Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: DTS problem: does it sound familiar?

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Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 05-02-2009, 12:21 PM:

A friend at a theater tells me of a "funny" problem he has I can't quite figure out. Perhaps someone here with more DTS experience can help.

I don't know what kind of DTS decoder unit he has, but I know it's not the latest models nor the earliest ones. It had 3 (CD) drives. It was upgraded at some point with 3 (DVD-IDE-2-SCSI) drives.

Well, he tells me that whenever he receives a movie with the sound in 2 (or more) discs, everything works fine.

But that when he gets a movie with the sound in just one disc (he mentions "short" kid's movies and the like), then the sound refuses to play in DTS no matter which one of the (3) bays he places the sole disc into.

Anyone knows if this issue has a known common cause?

Thanks.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-02-2009, 12:55 PM:

That makes no sense at all, but he could test that theory by using this tips page to do the reverse and split a short movie over two CDs and see if it plays.

My bet is that he has a dead drive and the movie is starting on the good drive and dropping out when it starts to pull data from the bad drive. The model he has is the dts6-d, and some models I've found you have to reboot the processor anytime you put a different disc in, so he is probably not rebooting after he moves the disc around.

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 05-02-2009, 01:40 PM:

Thanks Brad. Those are good pointers to check on this problem.

I'll tell him to reboot between retries in different drives with the single disc next time he runs into a short film to confirm. If it is confirmed, I'll make the 2-disc split for him and ask him to check really careful for serious drop out once the second disc starts.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-02-2009, 02:46 PM:

FYI, not all movies have "reel 1" on the "A" disc. Also some movies bounce back and forth between discs as the reels go through (Titanic is one that comes to mind).

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 05-02-2009, 03:18 PM:

Got ya.

Thanks again.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 05-02-2009, 07:30 PM:

Throw in a VGA card, hook up a monitor, and watch the diagnostics...

I agree with Brad, it makes no sense, sounds like we're missing some important detail.

Have you checked to make sure you have 4VDC on the reader with no film? Marginal timecode reader gain can cause a lot of confusing problems.

--jhawk

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 05-03-2009, 12:50 AM:

Julio, I have the opposite problem with my DTS 6-D at UC Irvine. Single discs play fine, but multiple disc films will always crash. Found out my "A" drive is bad. So I just don't use it anymore. [Smile]

As was mentioned, you MUST reboot the DTS unit when changing discs..and DON'T ever put more than one movie's discs into it at a time.

Is you friend doing both of these things:

1: Reboot after changing movie discs (turn power off for about ten seconds then back on)

AND

2: Taking out the movie discs for the film that was in there before?

Also have him look at the sticker on the back for the latest TCR version (1.46 I believe.)

There is no logical reason why a multi-disc movie will play and a single disc will not, unless one of the two things I mentioned aren't being done....

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 05-03-2009, 01:19 AM:

I dunno about must. The 6D reboots itself after you change discs, I've never seen it fail to do that. (Again, way more obvious with a VGA monitor).

--jhawk

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 05-03-2009, 08:23 AM:

I was scratching my head as well with these alleged symptons, but figured maybe DTS did something lately for single discs which could've explained it (i.e. started using DVD media instead of CD's or something which required a code update).

I asked and he wasn't rebooting between tests. But he's also not running a DTS film at the affected screen now, so it'll be a couple of weeks until it can be more conviniently tested. No big deal, the screen also has SRD and it's used on most films around here anyway.

Next time he shows one of those single-disc movies, he's calling and we'll figure it out.

I'll take a vga card to see what the software has to say. He has monitors there.

Thanks again guys for the tips.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-03-2009, 11:17 AM:

quote: John Hawkinson
I dunno about must. The 6D reboots itself after you change discs, I've never seen it fail to do that.

Correction, the 6D units John has used do that. I have worked with some units that did and some that did not. Hence, reboot the thing.

Posted by Mike B. Smith (Member # 2829) on 05-06-2009, 04:20 PM:

Just a few additional comments, in general there is no difference in single or dual disc feature. Single discs are created simply because the feature data is small enough to fit on one disc. The player does not care if one disc or two are loaded as long as they are the same feature. DTS does not use DVD’s because many older players have CD-ROM drives. With two disc features its true, reels do not always go in numerical order, such as “A disc reels 1 – 4”, “B disc reels 5 – 7”. The reason for this is disc space is limited and not all reels are the same length, so sometimes reels are mixed to fit on a disc, again doesn’t matter the location of data (drive or disc) since the player searches for what it needs. In addition to the feature audio the disc contains an .exe file which loads each time the DTS-6 or 6D is powered up and the disc is booted. It was normal practice to power-cycle these players every time a different disc was loaded to ensure the correct .exe was loaded, all discs made today have the same .exe file although it’s still recommended to power cycle the player when changing discs.

There are many possibilities why a disc won’t play; being just a single disc is not one of them however the disc itself could be suspect. Some of the things I would ask are, when you put the single disc in the unit does the “SYSTEM” LED blink?
All DTS systems will indicate if they are ready to play, the 6 and 6D have the LED, the 6AD has the disc icon which darkens, the latest players will actually state “READY” on their screen. If a "SYSTEM" LED is not blinking with a 6 or 6D, I would recommend trying different drive and power cycling the player. If doing this corrects the problem you may have a bad drive. If moving this disc to all drives does not work perhaps you have a bad disc. Where did the disc come from? Is this a copy or a pressed disc from DTS? If the READY LED does blink, are you getting timecode? Does the disc title match the print title?

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-06-2009, 10:37 PM:

I'm making me copies of DTS disc for our other theatre were the prints arrived without discs.

Doing the copy tips that Brad posted, I noticed that the *.AUD extender has been changed to *.AUE for the movie files in the "DTS" folder on the source disc.

Is this the "SMPTE RP200" update that is labeled on the disc, or something else?

thx-Monte

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 05-07-2009, 01:32 AM:

I haven't seen this issue in person, and now confirming that there is no known reason why a player would act like that, I'll make sure to follow all proper diagnosis next time the issue arises (next time there is a movie with the audio in a single disc).

The discs involved would've been, nonetheless, the original ones shipped with the movie. Hopefully the projectionist checked the title and status lights to confirm the barcode was reading and the disc title matches the film. I haven't been told how the status lights behaved, just that they can't get the DTS to play whenever the film comes with just one disc, only when it comes in two or more discs.

Most movies arrive SRD here, so it may be a while, but we'll figure out what's going on eventually.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 05-07-2009, 05:15 AM:

Monte

No, the extensions of files changed many years ago. AUD files are not coded, they just have the APTX100 sound code and can be played with a normal PC. AUE files are coded for anti-piracy purposes. You need a newer Timecode chip to properly play these files otherwise the player will play only the first 2 minutes of all reels.

RP200 is the subwoofer level recording standard, implemented many many years ago.

Marco