Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: I {heart} my XD10.

This is topic I {heart} my XD10. in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 07-10-2009, 08:07 PM:

I love my XD10.

So I have a print of Finding Nemo (2003)*, and it seems that somebody has tail wrapped it, and apparently there's no replacing it (. . .). So there are three splices in R6 and missing footage. And of course, they land right in the middle of Marlin (Nemo's dad) finally telling a joke and delivering the punch line. And of course, there are chunks missing and it's a huge disappointment.

But DTS saves the day!

So I run R6 and then go over to the XD10 and look at the VGA monitor (and if you don't have it set up, you can dump the logfile onto a usb key and look at it on a computer) and read off the edits:

quote:

TC: Edit from R06 09:43:19 to R06 09:44:02
TC: Edit from R06 09:44:12 to R06 09:45:09
TC: Edit from R06 09:58:16 to R06 09:58:29

So, we stop and do some math. Evidently DTS TC is in 30fps (and you thought NTSC was dead), and each second must go from 0 TCs to 29 TCs.

So, the first one goes from 09:43:19 to 09:43:29 (11 TCs) and 09:44:00 to 09:44:02 (3 TCs), that makes 14 TCs. 14 out of 30 times 24 => 11.2 frames. Break the splice, slug in 11 frames of black (no DTS timecode!), and on to the next one.

Slug in 22 frames of black in the second one. And slug in 12 frames in the third.

(Note, by the way, that you can do this for up to four seconds. But no more! Then you'll drop out of DTS.)

Let's try it. Sure, it's a bit unfortunate to have black instead of the picture, but the dialog works great. Waaaaaay better than it was beforehand.

Thanks, DTS! We couldn't have done it with SRD or SDDS!

--jhawk

---
*: If you must know, it's TES's print SWANK\00001, relegated to the poor suckers contractually obligated to book through Swank and for some reason the Mouse has seen fit to designate a special print we have to share with all the incompetents. At least they only do this sometimes. not like a certain other studio.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 07-10-2009, 08:15 PM:

The world's first non-Imax Imax presentaion of Finding Nemo.

[thumbsup]

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 07-10-2009, 08:31 PM:

Ah, Yes!
Just like slugging the print for Vita Phone.

Everything old is new again!

KEN

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-10-2009, 10:39 PM:

Not a bad idea, but it totally screws the people running any format other than dts.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 07-10-2009, 10:44 PM:

They're no worse off than they were before.

--jhawk

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 07-10-2009, 11:02 PM:

If anybody asks why the screen went black just tell them the projector is running out of Technicolor but the delivery truck doesn't come till tomorrow. [Wink]

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 07-10-2009, 11:26 PM:

John could have slugged it clear or alernated to give that strobing effect....or even better, slug it with another film so long as it didn't have DTS code on it. He could have even slugged it with "you're thirsty!" or other old-school stuff.

Steve

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 07-10-2009, 11:31 PM:

Step 1: Go rent the DVD (Blu-Ray)?

Step 2: Shoot one E6 roll (23 8-perf exposures => 11+12+22 4-perf frames) of the relevant frames (fields?).

Step 3: Process, dry, etc.

Step 4: Splice.

If I had the time it'd definitely be an interesting way to go.

--jhawk

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 07-11-2009, 09:28 AM:

How about a piece of film snipped out of a trailer?
You could black out the sound track with black ink.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 07-11-2009, 10:47 AM:

Thinking about this some more, I think it's a good thing I didn't think too hard about it last night. Because the idea of taking a roll of black and white film and shooting some cards that say:

FINDING NEMO
MISSING FOOTAGE
R6
NOT OUR FAULT

is awful tempting. And on b/w, I can just use the negative, and don't have to deal with the added hassle of E6 developing.

If I'd thought of it, I might actually have done it...so it's probably a good thing I didn't.

--jhawk

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-11-2009, 10:50 AM:

Christy's Editorial will sell you "Scene Missing" slugs; you should order 100' or so!

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 07-11-2009, 04:39 PM:

quote: Kenneth Wuepper
Ah, Yes!
Just like slugging the print for Vita Phone.

Or the old 3D.

Quite a clever idea, but I'd keep the slug black.

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 07-11-2009, 05:43 PM:

I think we're burying the lede...

A swank print with DTS disks?

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 07-11-2009, 06:06 PM:

Actually, Mike, we have a near-100% success rate on either getting the print with DTS or making sure that DTS chases the print and gets there in time for the show including on Swank prints. (Perhaps more the latter than the former for Swank prints; our data entry guy seems to be running behind so I don't have the recent stats at my fingertips...).

But really what I wanted to highlight was the fact that the XD10 would read off the footage counts, which is really the helpful part. I mean, I could have slugged in black on a DTS-6D, but figuring out how much would have been a pain. I mean, I guess I could have read the TC by hand. Or I could have slugged in too much black and tried to measure the duplication and the ncut. But all of those methods would have sucked! The XD10 makes it childs' play.

Scott, that's good to know, but I think it'd be a lot more fun to make my own (including the "not our fault!"), if I was going to go that route!

--jhawk

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 07-13-2009, 10:29 AM:

If you're going to rent the BluRay just run the BluRay, it'll look better than one of Swank's hacked up prints.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 07-13-2009, 10:38 AM:

Well, aside from this particular issue, this print was certainly better than BD quality (though not pristine). And I think that's generally the case for most of the "Swank backslash" prints we see from TES. Not always, but probably 70%. And the of that remaining 30%, many of them are toss-ups, where it's hard to say if a scratch is worse than a pixel.

--jhawk

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 07-14-2009, 10:09 AM:

Wouldn't it have been easier to just count the footage marks and determine the missing frames from that.. or aren't footage numbers even ON film these days?

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 07-14-2009, 11:02 AM:

Umm, footage marks, Tim? What planet are you on? [Confused]

Release prints have not carried footage marks for decades, if ever they were common or consistent.

And print-through of negative edgecode footage marks went out with SDDS using that space, and of course, that's not terribly likely on a computer animated film.

--jhawk

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-14-2009, 11:35 AM:

quote: John Hawkinson
They're no worse off than they were before.

It takes only a handful of missing or damaged frames worth of data for Dolby Digital and SDDS to drop out to analog. But with no backup analog soundtrack on the black slug any viewers watching the movie in Dolby Digital or SDDS would be greeted by the deafening sound of silence.

quote: Bill Enos
If you're going to rent the BluRay just run the BluRay, it'll look better than one of Swank's hacked up prints.

Finding Nemo isn't available on Blu-ray Disc™ yet.

Monsters Inc. was supposed to be released on BD the same time as A Bug's Life, but it has been pushed back until Fall or some time in 2010. Some rumors suggest Finding Nemo may come out on Blu-ray in 2010, but with the third Toy Story movie in production the previous Toy Story installments may move to the front of the line for Blu-ray release. Anyway, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles will probably be the last of Pixar's catalog titles to make it to Blu-ray.