Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Lord Of The Rings 3: Return Of The King, SRD playback

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Posted by Alexander Smith (Member # 1769) on 01-06-2004, 04:00 PM:

Kit: Dolby CP500-D, Strong picture and sound heads.

Since we opened our two copies of LotR3, we've not been able to play them in SRD correctly. Our support engineer has given the Dolby Digital reader and processor a full alignment check (no problems found, focus 68, azimuth 0, mag. width 100%, corners found 99%) e.t.c. We've having to play them both in SR, where it works fine.

There are other observations:
1. When running the adverts and trailers, the digital playback is good (error rates of about 4). As soon as reel 1 starts, the vertical jitter shoots up to about 4.5 (as displayed by WinDRAS) and the error rate changes between 6, 7 and F(ail). At this time the error concealment becomes quite audible, mostly on the centre channel. Sounds like a muted 'popping' sound. Sections of reels are worse than others, with some just reverting to SR.

2. If this is left running, by about reel 3 or 4 the sound is breaking up and eventually goes to silence. It won't revert to SR because the processor still thinks it is playing in Digital. The vertical jitter was reading about 6.0 by this time.

3. I watched a different film in the same screen, in SRD and the playback was excellent.

4. As a test, we moved the final reel of LotR3 to another screen with the same sound system, and it played back correctly.

5. Also, we tried swapping all the cards of the digital sub-system with "known good" cards and the problem persisted.

Has anyone had a similar experience with LotR3? Our engineer told me that other cinemas in the UK are also having to play LotR3 in either SR or some other digital format.

To me, all this points to the print being border-line out-of-spec. Naturally it's a brand new print from Deluxe. For other reasons I've already requested a replacement reel 1, but I was informed that our chances of getting it are slim to none.

Our programme next week means we're moving the print to another SRD screen, (where we tested the final reel), so that should allow us to play in SRD. I've volunteered to watch and listen to the copy in that screen, so I'll post back with my observations.

Posted by Dick Vaughan (Member # 540) on 01-06-2004, 04:11 PM:

I went to see ROTK at the Warner Village (Vue) Cinema in Leeds on Sunday as we don't get our hands on a print for another 4 weeks.

The majority of the print ran fine until it hit the credits.
The sound dropped out completely on a number of occasions which sounds like a similar problem to the one you highlighted and was badly distorted in others.I am not sure which digital systems they are equipped with .
There was also terrible colour casts over the picture like a mixture of lab fogging and bad developing which went on for over 5 minutes [thumbsdown]

Posted by Michael Harlow (Member # 1353) on 01-06-2004, 04:50 PM:

I have found on our LOTR3 that the surround seems very loud, louder than the screen channels. We have tried a print of Love Actually on the same screen and the "mix" is perfect. Future Projections came and checked the alignment and all perfect. We do not have digital yet though.

Posted by Alexander Smith (Member # 1769) on 01-09-2004, 03:12 PM:

Last night I ran our print of LotR3 in our other Dolby Digital screen, and it played back (to my ears) perfectly. I heard it revert to SR about twice during the entire show, and one of those was during the closing credits.

However, WinDRAS reported the alignment was quite wierd (this is for near the beginning of reel 8):
Error rating: 0.0
Lateral position: -107.14
Track Width: 79
Focus: 67
Azimuth: 1
Vertical jitter: 420.05

So the track width and vertical jitter are "well off", although we had our service engineer align the digital reader earlier in the week with calibrated CAT69T in the usual way.

I suppose it's a minor miracle that the digital playback is mostly error free.

Meanwhile over in the screen where we couldn't play LotR3 in digital at all, I ran our copy of "The Last Samurai", and the results were quite poor. It was reverting to SR alot and the error rating was changing from zero to F, the lateral position was varying +/- 0.5 around 1.5, the track width was steady at 101%, the azimuth was wandering slowly between -10 and +30 and the vertical jitter was varying between 50 and 250.

Our engineer informed us that it may be necessary to buy a spring upgrade kit (if the playback didn't improve with a different print), when we get it fitted I'll see if that improves things.

I hope this is of some use to anyone else having similar problems, I can make the .dqc files available, on request.

Alex.

Posted by David Favel (Member # 1125) on 01-09-2004, 05:09 PM:

In New Zealand the LOTR prints are made locally, hence the best we can achieve is an error rate of 3/4. With drop outs in the credits only. This is quite annoying as a lot of people stay to see either their name or a friends name in the credit roll

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 01-09-2004, 05:34 PM:

I ran a print in interlock and watched the two screens error rates carefully.

One screen has a CP500 and the other a CP65 and DA20. They both ran about half a step between them. Then for some reason I started having problems in the DA20 screen. I did a full
re-alignment and things seemed to settle down. I have mentioned in another post that I get some strange readings from DRas & WinDras at times....

However I also had three other prints that started to display SRD problems. I found out that other cinemas had similar problems with the same films. It points to printing problems with the SRD track and poor quality control.

DTS is a much more robust system and based on my experience would be the system of choice. The time code is by its nature very robust, has an error window of some five seconds and is not a lossy system. It either plays or it don't!

However SRD is a lace it up and forget it system..... ideally.

I can set a system up and have green across the board on DRAS software and yet the next print will revert. The funny thing is that the prints you would expect to have iffy tracks, bollyword films for example, often run with the lowest error rates!

Dolby need to look into the quality of SRD tracks if its reputation is not going to be affected. We live in an age of innovation and technical marvels.... yet consistency, in SRD tracks, seems to be beyond us!

One thought thats just come to me.... is this anything to do with the change to cyan tracks and the different processing of prints as a result. Seems a coincidence that we are now at the point of doing print runs totally in cyan and the poor quality of SRD tracks.... has something changed thats having a knock on effect that was not expected?

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 01-09-2004, 05:49 PM:

First I never use dras/windras to align a reader trust the scope that is the best method

Posted by Stephen Wilkinson (Member # 1463) on 01-10-2004, 07:01 PM:

quote:
One thought thats just come to me.... is this anything to do with the change to cyan tracks and the different processing of prints as a result. Seems a coincidence that we are now at the point of doing print runs totally in cyan and the poor quality of SRD tracks.... has something changed thats having a knock on effect that was not expected?

I had wondered about this.

When we started to get "Hi-Magenta" (pink coloured analogue and SRD tracks) for more compatibility to reverse scan readers, as an interim to Cyan prints (when ever that starts here sometime this year), some places had problems with their SRD having higher error rates.

Maybe it was just coincidence? Does anyone have any thoughts?

BTW I know of a place that has 3 Return of the King prints, but one has a much higher Error rate (6/7) than the other 2 (3/4). All have been run in same theatre/house as a check.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 01-10-2004, 08:53 PM:

Your analog tracks are pink colored? High Magenta should still look black due to the retained silver except for a thin sliver of magenta at the edge.

SR-D should still be black / clear except where they've experimentally let it go all cyan along with a cyan dye-only analog track although based on the discussion here those two things are not necessarily related as the digital track is normally a dye-only black image when printed with white light.

Any sort of all-magenta image would be difficult to read with red LED's.

Posted by Stephen Wilkinson (Member # 1463) on 01-10-2004, 10:20 PM:

The analogue sound and digital information are still black, but where it use to be white (that the LED's shine through) is a transparent pink.

I realize the pink is ignored by the CCD camera in a Cat 701 and the light is red, but wouldn't (the pink film) lessen the difference between 1s and 0s, like a filter, than if it was clear?

Or have I just been working too many double shifts? [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 01-11-2004, 12:33 AM:

The transperant area is clear not pink
Dye tracks have no effect on SRD as they have never been reprocessed at any time in the past and have always been a dye image

Posted by Alexander Smith (Member # 1769) on 01-11-2004, 09:37 AM:

Just w.r.t. Gordon McLeod's comment about alignment of digital readers:

I don't have a 'scope, but I don't actually do alignments either. I only use WinDRAS to monitor to performance of our Dolby Digital systems. FWIW Our engineer uses a scope and calibrated CAT69T film in the "normal" manner.

In general:

I still think it's a bit poor that the quality and nature of the printing can be allowed to get so lax, as to start affecting some digital readers.

FWIW we don't have DTS here either, it's nothing to do with company policy, just they didn't specify it for the original fit-out.

Alex.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 01-11-2004, 01:02 PM:

Dye tracks should have no bearing on SR-D but the first general dye-only release, "Anything Else," did have cyan SR-D tracks for no apparent reason.

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 01-11-2004, 01:08 PM:

Gordon you are of course quite right about using a scope.... however in the real world the average projectionist only has DRAS or WinDras to monitor the performance of the digital system. From what I've seen the information that is presenten is often quite different than what is displayed on the DA20 itself.

I know of situations where an engineer will pass a reader as perfect and yet a print will not run well. Yet the same print has run perfectly in another screen. Both screens have passed examination and certified correct?

It just seems that recently the situation is getting worse and more prints are showing higher error rates and reversions than would normally have been expected.

so whats the solution...

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 01-11-2004, 01:47 PM:

The problem with windras/dras is that it isn't in real time for doing any alignment
As for QC'ing a print dolby actual has a QC program for that purpose
basement readers in my experience tend to have more print issues than most of the penthouses do

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 01-11-2004, 03:34 PM:

I've seen ALOT of theatres with bad SRD tracks on LOTR. There have also been many bad DTS time code tracks as well lately, not on LOTR, leaving me to believe that the labs are really going down hill quickly. In at least two locations the replacement reels flown in still had bad SRD and DTS on them. Sad that it might ultimately be the labs that may bring down film exhibition as a whole.....

All of this goings on is another reason to have nothing but the best analog playback available!! If your digital system won't work why on earth would you want to put your customers through 8 to 16 weeks of piss poor analog. It definatley pays to pay attention to this often overlooked, skimped on, and at times flatly skipped over section of the playback chain when in reality it is still the most important aspect of film sound.

Mark @ CLACO

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 01-11-2004, 03:40 PM:

I wouldn't blame the labs but the creative talent/financial backers who dictate the time frame for printing
Also I haven't seen any major increase in print defects up here

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 01-11-2004, 05:59 PM:

At least U.S. theatres have dts to fall back if Dolby Digital does not play. Here in Germany, the Warner Bros. people went completely mad and paranoid - they would not send any dts discs to theatres, then they provided them for a certain theatre chain only. All out of fear of piracy, but they have no problem giving dts discs with the same German dub to theatres in Austria or Switzerland. [Mad]

On a local projectionist's forum I found many complaint about lousy DD tracks on this film, so a number of theatres will have to show LOTR3 in Dolby SR analog. What a way to run a railroad!

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 01-11-2004, 07:25 PM:

The labs need to figure out that QC does not stand for Quick and Crappy. The labs are the only ones who can improve their own quality, no one else can do it for them; so trying to blame someone else for the labs screw-ups is just non-sence. If the labs need more time, they must demand it. If they can get together on this it will work. But, just how much time does it take for someone who knows what their doing to look at some of the film on its way out of the processor; not much. If the labs cannot improve their quality, then they are out of business. That is the way things work in a free market. We don't want a bunch of excuses, do the job right, or close the doors and go home.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-11-2004, 07:30 PM:

The "free market" is why the labs don't ask for more time.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 01-11-2004, 07:56 PM:

Bruce to be blunt you are out to lunch the labs provide what the customer wants on the time table the customer wants or the customer will go else where
To QC digital tracks must be done in real time so if you are crazy enough to think that 2000 odd prints are going to be tested then you are on a different world
I really doubt that there is more than about 2% of all footage printed world wide that fails
Now of course if you want to wait and can afford to pay for it I am sure you could get a real time printed print for your location [Big Grin]

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-11-2004, 07:56 PM:

quote:
Here in Germany, the Warner Bros. people went completely mad and paranoid - they would not send any dts discs to theatres, then they provided them for a certain theatre chain only. All out of fear of piracy

How much you wanna bet these doofs at the MPAA and Warner Germany don't even realize that you can't stick a dts disc in a cd or dvd player and listen? [Razz]

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 01-11-2004, 10:34 PM:

Very few mass-produced items can have 100% testing. Statistical methods are used to sample and test. Random problems can occur, but the systematic ones are usually caught. Returned reels come right off the bottom line, as they have to be remade, so successful labs keep defect percentages very low. Here are the release print procedures from the ACVL manual:

http://www.acvl.org/manual.htm

http://www.acvl.org/manual/chap4.htm