Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: cyan soundtrack faded

This is topic cyan soundtrack faded in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Brian Jupp (Member # 2801) on 07-01-2011, 03:33 AM:

Reel two of my print of Larry Crowne has a faded looking soundtrack. Here is a picture comparing it to another reel.

Is this anything to be concerned about? I didn't have a chance to do a test screening tonight. I will tomorrow morning.

Thanks.

Posted by Robert Minichino (Member # 3495) on 07-01-2011, 10:48 AM:

Absolutely. For digital, the change in density will affect the error level, and for analog, it will negatively affect the signal to noise ratio and cross-modulation distortion performance. The underdeveloped analog soundtrack will sound excessively sibilant, as the printing process counts on the "blooming" that occurs at the proper print density.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-01-2011, 01:22 PM:

Yep, "light strike" disease. Get a replacement reel on this one.

Posted by Ron Lacheur (Member # 1126) on 07-01-2011, 01:47 PM:

Interesting on the title. We did the Larry Crowne press and someone had mentioned the sound was " thin ". There could be a few prints with bad soundtracks. Though we were playing it back in SRD.

Posted by Brian Jupp (Member # 2801) on 07-01-2011, 02:11 PM:

I just finished screening the print and all was fine. It's in an analog only house.

Posted by Jason Raftery (Member # 6291) on 07-02-2011, 01:22 AM:

I experienced sound problems with Larry Crowne during a showing tonight. DTS went in/out before failing over to SR somewhere during the second reel. Multiple customers reported a variety of audio problems (unintelligible dialogue, failure of the left channel, rapid increase/decrease of playback volume, etc.) before I was able to get back to the booth and reengage DTS playback near the end of the reel; the rest of the show ran without incident. What confuses me is that when I entered the booth to check this screen, the timecode reader had a solid green LED but the DTS-6 controller was not engaging.

I checked the head/tail of reel two and noticed some difference in the SDDS and SRD coloration between the two; the cyan for the analogue tracks look about the same. A check of the reel on the platter confirmed the presence of a lab splice.

I'm fairly new to the projection booth and am unsure if the reel I'm showing has the same defect as Brian's or if there's no relation. What is considered an acceptable amount of variation in the cyan printing from one reel to another (or within a reel as in this case)? Can poor printing of the soundtracks impact the DTS controller's ability to decode the timecode?

The following photos show a bit of the head and tail of reel two of my print of Larry Crowne:

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-02-2011, 01:20 PM:

(What's interesting that Brian's sample shows the print without SDDS encoding, where Jason's has the SDDS encoding...)

Welcome to Film-Tech .

That minute discoloration would have no affect in reproduction, but a lot of times, the discs themselves can be at fault. Timecode is a pretty hefty area that even more discoloration would have no effect with it since the DTS system is a read ahead format and the info on the disc is being read ahead and you're actually playing back the cached information stored in memory that is read from the disc.

You need to get a tech there to tune your system up if there was that much of a noticable difference between SR and DTS. The ideal tune is where the two are not noticable at all between switching formats.

If the one drive didn't pick up between disc changeovers, I bet that drive is getting rather tired where you said you had solid green light on the reader.

But, you mention a "DTS-6" - which is an early release of the DTS units (like built from early to mid 1990's being a two drive system). Thus, have the unit been overhauled with new drives, new timecode V.1.46 chip, and SCSI controller card... plus, finally a new AT power supply?

good luck - Monte

Posted by Jason Raftery (Member # 6291) on 07-03-2011, 12:52 PM:

Thanks for the warm welcome to Film-Tech, Monte.

The problem encountered Friday has not reoccurred--DTS playback was solid for all five showings of Larry Crowne yesterday so the print is indeed fine. I did find it odd how this particular film's DTS files are distributed between disc A and B though. Reel 1 is on disc A while reels 2-5 all play from disc B; this seems odd since reel 1 and the trailers would hardly fill up disc A. Perhaps the problem was with the drive disc B was in failing to spin up or read correctly at the start of reel 2.

As for the age of this particular unit, it is indeed a two-drive DTS-6 dinosaur (vintage 1995). The firmware is listed as v1.28 on the back of the unit; I have no idea if a newer chip or SCSI card were swapped in at some point. The power supply was replaced a couple of months ago due to fan failure. I don't know how old the CD-ROM drives are but it wouldn't surprise me if they're quite long in the tooth.

This multiplex gets a tech visit once a week or so. I've requested the tech try to minimize the difference in loudness in the auditorium between DTS and other playback formats the next time he comes in. Is this generally something that would be correctly described as being part of a B-chain alignment?