distributors put the track on all their prints? If there are some releases with and without SDDS, do they make sure that AMC cinemas get the ones with it?

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-05-2003, 01:06 PM:

Michael--that may be true for AMC's new construction. It is definitely not true for the ex-GCC houses, which have whatever equipment was installed over the years. That usually is a mix of all formats, tending towards DTS and, to a lesser extend, SRD. Most complexes have at least one SDDS unit, however.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 05-05-2003, 01:17 PM:

As for original AMC builds, all 72 screens in Central Ohio have SDDS. A few of the larger houses in each complex have DTS or DOLBY DIGITAL.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-05-2003, 02:00 PM:

What about 6/8 channels?

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 05-05-2003, 02:31 PM:

While most major studios release their films with all three digital sound formats, I have noticed Paramount and Fox only includes SDDS tracks with 'big' pictures and only use SRD and DTS for most of their other pictures. There are times when even DTS is not used on some of their pictures. I wonder why studios such as Universal, Dreamworks, Warner Brothers and Disney will always use all three formats and Paramont and Fox only favors SRD and DTS. Do they have a personal grudge against Sony?

-Claude

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 05-05-2003, 02:35 PM:

While most major studios release their films with all three digital sound formats, I have noticed Paramount and Fox only includes SDDS tracks with 'big' pictures and only use SRD and DTS for most of their other pictures. There are times when even DTS is not used on some of their pictures. I wonder why studios such as Universal, Dreamworks, Warner Brothers and Disney will always use all three formats and Paramont and Fox only favors SRD and DTS. Do they have a personal grudge against Sony?

-Claude

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 05-05-2003, 03:25 PM:

quote:
What about 6/8 channels?

When AMC first adopted SDDS, all of their 4 (or 6) channel (big) houses were converted to 8 channel SDDS, and all of their front/surround (small) houses were converted to six channel SDDS (and hence also 4 channel analog). Someone else could speak to new installs, as I haven't been involved with any recently.

What I really don't understand about all this is that all the attached trailers on X2 have an SDDS track. So why the rest of the print doesn't have it is beyond me. Oh, well.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-05-2003, 05:05 PM:

Most SDDS houses are 5.1 channel (three stage channels). This is just a guess, but from judging averages I have seen in theaters I have visited in a number of cities and based on some advertising, I would say fewer than 20% of all SDDS installations are wired for 7.1. Most AMC 24-plex theaters have at best 4 to 6 screens equipped for SDDS-8. Could be fewer than that in smaller markets.

I think studio politics play a part in why some distributors choose not to use SDDS and why others do. For the longest time Paramount has typically released many of their films SRD-DTS, with the lesser dramas and such going out SRD or SR only. Fox will get on a SRD-DTS trend at times and then go SRD or SR only on some other releases (particularly the Fox Searchlight ones).

Universal supports both DTS and SDDS, but I wonder if they have some kind of quid-pro-quo deal with Sony. From the time Universal started supporting SDDS on nearly all their releases, nearly all Sony releases have been supporting DTS.

There probably could be some quality control issues as well, depending upon where the distributors prefer to have their film prints manufactured. It does seem strange though that companies like Buena Vista, Universal, Sony and Warner Bros. have little problem issuing single inventory Quad Format prints whereas Fox keeps sending out this mixed bag of Quad and sans-SDDS reels on some major releases.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-05-2003, 05:45 PM:

I guess you are right - there are some very funny studio politics going on. As if it would matter! Exhibitors buy the system they like best for completely different reasons. They should just give out prints with all the formats, and also see to it that the dts discs are always there. I understand of course that some smaller distributors cannot afford Quad prints.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-05-2003, 08:19 PM:

It can be more difficult for the smaller distributors to do quad format, but it is still do-able. I've seen plenty of Miramax releases go out Quad. Destination Films released a fair number of Quad features.

The easier thing for indie products is just doing Dolby Digital. But there's been a few here and there that have released DTS discs burned onto a short run of CD-Rs. Of course, the other consideration is having a budget in place that allows a good 5.7/7.1 track to be crafted -that way doing a quad release is worth it. With a lot of indie releases the DD 5.1 tracks are pretty darned conservative, to the point where you don't feel like you would be missing a whole lot just watching the movie in SR optical.

For any major release, like "X-Men 2", they really ought to be able to get well aligned quad format prints delivered in single inventory. The only thing I can figure as an excuse for this is a last minute rush job in making the prints where some of the QC gets screwed up. The SDDS track would seem to be the weakest link in all of that.