Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Arclight LA Star Wars Disaster

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Posted by Don Furr (Member # 1469) on 12-19-2015, 01:31 AM:

Just proves that even the high end theatres have problems.

http://laist.com/2015/12/18/video_star_wars_freakout.php

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-19-2015, 02:28 AM:

Firstly, I think I'm safe in opining that this thread belongs under the Digital Cinema category.

Secondly, and much more importantly, let's focus this discussion on responses to breakdowns in shows that really, really matter, rather than let it head towards an unhelpful variant of the film vs. digital debate.

It will have been a really, really bad night for the poor guys working in that theater, especially front-of-house. We all know that whatever method is used to put the picture on the screen and however many failsafes, tech check screenings and precautions we take, such a breakdown can still happen, and an early screening of a much-hyped blockbuster in the heart of Hollywood ... not a good night. There is going to be some lesson learning to do once the initial fire fighting is done, and that's what I'm going to be interested in hearing about.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 12-19-2015, 08:34 AM:

Thanks, Leo, for being the 'voice of reason'.

I agree that film or digital systems can have "hiccups".
Even the best operators can have a 'bad night', just as
expert athletes sometimes have a "bad game".

But problems like this can be often be compounded by
having a less-than-experienced booth staff to deal with
situations such as this one.

As I've said many times before:
There's a big difference between knowing how to work things. .
and knowing how things work.

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 12-19-2015, 09:08 AM:

According to Bill Hunt of DigitalBits, a guy from Christie named Don Shaw, who is apparently the product director for the system, was actually in the theater and introduced the show, promising a spectacular presentation. Bill went to the first show and said it went fine, so it must have been a later performance. Still in all, it must have been mighty frustrating, and at a premium price too.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-19-2015, 09:16 AM:

This is one big difference between film and digital, however. Film problems would hardly ever just pop-up out of nowhere during a presentation, especially if you'd already had at least one problem-free presentation of that print -- whereas digital problems almost ALWAYS pop up out of nowhere when you have a room full of people.

But yeah, information on how it was handled would be more helpful.

What's funny is the reaction of people. "You're ruining my life?" Come on. It's a movie, it's not botched open heart surgery. You've been waiting this long, another day won't kill you. Suck it up, come back tomorrow, we'll get it fixed.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 12-19-2015, 09:27 AM:

To be fair Mike, when you listen and watch the videos, the "You're ruining my life" and other things shouted out ("It's Jar Jar's fault") are fairly good humored. At least from the posted videos, the audience is taking it in stride.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-19-2015, 09:56 AM:

That's good -- I didn't get a chance to watch the video yet, only read the article.

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 12-19-2015, 10:50 AM:

quote: Mark Ogden
According to Bill Hunt of DigitalBits, a guy from Christie named Don Shaw, who is apparently the product director for the system, was actually in the theater and introduced the show, promising a spectacular presentation. Bill went to the first show and said it went fine, so it must have been a later performance. Still in all, it must have been mighty frustrating, and at a premium price too.

The thing is, if you watch the video you can see the screening that took a dive was not in the Dome, but in one of the other auditoriums at Arclight Hollywood. So it wasn't the new Christie projectors that failed.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-19-2015, 03:06 PM:

When I looked at the video...the first thing that popped into my mind was...what equipment was being used?

One of the things we've prided ourselves on is our "up time" in that we have tried to use equipment that fails less (they ALL fail...it is a game of odds). Furthermore, given the choice, I'll take failures that happen prior to show time (boot up odd/don't connect to something) over failures that happen during the show (skipping, lock ups, lamps that drop out...etc.) Nothing is worse than canning or having a show stop that was already going.

Some equipment out there has a 100% chance of failure...as in they all will fail (of that make/model), sooner or later (and I don't mean in the 100-year sense but within what should be a normal lifetime of 10-15 years of the product). Other equipment just has a lower chance of failure.

So again, I'm most curious as to what server and projector are in use at the Arclight and what actually failed? My guess is it is server related.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 12-19-2015, 03:31 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
Film problems would hardly ever just pop-up out of nowhere during a presentation, especially if you'd already had at least one problem-free presentation of that print

In terms of problems with the film, I would agree. But there were more than a few occasions when I had things happen like a platter motor fail, or a Christie platter roller break. I've had prints that played fine, then started having static problems - even resulting in a thrown print.

The biggest thing I see with the description of what happened is the 'projectionist' failed to note the playback time on the movie before stopping/restarting. This is something my staff is trained to do, as well as restarting a minute or two prior to where the movie stopped.

When I'm training people to run projectors and/or as managers, one of the first lessons I always try to teach is when a problem happens to stop and take a breath. Then assess the situation before trying to take action.

Posted by Mike Schulz (Member # 4297) on 12-19-2015, 03:44 PM:

quote: Steve Guttag
I'm most curious as to what server and projector are in use at the Arclight and what actually failed? My guess is it is server related.

Unless things have changed, they have Christie 4K's with GDC servers. After watching the video, Dan is correct. This was definitely not the Dome. It still sucks majorly though. I feel bad for whoever the operator was that night because they were probably running all over the place and then have to try and deal with this at the same time. My only criticism of the operator is why in the hell they didn't at least douse the projector and mute the audio while seeking through the playlist trying to find the right spot to restart the thing? That is just crazy. They must have been really flustered [Frown]

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-19-2015, 04:00 PM:

One thing with DCinema is that while all of the systems can probably claim somewhere in the 99%. something uptime...when you look at all of the shows over the entire world, you still get a significant number of botched shows. Thus stuff gives you a false sense of confidence because it really does work the overwhelming majority of the time. However, this also means people have less (and less trained) skills on how to deal with the failures when they happen.

On the GDC server front...do you know the model? SX2000 with the old IMB, SX2000AR or SX-3000? Again, I'm not looking to pick on anyone...just trying to keep tabs on things that have issues...they ALL have issues and sometimes issues are dealt with but the end user doesn't do a necessary upgrade...conversely, some upgrade all the time and get to find bugs that the latest upgrade brought.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 12-19-2015, 04:02 PM:

quote:
But there were more than a few occasions when I had things happen like a platter motor fail,

I had a platter motor not start once. Since it was the payout motor for that movie, I stood in the projection room for the duration of the movie and spun that platter by hand. The timing wasn't as critical as it would have been for the takeup motor -- I don't think I could have managed a whole show spinning takeup without having the dancer bottom out.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-19-2015, 06:02 PM:

Wonder, with GDC, if they performed any server reboots prior before these events, since being in the VPF world, these units remain on all the time-actually any device connected via network remains on.

I do mine one a week so these units avoid the hiccups and freezes, but still not a guaranteed procedure since, being computers, they have a mind of their own.

I just get the addicted ones that tell me that my surround channels aren't working too well, or left and right screen speakers are too hot than with center, and so forth. This is real sad when you have that bad of addiction.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-19-2015, 06:07 PM:

My main beef with computerized equipment is that there is often no way for a human to take over or to solve a problem by running things manually.

I was once in charge of a show on the stage where the visiting TD wanted to put an electronically controlled capstan winch on the fly system so that he could fly scenery in and out using the lighting control console. I thought it was a great idea until I discovered that there would be no way for a fly operator to take control. I was 99% sure that the winch would work the way the guy said it would but almost all of my crew were Work Study students. There was no way I would put college students in a situation where things could go wrong, even if it was only a 1% chance.

Yes, I know that there are fly systems that can be remotely controlled but, (A) our system was not designed for it. This winch would have been a retrofit. (B) Those systems have a lever you can pull or a button you can press so that they can be operated manually if necessary.

In a traditional movie theater, you can swap out a platter motor, replace parts or run a show manually, even if that means spinning a reel by hand. In a digital cinema, if a hard drive fails or if a computer crashes, it is likely that there will be no way to save a show.

I'd rather have a 10% chance of failure but have the ability save the show 90% of the time than to have a 1% chance of failure with only a 1% chance to make a save.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 12-19-2015, 06:52 PM:

Not a big deal compared to a show stopper, but just a few days ago I watched Spectre on a Barco/Dolby System, and at one point in the movie for the first time ever saw a codec break, maybe one or two frames of a broken-up image.

I watch a lot of DCI stuff, but never had something like this under normal playout conditions.

- Carsten

Posted by Terry Monohan (Member # 8285) on 12-19-2015, 07:00 PM:

Did QT put a voodoo curse on the place???

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-19-2015, 10:05 PM:

I'm kind of sad that cell phone cameras and internet video weren't as ubiquitous back when film was in its heyday. So many more bad theaters would have been called out in the national eye. It would have been... glorious.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-19-2015, 10:53 PM:

quote: Randy Stankey
In a traditional movie theater, you can swap out a platter motor, replace parts or run a show manually, even if that means spinning a reel by hand. In a digital cinema, if a hard drive fails or if a computer crashes, it is likely that there will be no way to save a show.

That's why servers use a RAID (usually RAID5) for storage, have two power supply units, more fans than the unit needs to maintain its required operating temperature, etc. Someone who has only been trained in the basic operation of the software front end would not be able to repair the sort of faults that a DCP server occasionally throws at you, but there again, a film projectionist who was only able to thread and play wouldn't have been able to fix minor faults on one of those installations, either.

The DCI requirements for digital cinema systems specified that they had to match their 35mm predecessors for overall reliability. I'm guessing that the big theater chains don't publish statistics as to how many booth equipment failures causing the loss of a show they've had (with all other relevant factors, e.g. the maintenance regime in use, being equal), but I suspect that if DCI/DCP projection systems weren't achieving that reliability level, lawsuits would be flying and 35mm would be making a mainstream comeback.

We've already seen a demonstration of market forces at work over reliability with the Attack on Titan subtitle disaster. Many distributors abandoned VFs as a result, and are only producing DCPs with burnt-in subtitles. Even though it means more data to wrangle and consequently higher distribution costs, the VF aspect of the DCP is now considered an unreliable software infrastructure, and given the availability of a less sophisticated workaround that improves reliability for only slightly greater cost, the industry is voting with its feet.

IMHO the real vulnerability of digital cinema is encryption and KDMs. That has nothing to do with the technology per se, and everything to do with the humans using it. I've never lost a show completely due to server or projector failure, but I have because a distributor failed to supply a correct KDM.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 12-19-2015, 11:53 PM:

I find it sad that when this kind of thing happens, the pro-film side jumps down the throat of all-things-digital... gleefully reporting on a singular failure. OK. A show had a problem. Surely, back when everything was all film, somewhere a gear failed, a diode popped, a switching power supply decided to die, a starter switch in a projector motor started its last. Those failure points would all be unusual, and not something most experienced projectionists could, or maybe even would attempt to fix quickly enough to save a show. Yet life would go on, most of us would never know of the failure in a film-based playout system and the legend of the medium's invincibility would remain intact. It's just not reasonable to believe that an installed base of 30,000+ mechanical systems could get through the day without a hiccup.

I'd bet it would be generous to suggest only a small handful of projectionists never had a serious problem in their day... and I'd also bet even Brad himself had an oh-shit or two in his time.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-20-2015, 01:17 AM:

Film or digital doesn't matter. Sometimes shit happens.

That being said the real discussion is on frequency of failures. As an example what has the better chance of failure? A Christie SLC console or a Cinema Film Systems console?

The point is that old saying you get what you pay for really is true. Often times it's better to pay a little more for higher quality and ultimately...reliability.

But yup, everything will experience a failure at some point.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 12-20-2015, 05:40 AM:

Whatever happened, maybe closing the dowser and muting the sound would have helped.

I've seen many times 'managers' restarting a late show by jumping randomly into the playlist, playing a few seconds every time to check the position - with the audience in the auditorium!

I appreciate a fault can happen. But then, as it has been said, it's customer care. You need someone upstairs to fix the problem and someone in the auditorium to tell people what happened/what's happening.
You don't skip randomly to see if the show restarts - unless the server was doing that by itself, but I've never seen that myself.

I used to tell my projectionists not to rush and damage the film if anything happened and to send someone in the auditorium no matter how quickly they could restart the show: the show had stopped, the experience was already ruined. Let's do the right thing and make the customers feel that we know what we are doing.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-20-2015, 06:38 AM:

Something to remember...some servers are better than others at coming back to the same point of failure...Dolby's DSS line if you yank the power cord mid show will come back up up stopped right at the failure point...other servers are not necessary like that. You also don't have a booth monitor to cue up the movie to so you are guessing at the point in the movie to bring it back to. A 7:00pm show might have 30 plus minutes of preshow and a hour of previews...etc to make simple calculations hard. The TMS is likely in another room and may not be visible for one to figure out that at the point of failure they should start up at a specific time in the movie so they likely had to put a picture up just to verify that they are at the point in the movie where they should be.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 12-20-2015, 07:12 AM:

That's true.
Then you take 2 minutes to do an accurate calculation looking at the start time and the playlist and you then subtract 5 minutes. It's not hard to do. If that involves walking to the TMS (I cannot think of a server which does not show you locally the current playlist) then do so.

In the meantime ushers are walking in the auditorium apologising to the customers, explaining what happened and what was being done to restore the show.

You just don't skip randomly on screen with a sold out auditorium!

The last manager I saw doing that trick didn't bother checking the playlist or the TMS at all.

Posted by Mike Schulz (Member # 4297) on 12-20-2015, 10:34 AM:

I agree. There are ways to check the image without shooting onto the screen. One quick and dirty method I use (and it works!) is throwing a piece of cardboard into the port window to block the throw but you can see just enough of the picture on the cardboard to figure out what scene you are on. Muting the audio should be automatic no matter what in this type of situation, too, and if you are really clever and need to listen to the audio, you can just kill the amps for a few minutes and listen to the booth monitor (assuming amps are in the processor rack).

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-20-2015, 12:26 PM:

My point isn't simply a film vs. DCP issue. It's about the broader issue of physical systems versus virtual systems.

Assuming competent maintenance by concerned operators being equal between the two, I prefer to have a higher chance of error or malfunction from a physical system if I can have a better chance of recovering from a problem than to have a lower chance of malfunction from a virtual system but have slim chance of recovery.

Case-in-point: The problem that I have been having with my DCP system for the last few weeks. I'm still not sure if it's the AMX automation system or the TCP on the Christie projector. When problems occur, the nearest technician is 100 miles away. The only thing I can do is to reboot the system and hope it works. If it doesn't, I lose the show. Yes, I have had a showstopper because of this problem. If I had still been using the old projector, I could have run the show manually.

I would almost prefer a crappy CFS console to some digital systems. [Wink]

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 12-20-2015, 12:47 PM:

I'll just mention something that may or may not stir the pot. I've been forced to watch digital projection here in Los Angeles, the hub of the film industry for what, the last 5 years? Anyway, I use to go to the theaters all the time when it was film, but with digital I don't because the consistency of the projectors is all over the place. I've seen 3 movies in the last 2 weeks, all of them had projector issues. One had a lamp going out, so the image wavered the whole time. One had white diagonal lines on the left part of the image. The other was the red channel bleeding onto the blue and green. So three movies and three bad projectors.

This isn't an "extreme" case either. I'd say 90% of the time I view a movie in digital, there is a problem of some sort unrelated to the image coming off the server. Heck, last time I went to the AMC in Burbank, the upper right portion of the screen was out of focus and had lost all contrast. Must have been a bad lens or something. Still, nobody bothered to change the projector, nobody complained or cared. I sure as heck complained because if I'm going to waste $16 bux at seeing television at a movie theater, it should look A LOT BETTER then my personal home theater. I refuse to go to AMC anymore, I just won't waste my money.

It's funny that every time I see film (35/70) projected here in LA, it's stellar. Mind you, I don't go to shit theaters, I really only go to Arclight because their film projectors are in good shape and their projectionists care. I use to go 30 times a year prior to the shift to digital and never once... not a single bloody time, did I have a problem with the film projection. Now, I really can't stand going to the cinema, I just wait for video. Which is really sad because I'm a true cinephile, but I can't stand incompetent projection.

Posted by Manny Montes (Member # 5639) on 12-20-2015, 01:07 PM:

I've had the exact opposite experience and I'm pretty sure for the industry as a whole, it has seen the same as I have.

With 35mm I had plenty of screenings ruined, brainwraps, gate weave, scratches, starting out of frame (yes that is a real complaint), etc.

with digital I have found that the playing field has "leveled" so to speak, now the real differentiation is sound. It has turned the discount house into a decent place to watch movies since I won't have all the dirt and scratches that it used to have with an old 35mm print, it will play perfectly each time. For that I appreciate it, and to be honest as a projectionist seeing cue marks really took me out of the film and put me into "work mode" it was cool when I first started but got old quickly.

I don't think digital is even close to perfect yet, but it is definitely a step up in reliability day to day.

Posted by Paul H. Rayton (Member # 1817) on 12-20-2015, 02:41 PM:

I heard that there are, nationwide, a total of 4134 "screens" showing SW:TFA. I presume that is a count of all types of screens, including the Imaxes. Just for fun, let's do a bit of speculation -- let's conjecture that each of those locations are running the show 4X per day (and I'm sure some are higher). But at 4X per day, that is 16,536 presentations of the movie every day. And we've only heard about one or two "problems" so far (strangely, both reported at local Arclights!)? That gives us -- if those are the only two -- a resultant "bad" rate of 0.0001209. I'm sure the actuaries and accountants can live with that.

I'm supposing that there may have been glitches elsewhere, but here in L.A. people are hypercritical (and hyper ready-to-post-images!). But a few glitches here and there are not going to stop this Juggernaut!

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 12-20-2015, 03:46 PM:

quote: Paul H. Rayton
I heard that there are, nationwide, a total of 4134 "screens" showing SW:TFA.

Actually that's the number of theatres. The number of screens might be closer to 10,000.

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 12-20-2015, 05:06 PM:

The IMAX presentation I saw today had a title card up at one point stating "IMAX: Celebrating 1000 Screens"

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 12-20-2015, 08:20 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
That's why servers use a RAID (usually RAID5) for storage

When I had a Doremi drive failure, during a Christmas showing of Its a Wonderful Life playback was interrupted even though the system was able to continue until a new drive was installed.

quote: Leo Enticknap
a film projectionist who was only able to thread and play wouldn't have been able to fix minor faults on one of those installations, either.

I suspect D-cinema training at most venues has been "process led" rather than giving the staff an understanding of the systems and how they work.

[From working in a multiplex in the film days the training was equally poor, with "senior" projection staff not being able to identify key projector components or understanding common terms (such as anamorphic)]

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-21-2015, 09:25 AM:

Monte Fulmer, none of my customers GDC servers or projectors remain on 24/7 except two sites that leave the projectors in "Standby". I wouldn't use a NOC that requires they run all that time and not bring in revenue. When I was doing Cinedigm VPF's for one customer they did not require equipment be left on either. GDC VPF's also does not require equipment to run 24/7. And I have seen very few hard drive and equipment failures over 300+ screens. Lately I have been replacing 5+ year old hard drives and IMB batteries just as a matter of normal maintainance...

Mark

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 12-21-2015, 12:43 PM:

quote: Randy Stankey
My point isn't simply a film vs. DCP issue. It's about the broader issue of physical systems versus virtual systems.

Assuming competent maintenance by concerned operators being equal between the two, I prefer to have a higher chance of error or malfunction from a physical system if I can have a better chance of recovering from a problem than to have a lower chance of malfunction from a virtual system but have slim chance of recovery.

(Bolds added by me).

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I have run shows with BOTH platter feed and takeup out (takes some coordinated spinning but can be done with some effort) have used a MUT to drive a takeup or feed deck (just watch and regulate the speed), have changed gears fast enough to save a show, replaced diode stacks (if you ran a theatre with rectifiers prone to diode failure and didn't have a a rebuilt replacement stack assembled and ready to go you weren't too smart...) as changing the whole assembly is a 20 minute job max.... In other words, a theatre that had good projectionists and knew the history of the equipment was prepared for any failures and rarely lost a show. Only in extreme cases would a screen be down longer than one half hour to 45 minutes..not enough to lose a show totally. (In my service days I managed over 500 screens and can count on one hand the number of shows totally lost over two years.)

Digital cinema in general HAS proven to be pretty robust (except for the GDC servers and horrid Solaria 1 Series) but the point still remains: How many theatres out there have software experts that can diagnose and fix the cause of freezes and crashes? How many theatres have someone who know how to replace a light engine or integrator rod if they fail? (Or have spares on hand?)

Further, other than a hard drive going bad where the RAID software SOMETIMES gives a warning flag, how many digital system failures are able to be headed off by advance warning signs? Almost none.

Compare that to a film system: Unusual noises (intermittent, gears/belts, motor bearings, platter motors, rectifier humming/buzzing louder than before, etc.) visual cues (jumping, weave, flicker), tactile (Projector turns over by hand tight, motor running hotter than normal, pad rollers loose, etc.) ..all these things give a good projectionist clues that something needs to be fixed soon. (Even some not so good projectionists and managers knew to call someone when things didn't look, sound or feel right.)

Let's compare that to digital....:

Other than lamp flicker or taking more time to strike (both often symptoms of needing to change a bulb, which in many cases is harder to do than on a film lamphouse) in the digital world there is often little or no warning that something is about to go bad...I am sure that if Arclight had gotten a warning that the DCP was going to freeze (or the file had somehow gotten corrupted) they could have re-ingested the show to hopefully prevent what happened..but guess what? Unlike a damaged film print, there was NO WAY to know this was about to happen. And worse, they have no way of knowing if it is going to happen again..on that screen or any others that were ingested from the same hard drive.

Until we are all equipped with personal USB ports and software to physically and tactilely link up with the server and projector, we will NEVER have the ability to deal with potential breakdowns as well as we were with film equipment.

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 12-21-2015, 01:57 PM:

And that's exactly my point... in the film world, the projectionists were the mechanics and they kept things running. In the digital world, some outside company services the machines and maybe they did a good job, maybe they didn't. My biggest complaint is the industries reluctance to upgrade projectors.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 12-21-2015, 04:52 PM:

quote: Tony Bandiera Jr
but the point still remains: How many theatres out there have software experts that can diagnose and fix the cause of freezes and crashes?

Given how much can be done remotely, I don't think it's necessary to have someone with that knowledge on-site at every location who can fix and repair average issues. But there should always be someone within 30-60 minutes driving distance. On-site managers should be competent enough to swap out arrays and other easy to replace parts, as well as perform minor tweaks on screen files as necessary.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 12-21-2015, 04:53 PM:

Tyler,

Are you saying projectionists used to do a good job all the time?

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 12-21-2015, 05:21 PM:

I think projectionists who take pride in their work, will run a tight ship and make sure things are working properly. Even if you were the best projectionist, digital systems aren't maintained by the theaters. You can't really tell what's going on until it's too late. Nobody is pulling a projector out of service, pulling it apart and re-calibrating it there at the theater.

Honestly, I have never met a projectionist who doesn't take pride in their work when it comes to film. Checking over their equipment between showings and most importantly, paying attention as it operates.

Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 12-21-2015, 05:29 PM:

It seems many times, there is no "fix" to digital problems. You can see the symptom, but not the problem as opposed to with mechanical film systems where you could see/hear/feel/smell the problem before the symptom even began.

With digital, it's almost always "Restart it and hope for the best" "just a glitch" "maybe a software update will fix this intermittent problem that we can't figure out or know when will happen"

I'm not saying film was perfect, but problems were very cut-and-dried, easily fixable, and then you were done.

You literally just never know with digital.

We had a problem where on our 2nd largest screen, any given feature would stop randomly for about 4 minutes. Exactly enough time for a customer to be bothered enough to go complain about it, an employee relaying the message upstairs, and the manager running to the screen TO FIND NOTHING "WRONG". Not every single show, but probably every other show at least. For weeks. Weeks of ruined shows. Many passes handed out. Many attempted and failed "fixes". Ended up having to replace the whole server which was only 3 years old.

We have issues like this all the time. Grey static. Failed starts. Playback randomly stopping. CONTENT LITERALLY DISAPPEARING. You just can't predict it and there's not much you can do.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 12-21-2015, 06:44 PM:

I may have been unlucky over here, I don't really know many projectionists who were really caring about what they were doing.
Or, better, who actually cared - most of them would tell you they were super-caring but then the projectors were in fact fur balls! [Smile]

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-22-2015, 05:07 AM:

Buck...which server (make/model) had the issue(s)?

The number of in-show incidents we've had like that over ALL of the system we support (hundreds) is VERY small.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 12-22-2015, 08:10 AM:

I agree, show disruptions are very rare. I haven't heard of a show stopped - except for power failure or lamp failure - in the sites we service. Fail to start is still rare but more common and generally operator error.
We had a spate of weirdness with series 1 projectors that would flash (usually to black) in shows. That's been pretty much eliminated.
Doremi servers will play fine with 1 of the 3 RAID drives missing, but may stutter or stop if the 3rd drive is bad in certain ways: removing (in diagnostic tool) a failing RAID drive fixes that problem until a new drive can be installed.
I watched the Arclight videos, there's no indication of what actually went wrong but apparently the operator couldn't get the show restarted at the right time, showed some much later content and gave away some of the ending. No SW fan could have any uncertainty about the ending anyway - the good guys were going to win - and I don't know exactly what was "important" revealed, like just who has been killed off... but that is 100% operator error.
Complaints about bad convergence, flickering lamps, dark images, poor focus - these are complaints about the management and staff. Management has chosen to avoid maintenance costs if they don't have regular technical maintenance to do convergence and cleaning, or don't replace lamps when they get flaky. If management has actually decided to pay for staff trained in projection, the staff are not doing their jobs if the image is out of focus or misaligned,
Mechanical failure on film systems wasn't unheard of. Many problems would "only" damage the fragile film and, although the show would go on, there would be unrepairable annoying scratches or missing parts where severely damaged film had to be cut out - permanently in that print. We may all be perfect professional projectionists ... but damn! I had very few used prints come in with no damage.
A film breakdown could cause serious delays but hey, the film would start again where it stopped!
Digital cinema haters will of course blow every shortcoming and failure out of proportion. Count on this though - film is not coming back.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-22-2015, 10:31 AM:

I'm a computer guy. I think the idea of digital cinema is like the next best thing to titties and beer but the way it has been implemented, today, is like a black box with magic fairies inside. You push a button and movies come out as if by magic. But, if the magic fairies get tired, you can't make a movie and the only thing you can do is call somebody on the phone. The unseen voice on the other end of the line can help you, maybe, half of the time.

Digital cinema might be cooler than the other side of the pillow but I ***HATE*** working on a black box!

I was forced to throw out a perfectly good machine that cost $50,000 and replace it with another machine that cost $250,000 and which is almost as good as the one I threw in the dumpster.

They didn't even buy me dinner, first...

Posted by Alan Plester (Member # 852) on 12-22-2015, 12:55 PM:

lost one show in 20yrs due to intermittent failure, engineer took 1hr to get to the cinema, back on screen @ 5 o clock with a nice new part, anything else was put right by myself and the chief, I was taught from the ground up and definitely new what Anamorphic was, yea gods

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 12-22-2015, 02:06 PM:

quote: Randy Stankey
... the way it has been implemented, today, is like a black box with magic fairies inside.

I still think DC has been made unnecessarily complex.

PS: The only show I ever lost was due to a nitrate fire.

Posted by Manny Montes (Member # 5639) on 12-22-2015, 03:35 PM:

Of course you'll see the film purists trying to attack this as "film was better, etc" however I lost far more shows for film issues as compared to digital. In fact my lost digital shows have been due to physical issues (exploded bulb destroying reflector) and even then I only lost the show due to it taking too long to vacuum out all the pieces, replace reflector and bulb and get it back on screen (you'd be pushing into the next set). I've never lost more than one show in a day except once when we had a roof leak into a server which knocked it down for a few days, this would have been the same if the roof had leaked onto a film and damaged the print which would have to be shipped and rebuilt. All of the major providers have gotten great with shipping and courier speeds for digital parts that now you can expect them in a few hours and most servers have multi-drive redundancy anyway. The only issue I hate is corrupt hard drives, but that is easily fixed by borrowing from another local theater (or going to a satellite system), I've only had 3 so far, each one we either borrowed from another local theater or we had deluxe ship a new one overnight. They give enough time to make sure we have time to ingest (and if we are lucky with KDMs, test).

Film had its time and the industry has moved on, maybe not for the best reasons and maybe a little too soon before the technology was perfected, but I look at the 70mm nightmare that is hateful 8 right now and realize that film is never coming back in any sort of major role. Archival will stay on film of course, its simple, lasts forever and just works, but eventually that will change too. I am still just confused as to what people who are film purists are arguing for? The days of projectionists are long gone (even before the change to digital), there were ushers in the booth getting paid minimum wage to scratch prints like no tomorrow, I'd argue that a good majority of theaters have a much better presentation with digital now (especially if they invested in digital done right a la the FT DCS)

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-22-2015, 04:13 PM:

If I don't maintain my projectors, if I don't take care of my film and something goes wrong, customers will look to me for answers and I will be the one who provides the solution or takes the blame when customers aren't satisfied. That is as it should be.

If my digital system breaks down... for whatever reason, through my fault or not... the only thing I can tell my customers is that I have called the Network Operation Center in some town far away and that a technician will come to fix it in a day or so. I still take all of the blame but I have no ability to solve problems. Not fair!

You guys who work for big corporations like AMC, Cinemark, et. al., are more insulated from this. You've got company technicians with equipment, training and resources who can be on-site, sometimes, within the hour. I don't have such a luxury.

Further, people who work at megaplex theaters are faceless drones, as far as the public is concerned. In my town, I am "That movie guy." People stop me on th street and ask me questions about why such and such a movie didn't play right.

All I can tell people is that the computer crashed and that the guy will come to fix it on Monday.

Things like that don't make me feel very happy when I go to bed at night.

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 12-22-2015, 04:15 PM:

[Roll Eyes]

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-22-2015, 06:57 PM:

quote: Manny Montes
I'd argue that a good majority of theaters have a much better presentation with digital now

And I would agree with that. Not because [dlp]

at its best is better than 35mm at its best, but because so much junk equipment and so many awful operators who were running low-quality high-speed prints on the aforementioned junk equipment were replaced with new equipment that (at least while new) requires less human involvement and provides a high degree of consistency from show to show.

The people who really got screwed on the D-cinema transition were the smaller theatres who were actually doing film right (with good equipment and operators) and who were forced to spend money for equipment that provides a demonstrably inferior result to what they were getting with film. The other group that got screwed were the filmmakers who actually wanted their work to be screened in its original format.

I am something of a film purist myself, but even I would not advocate a return to film projection for the AMCs and Regals of the world. I do want film (in all formats: 70mm, 35mm, and even 16mm) to remain an option for original photography and projection for the filmmakers and exhibitors who prefer it. I don't necessarily expect that every new feature will be available on 35mm, but I do think that older films (which were originally intended for film projection) should continue to be available in quality prints, and the option of distributing a feature in 35mm should continue to exist for the filmmakers who prefer it.

I am happy to live in a time when producers and exhibitors have both film and D-cinema as options, and would like to see both options remain for production and distribution. They have different looks and are in no way interchangeable as far as I am concerned. I think that the Hateful Eight 70mm roadshow is a noble experiment, and I hope that it is a success for all concerned.

As for the Arclight--I don't blame the theatre or the operators for what happened, but the situation clearly could have been handled better (for example, by closing the douser and muting the sound before fast-forwarding or rewinding to the appropriate point in the feature).

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 12-22-2015, 07:53 PM:

The biggest problem with digital cinema is the quality being no better then home theater. With the advent of UHD BluRay and 4k viewing devices at home, we are slowly seeing a push towards superior quality at home.

What makes film special is that it's an experience you can't have at home. For better or worse, proper film acquisition and distribution is nothing like digital. When done right, through a photochemical process, the color information rivals any digital formats we have available today. The sad part is, the only real change in 35mm since the late 50's has been audio. Even at the end of 35mm, we still projected a smaller academy image rather then full-frame, loosing quite a bit of resolution in the process. The industry kept going the same direction, never really re-inventing itself along the way. Small changes like 2 perf and 3 perf projection for 2.35:1 and 1.85:1 presentations, with 1:1 optical printing from camera negative, could have been huge, allowing far less camera and print stock to be used. Films could have been shipped pre-built from distributors on 2 perf and maybe even used reels instead of platters.

I mean, there is a lot the industry could have done to save film, but it's all down to money. For the distributors, digital is a godsend because it's practically free. For theaters, digital is a huge overhead/expense which raises the ticket prices to the point that pushes a lot of people away. I mean heck, the only reason anything is released in 3D today is because it makes the theaters and distributors more money! Most 3D movies aren't even shot in 3D! You can thank James Cameron for trying to do the right thing and unfortunately failing because the vast majority of people could care less about 3D.

Never the less, the final nail in film's coffin happened 2 years ago, with the decommissioning and destruction of both high speed duplicators in the US. This basically means no more mass-duplication of film prints. However, the resurrection of 70mm for films like The Master, Interstellar and Hateful Eight, maybe the beginning of a new era in film distribution. Only time will tell!

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 12-22-2015, 10:24 PM:

quote: Tyler Purcell
The biggest problem with digital cinema is the quality being no better then home theater. With the advent of UHD BluRay and 4k viewing devices at home, we are slowly seeing a push towards superior quality at home.

I have to push back on this a bit. I am a film fan, and like many on this forum I am extremely frustrated by the decline in presentation standards and the loss of things like constant-width screens, true anamorphic widescreen, curtains, proper masking and so on.

But still, there is a *world* of difference between a DCI compliant projection system and any home theater setup. The pixel count between 2K digital cinema and 1080p home theater may be similar, but the digital cinema data rate, compression scheme and color space are all vastly superior to the home theater experience.

Yes, there are very well-designed home theaters that perform at cinema levels, and yes there are terrible cinemas (true in the film era as well), but the average cinema is orders of magnitude better than the average home for both picture and sound.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 12-22-2015, 11:43 PM:

Alan,
So in 20 years you've never received a poor print with bad focus, bad colours or scratched/mutilated?
Your dolby digital sound/DTS has never reverted to analogue and you've never come across a badly made lab splice where sound and picture would go nuts for a few seconds.
(And I'm not considering all the rubbish projectionist who couldn't be bothered and were regularly damaging their prints - and those were a lot! )
I miss film too but we can't acknowledge that we gained a lot from digital too, it's not just downsides!

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 12-22-2015, 11:57 PM:

Daniel, I was referring to the new UHD .h265 BluRay format and 4k monitoring devices at home. That new format is 10 bit 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 color space, unlike the prior 1080p 8 bit 4:2:0 format it replaces. So it's MUCH closer to DCP quality. Plus, BluRay already has 24 bit 192khz DTS and Dolby Digital 7.1 audio. There are very few theaters that rival my home theater audio quality wise.

There are also loads of brand new 25,000:1+ contrast ratio, 2500+ lumen, 7 seg color wheel, single 1.5" DLP 4k projectors hitting the market. They can do 3D with active glasses, they don't have the RGB DLP imager alignment issues. Some of them actually are powered by laser lamp technology as well.

So where it may not be in homes today, it's coming fast and theaters have yet to move away from the world of 2k, which is substandard compared to good 35mm film projection.

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 12-23-2015, 02:05 AM:

quote: Tyler Purcell
Daniel, I was referring to the new UHD .h265 BluRay format and 4k monitoring devices at home. That new format is 10 bit 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 color space, unlike the prior 1080p 8 bit 4:2:0 format it replaces. So it's MUCH closer to DCP quality. Plus, BluRay already has 24 bit 192khz DTS and Dolby Digital 7.1 audio. There are very few theaters that rival my home theater audio quality wise.

There are also loads of brand new 25,000:1+ contrast ratio, 2500+ lumen, 7 seg color wheel, single 1.5" DLP 4k projectors hitting the market. They can do 3D with active glasses, they don't have the RGB DLP imager alignment issues. Some of them actually are powered by laser lamp technology as well.

The UHD Blu Ray standard is still 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, although it is going to 10-bit color. And the bitrate will max out around 128Mbs vs DCIs 250 Mbs. Although now that you mention it, I wonder how HEVC measures up against JPEG2K? Hmmm...

I don't deny that at the high end consumer projectors have gotten very, very good, and likewise home theater sound can be utterly amazing. But the percentage of home theaters with projectors at all is vanishingly small, and likewise the percentage of home theaters that have more than 2.0 sound is not huge. And even those with 5.1 or 7.1 can't play at anything close to reference without distorting or simply breaking. I think the existing DCI standards do an impressive job at presenting a theatrical experience in the cinemas that cannot be easily bested at home.

I do wish we could have anamorphic 4K projection (5K once unsqueezed) to truly differentiate the cinema experience though.

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 12-23-2015, 02:20 AM:

JPEG2000 is far superior then .h265 of course, mostly because it's a lossless intraframe codec. I have a feeling (knowing Sony) they'll have a "high band" version of UHD which is 10 bit 4:2:2 or even 4:4:4 sampling. .h265 is the first codec to allow that bit depth and chroma sampling in a streaming format. In a lot of ways it's good for the industry, but I'm also wary of how it will effect the cinema.

Yea, it's very true that home theater using projectors, is a very small market. They really never took off because people don't really understand the benefits. I can't stand the look of a normal television, the processing is horrid on most of them. But never the less, the push for UHD televisions at home is huge, this season is the first big christmas where all the brands finally have them available at competitive pricing. I predict next holiday season it will be even cheaper and more available. I'll bounce on a 4k upgrade when my current 1080p projector dies.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-23-2015, 07:34 AM:

quote: Tyler Purcell
The sad part is, the only real change in 35mm since the late 50's has been audio.

I disagree. There have been many improvements in 35mm, and nearly all of them have been backwards-compatible with existing equipment: camera stocks, intermediate stocks, print stocks, camera and projection lenses, screens, and the brief return of dye-transfer printing in the late '90s.

We have lost a few things (dye-transfer printing (twice), really good B&W printing, magnetic sound), but, on balance, I think that the improvements have outweighted the losses.

And that doesn't count improvements on the production side, either (smaller and lighter cameras, computer-controlled animation stands and optical printers, etc.). The DI was (and is) a step backwards from photochemical printing, but the latter is still possible (and cheaper than a DI!).

Posted by Alan Plester (Member # 852) on 12-23-2015, 11:13 AM:

Marco...ouch, we never had dolby,dts,, the company wouldn't install it, as for the other stuff you mention, of course we had our fair share, never could get replacement copies, not without trying though, my main point was, the cinema only lost one show when I was on in 20 yrs, sorry for any confusion, if there was any.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 12-23-2015, 12:15 PM:

All I know is that the AVERAGE presentation that I see in 2k digital cinema is better than the AVERAGE presentation that I saw in 35mm (even in scope) for at least the last 10 years of film.

Honestly, when I worked for GCC at the Mission Bay location in Boca Raton in the early 90's, we had probably the best projectionist I could imagine. Presentation was always flawless and as good as it could be given the equipment (V5 projectors).

Scope movies from back then (when things were mostly shot in scope for scope release) didn't look THAT much better in that location than 2k DLP does today on similar sized screens. Yes, I can tell the difference but it isn't a night and day kind of thing. I'm curious to see 4k laser projection (of 4k material) one day to see how it compares.

Film based IMAX of scenes filmed on IMAX 70mm are night and day with (at least Xenon based) 2k projection but that was something rare before digital.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-23-2015, 01:16 PM:

quote: Daniel Schulz
But still, there is a *world* of difference between a DCI compliant projection system and any home theater setup. The pixel count between 2K digital cinema and 1080p home theater may be similar, but the digital cinema data rate, compression scheme and color space are all vastly superior to the home theater experience.

Not always. When the projected image on screen is soft or even warped that higher bit rate and deeper color depth is all but wasted. Meanwhile the Blu-ray image on the TV screen at home is perfectly sharp, even if it is more data compressed.

Fake 'scope in d-cinema, combined with all these wall-to-wall screens that letter-box the results, is just a huge problem for me. That makes d-cinema feel more like TV in public than anything. The movie industry either needs to fix that problem or they just need to stop cropping movies in 'scope format. It's insulting.

quote: Daniel Schulz
I don't deny that at the high end consumer projectors have gotten very, very good, and likewise home theater sound can be utterly amazing. But the percentage of home theaters with projectors at all is vanishingly small, and likewise the percentage of home theaters that have more than 2.0 sound is not huge. And even those with 5.1 or 7.1 can't play at anything close to reference without distorting or simply breaking. I think the existing DCI standards do an impressive job at presenting a theatrical experience in the cinemas that cannot be easily bested at home.

Surround sound has lost some of its novelty. I think the main reason it isn't in a lot more homes is because it's a pain in the ass to install. I wouldn't mind having a Dolby Atmos/DTS-X capable home theater setup, but I would not be looking forward to installing it. Nevertheless, the technology is there for home theater nuts who want it.

The bigger danger for movie theaters is the increasing sophistication of TV screens. Unlike surround sound, those things are going to proliferate everywhere. Current 4K UHDTV screens are already pretty impressive. The new breed of screens that support HDMI 2.0 and REC 2020 are going to be even more impressive. Meanwhile there's a lot of commercial cinema screens, including about 99% of IMAX-branded digital screens that are stuck at mere 2K. They're looking at having to spend a fortune to upgrade to things like laser projection and "HDR." The same kinds of things will be so much cheaper for consumers to acquire. It really isn't fair.

quote: Tyler Purcell
JPEG2000 is far superior then .h265 of course, mostly because it's a lossless intraframe codec. I have a feeling (knowing Sony) they'll have a "high band" version of UHD which is 10 bit 4:2:2 or even 4:4:4 sampling. .h265 is the first codec to allow that bit depth and chroma sampling in a streaming format. In a lot of ways it's good for the industry, but I'm also wary of how it will effect the cinema.

Comparing JPEG2000 and codecs like MPEG-4 AVC or H265 is like comparing apples to oranges. Both have their pros and cons.

First of all, JPEG2000 is not lossless at all. It is a data lossy system. Judging by the file sizes of some DCP's I've seen some movies have very lossy data compression applied to them. One 2-hour DCP would be more than 200GB while another is less than 60GB. Even a movie at 200GB is using some serious lossy compression levels. An uncompressed or lossless compressed master with 10-bit or 12-bit color is going to consume terabytes of hard drive space.

JPEG2000 compression is inefficient. Add to that some of the "rules" studios are supposed to follow when encoding movies. No intra-frame compression is allowed. Only so many transform blocks are allowed. A lot of the tools one has for authoring video for Blu-ray, TV broadcast, etc. are off limits.

I have some movies on Blu-ray where the feature is consuming pretty much all of a dual layer BD-50 disc. Saving Private Ryan and Minority Report are two examples that come to mind. Just how inferior is the video quality on those discs really going to be compared to some DCP with a JPEG2000 encoded feature only 60GB in size?

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 12-23-2015, 03:30 PM:

JPEG2000 is considered a lossless codec by much of the industry. It CAN BE lossless at high bandwidth, but of course is not when presented at cinemas where bandwidth is a problem. JPEG is also intraframe meaning, the compression is based on single frames and not a group like a transport stream. You can't make JPEG2000 a transport stream, it's always basing its compression on individual frames, not variations on one frame like most MPEG systems.

Because JPEG is so good at representing the original media, it's the number one long-term archival format. Tiff formats like Cinema DNG and TARGA, are also good at doing this, but aren't as supported. Tiff sequences are also larger, JPEG is a more efficient codec. JPEG2000 isn't efficient at all, but it's good at what it does.

Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 12-24-2015, 01:17 AM:

quote: Steve Guttag
Buck...which server (make/model) had the issue(s)?

Doremi ShowVault 4

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-24-2015, 03:53 AM:

Thanks.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 12-24-2015, 09:43 AM:

Alan,

Sorry, didn't mean to sound harsh!

quote: Alan Plester
my main point was, the cinema only lost one show when I was on in 20 yrs, sorry for any confusion, if there was any.

I agree that on 35mm you could compromise on several things in order to run a show. Digital is like Dolby Digital: once the data being read from the prints is not enough for the error correction, then you have no digital sound, nothing you can do about that.

Digital is digital. It works or it doesn't. But I wouldn't just consider such an event to say that 35mm was better. Yes, you've lost one show in 20 years but then I could say that over 20 years a 'digital audience' would never experience a sound issue or a scratched print.
Considering that that was the norm with 35mm, I'd be happy with the extra lost show to be honest.

In our example, also, a projectionist equivalent (i.e. an IT guy) may have been able to identify a faulty drive, eject it from the array and continue the show properly. If the cinema chose not to hire a competent guy to run the equipment then you can't really blame the equipment, can you?

Wish you and the forum a Merry Christmas!!

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-24-2015, 09:50 AM:

quote: Tyler Purcell
JPEG2000 is considered a lossless codec by much of the industry. It CAN BE lossless at high bandwidth, but of course is not when presented at cinemas where bandwidth is a problem.

JPEG, be it the original flavor or the new "2000" is NOT lossless. Even at its maximum quality settings it's still not lossless. The compressed image might be hard to distinguish between the original, but the format is still throwing away data permanently.

quote: Tyler Purcell
JPEG is also intraframe meaning, the compression is based on single frames and not a group like a transport stream. You can't make JPEG2000 a transport stream, it's always basing its compression on individual frames, not variations on one frame like most MPEG systems.

Yes, every image in a JPEG2000-based DCP is separately encoded. One could say the imagery in a DCP is not even a real video file. It's just many thousands of static images held inside a single container file that might as well be a folder. But since JPEG2000 works like that it makes it very inefficient compared to true video codecs like MPEG-4 AVC and HEVC.

quote: Tyler Purcell
Because JPEG is so good at representing the original media, it's the number one long-term archival format.

Number one according to who?

In the graphics and photography world TIFF with lossless LZW compression is a pretty much a universal standard. Photoshop PSD images are almost a de facto standard due to the application's popularity. Many photographers will archive RAW images since they're considerably smaller in file size than a fully inflated TIFF. Adobe and others have tried pushing DNG, but I don't think they're getting very far with it.

JPEG is not an archive quality format, be it the original version or the 2000 variant. Millions of images are traded in JPEG and stock images are commonly sold in JPEG. I get lots of different kinds of graphics and image files from customers in my work. Out of all the JPEG images I get I very rarely ever see any .JP2 files despite the fact several professional quality applications, including Photoshop, can open and generate such files.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 12-24-2015, 12:05 PM:

quote:
If my digital system breaks down... for whatever reason, through my fault or not... the only thing I can tell my customers is that I have called the Network Operation Center in some town far away and that a technician will come to fix it in a day or so. I still take all of the blame but I have no ability to solve problems. Not fair!

... and yet, at least in the case of Barco machines, you can attend factory-sponsored training. That, at some point, should qualify you to troubleshoot most anything in your machines. The main drawback for you would be the opportunity to gain the kind of experience a full-time tech would have, but at least you'd be far more help to a NOC or other service company, if that was required.

From what formal entities could you get comparable training in practical 35/70mm booth operations? At least in my experience, so much of the craft was passed down by others, whose qualifications you'd have to judge at a later date. If you were lucky... you'd get lucky.

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 12-24-2015, 02:44 PM:

Bobby, I was part of building the archival architecture at Iron Mountain, these are the guys who store/archive MOST of the visual content. They brought me in as a consultant to help with these decision making processes and during our testing, we found JPEG2000 to be the best format and henceforth, ALL media is now stored in that format. The biggest reason why comes down to file size and corruption. The way JPEG encodes it's images, even if there are bits of data missing, you can still re-create the image. With Tiff based formats, if any part of the data block is missing, the frame can't be created. Plus, JPEG2000 is way more efficient then Tiff, offers real-time proxy viewing and is native to many GPU's for instant playback.

If you wish to read up on lossless motion JPEG, here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_JPEG

I personally prefer Tiff for camera original, but the industry is heavily JPEG2000 based, most of the cameras shoot that and everyone distributes using it as well.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-24-2015, 04:03 PM:

MJPEG .. been around for some time. Back in the early 90's when Iomega was at its peak, it had a device and software that would take raw video to convert to MJPEG.