Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: DTS time coding

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Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 04-24-2016, 02:12 PM:

i have a print of Tarzan 1999, it's a german release. On real 1 they printed antoher distribution logo in front of the normal studio. Because off this on reel 1 the DTS (i use english disc) is off for about 20 seconds.

Did anybody have tried or succeeded adjusting audiofile or timecodes on the disc so I can use it properly?

Thanks

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 04-24-2016, 05:30 PM:

quote: Florian Kuik
i have a print of Tarzan 1999, it's a german release. On real 1 they printed antoher distribution logo in front of the normal studio. Because off this on reel 1 the DTS (i use english disc) is off for about 20 seconds.

Did anybody have tried or succeeded adjusting audiofile or timecodes on the disc so I can use it properly?

Thanks

That's interesting. Normally DTS would have assigned an alternate timecode reel number for a version with a changed running time, to prevent out-of-sync sound from playing (so for example the Germany Reel 1 would have been identified as timecode Reel 13 and a correlating file encoded).

I am not aware of any way to edit an encoded DTS file in this way, you'd need to edit the 5.1 printmaster and re-encode a new DTS Reel 1.

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 04-25-2016, 05:52 AM:

Hi Daniel,

The German version has a studio label printed in front of the reel. So the timecoding on that reel is about 20 seconds out of syn to the English version.

So there is a good DTS coding, it's just not the same timing as the English release. So I thought about swapping the DTS audio files, adjusting the timing or any other way to let the DTS player now It has an offset of 20 seconds. The other reels are working properly I've been told..

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 04-25-2016, 07:41 AM:

This is interesting old school stuff!

Are you saying that the picture has been replaced but not the timecode so you have your german logo with the wrong sound?

If that's the case I'd probably just scratch away the DTS timecode from the print itself (but you'll have to be careful) or simply switch back to SR/SRD before the sound starts and back to DTS when the logo ends.

What about removing the affected logo? [Smile]

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 04-25-2016, 09:37 AM:

It's worse, they use an extra film studio logo, they didn't shift the original dts coding, so that's off bij about 20 seconds. The print is German and german DTS works.

The English dts disc is off by about 20 seconds. So I need to shift it somehow..

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 04-25-2016, 11:00 AM:

Right, are you saying the whole reel 1 is 20 seconds out of sync?

As Daniel said they should have used a different timecode and reel - at least for the logo. I am not aware of a way to re-sync the whole thing, sorry.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 04-25-2016, 12:20 PM:

Just wondering... What would happen if you blocked the reader with a business card until the first logo went past?

If the time code is somehow improperly encoded/printed for the first logo, the system might work correctly once that part has gone past. If it's physically out of sync then this wouldn't work.

I am afraid that the second case is true but without looking at the code on the film to see how it is printed it's not possible to tell. The business card trick is a simple, quick and harmless test to see what would happen.

If the trick works, you simply need to block the reader each time the print is presented. Since an operator should be stationed at the projector when the movie begins, it would be a small matter to hold a card in place for the twenty seconds necessary to make the DTS work correctly.

If the trick doesn't work, I'm afraid a new disk will have to be obtained or else you will have to make a hacked version for your own use.

Posted by Paul H. Rayton (Member # 1817) on 04-25-2016, 04:05 PM:

The distribution norm for most US films in Germany is "dubbed", and it sounds like, for some reason, the entire R.1 timecode track was re-recorded, incorporating the ~20 seconds of distributor logo on the head. An odd decision, but that's my guess. The only solution I could imagine would be, as mentioned before, some kind of a hack.

Blocking the timecode from being read would not affect it -- the system goes to the sync point that is (theoretically) associated with the given frame of picture. It sort of has to be that way, or every time a splice goes through, it would drift out of sync. Think, for example, of older release prints which may have lost a few frames from the heads and tails of each reel as it was plattered at various places along the way. We know it's good practice to assemble prints so as to NOT lose frames, but there have been places where the candy-stand draftees sent to be "projectionists" weren't so diligent about film handling. Also at changeover houses -- the system goes to the newer (higher reel #, e.g. from reel #3 to reel #4) bits of track instantaneously when a reel is changed.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 04-25-2016, 06:42 PM:

quote: Paul H. Rayton
Blocking the timecode from being read would not affect it...

Yes, I am pretty sure that you are right and I said as much.
Blocking the time code reader is a simple, painless test that can verify the problem with no negative after effects.

As I also said, it is impossible for us to tell exactly what the cause of the problem is without physical access to the print. If you remember, some years back, another Film-Techer (Bobby, IIRC) showed us how to read time code manually (by eye) in order to verify that it is correct and so that we can splice reels together in the right order. It would be possible for a person with that knowledge and physical access to the print to decode the information on the time code track to determine what the problem is.

Alternately, a person can hook a monitor and keyboard up to a DTS machine and read out the current time code (Title/Reel/Frame) to see what's going on. Again...physical access is needed.

So, without physical access, the only way that I can think of to determine the cause of the problem would be to block the reader and cause the DTS system to temporarily revert back to analogue sound then, upon unblocking the reader, the DTS system will re-acquire the time code and, hopefully, synchronize back to the right place.

BUT...IF the time code is written as a contiguous track that includes the logo then blocking the time code reader would not work.

Blocking the reader is just an easy way to help us, who don't have physical access to the print or the equipment, to determine what the problem is. Further, there is still a small, yet non-zero, chance that blocking the reader might work.

There is no reason not to try it if it hasn't already been tried.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 04-25-2016, 07:46 PM:

If this is only for one or two shows, I'd just turn the damn DTS
off and run it analog. I'll bet 99% of the people will never
notice, unless you've got an audience full of audio engineers.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 04-25-2016, 08:43 PM:

I agree with that! [Smile]

If the analogue sound system is properly aligned and calibrated it should take an experienced ear and a side-by-side comparison ("A-B Test") to tell the difference.

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 04-25-2016, 11:30 PM:

Thanks for the input, highly appreciated. The print is dubbed in german and with DTS there is the possibility to do a english playback. That's something I wuold like [Smile]

Problem is that on reel 1 the whole timecode is shifted and therefore the blocking won't work. It simply goes back to analog and back to sync (that's off in english) when reding is properly back..

So only chance is to add delay, blank space or a new timecode to it.. or combine the english disc with german timecode or something like that.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 04-26-2016, 04:02 AM:

We'd need to know wether this is for rare personal showings, or for the public.

- Carsten

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 04-26-2016, 05:29 AM:

quote: Randy Stankey
If the analogue sound system is properly aligned and calibrated it should take an experienced ear and a side-by-side comparison ("A-B Test") to tell the difference.

I can't speak for SR because the auditoriums I will refer to weren't equipped for it. When digital sound was first emerging in the 1993-1994 time frame, I watched most films in one of two very good sounding, THX certified auditoriums. One had DTS and the other got Dolby Digital (or Dolby Stereo Digital at the time).

I could relatively easily tell if there was an issue and the digital sound wasn't working. In that time frame, this would almost always be when they didn't get the DTS disks shipped and I'd see the movie on opening day.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-26-2016, 09:03 AM:

quote: Jim Cassedy
If this is only for one or two shows, I'd just turn the damn DTS off and run it analog.

I think the analog audio on his print is of the German "VF", and he wants to hear the English "OV", so to speak.

This issue bit me in the rear the other way round in the mid '90s, with one of the Jurassic Park movies. I was working in a small theater in a remote part of the south-west of England. The print arrived only an hour before showtime - no time to test and preview. So at 6pm I started to play it blind to a sellout crowd. About half way in I nipped out of the booth to answer a call of nature, and when I walked back across the lobby to the booth a stream of customers were coming out, and I caught one of them complaining loudly to the girl in the box office: "What's up with the f***ing projector? They've all started talking f***ing frog language in there!". As you can gather, we catered to a very high class and well educated clientele, and played Bunuel and Renoir every week (not).

Long story short - the print had the French dub on the analog, I was playing the English DTS CDs, reel 4 had a bad timecode and it dropped out. That explained why the distributor called twice during the previous week to confirm that we did have DTS. They were very short of prints and had sourced a few French ones to make up the shortfall, which they sent to the smallest, bottom of the food chain houses that did have DTS, so that if what happened to me happened, the damage would be as minimal as possible.

Posted by Markus Lemm (Member # 3456) on 04-26-2016, 10:02 AM:

Florian can you message me and I can walk you through the procedure. I've had to do this in the past for a couple of trailers that were about 5 seconds off. You will have to burn a new disc too.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 04-26-2016, 10:04 AM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
I think the analog audio on his print is of the German "VF",
and he wants to hear the English

D'oh! I missed that small but significant detail in the original post.
Now I understand Florian's dilemna!.

Posted by Blaine Young (Member # 3992) on 04-26-2016, 10:47 AM:

I'm just thinking outside the box here. If you inserted 20 seconds of silent audio at the start of the R1 audio, you could - in theory - re-sync the track. However, to get the sync correct, you would need to know exactly how many 'frames' of audio to insert. DTS audio runs at 30 frames per second, so you actually have to insert the correct number of frames into the track. Plus you can't just insert the audio at the beginning of the reel since printed timecode on prints typically are between 30 and 60 frames INTO the reel.

If you have the German R1 and can get the frame number of the first DTS frame of the feature from the print, and the first DTS frame number of the 'studio' snipe, it may be possible to insert the necessary silent into the DTS R1 file to resync the reel.

In theory.

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 04-26-2016, 02:30 PM:

Wow, the community over here is very alive! Thanks for all the feedback. I indeed have a Tarzan print, bought from a collector and it has a German analof track. Off course, I want to listen to the english DTS.

@Blane, any idea how to edit this?

The timecode of the german R1 is 525 frames longer. So the sound starts to early on R1. I hoped there is a way to edit the audiofile or something like that to add this delay.

I send Markus a mail, if he knows a way, that would be great!

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 04-26-2016, 02:40 PM:

Wasn't it supposed to be one of the selling points of DTS, back in the day, when you wanted to play a movie in an alternate language, all you had to do was swap out the disks?

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 04-26-2016, 03:23 PM:

Yes, Randy- -that was supposed to be a big selling point.

And while that promise was accurate in a technical sense, it was not always
true in practice.

Case in point:
We have a large Asian population here in San Francisco. I know one theater
owner who put DTS into two of his theaters, one of which was in a primarily
Asian populated neighborhood. He did this because some of his older Asian
customers often asked if it was possible for him to get some of the major
American releases with 'dubbed' Mandrin or Cantonese sound tracks, so they
could better understand and enjoy their moviegoing experience.

His plan was to have at least one or two alternate language shows a day to
accommodate his non-English speaking customers.

Of course the equipment sales rep said this would be "no problem".

In practice however, he found out that almost 99% of the time he tried to
do this, he was told that the foreign language version DTS disks he wanted
to get "were not licensed for use in the USA".

So, even though we knew these films were playing with DTS foreign language
tracks in places like Hong Kong & Singapore, ete, it was impossible to get those
disks for USA use due to various licensing agreements. It was further complicated
by the fact that in many cases foreign distribution was handled by a different
company than in the USA, and their contracts prohibited them from providing
content outside their 'home' country territory.

Almost every request was turned down. I remember the theater owner was
pretty pissed since he felt he'd been 'duped' into buying the DTS systems
which turned out to be 'useless' for the primary purpose he bought them for.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 04-26-2016, 04:03 PM:

Well if you have a time code generator determine the Pix start location with the offending logo removed and then sync and lock
If you don't have a generator then record the time code off the reel as a wave file on a computer and then remove the footage and hopefully sync the starts on playback

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 04-26-2016, 04:28 PM:

Leo,

The distributor was very confident that your DTS was working fine and that the projectionist (you) would use it!

Back in the days I knew very little projecionists actually using DTS - or whatever that was not switching on when flipping the big "ON" breaker on the wall.
Most of the time shows were in fact running with the last format which was selecting itself on the automation.

Posted by Blaine Young (Member # 3992) on 04-27-2016, 06:55 PM:

quote:
@Blane, any idea how to edit this?

The timecode of the german R1 is 525 frames longer. So the sound starts to early on R1. I hoped there is a way to edit the audiofile or something like that to add this delay.

525 frames at the typical 24fps?

Take hi-res pictures of several frames of the header of R1, before the first cut, and then after the first cut. If you can see clear printing inserts (change in color, whatnot) at the beginning and end of the studio bump, pictures of both, and where you can clearly tell the feature begins.

I'll get my binary calculator out.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 04-28-2016, 05:54 AM:

quote: Randy Stankey
Wasn't it supposed to be one of the selling points of DTS, back in the day, when you wanted to play a movie in an alternate language, all you had to do was swap out the disks?

It was, but you would probably call your local distributor for a 'local foreign language disc' that would include proper timing for an added leader.

Disc/language swap It was a technical promise, but that doesn't mean it was always backed by distribution reality.

- Carsten

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 04-30-2016, 12:38 PM:

Thanks all! It will take me some time to compare the english and german print next to each other, but I will make pictures and let everyone now if this is a working solutioN!

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 04-30-2016, 02:42 PM:

Just a little more background on how things like this *should* have been handled.

DTS always encouraged international distributors who wanted to attach their own distributor logo to do that at negative assembly, with the distributor logo (whether silent or with sound) treated as a separate soundtrack element. DTS always treated trailers as Reel 14, so what you'd see on the print is a Reel 14 with the assigned serial number for the logo, and then at feature start the timecode would start at Reel 1 Frame 1.

However, for their own reasons, international versions often created an all-new Reel 1 that incorporated the different logo build as part of the Reel 1. DTS would typically handle this by using an alternate reel number and include both versions on the disc, so that we could have a single disc inventory. So if for example you have a movie that is Fox domestic but Paramount international, the disc would contain reels 1-5 plus a Reel 13, which is the international reel 1.

When dubbed versions were created, we would have to confirm with the dubbing studio which version of picture they were conforming to. On Tarzan it seems DTS was not informed (or misinformed) about the fact that the German dub did not match the OV picture and sound. What *should* have happened is an alternate reel number should have been assigned to the Germany version reel 1.

Where it gets interesting is if there was ever an English soundtrack that matched that German picture it all. Tarzan being a children's movie, it could be that the only soundtrack created that matched the German version picture was the German dub, and so although using a correctly-assigned alternate reel number would prevent sound from playing out-of-sync, the system would revert to analog when playing the reel that doesn't have a corresponding DTS audio file.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-03-2016, 09:23 AM:

quote: Daniel Schulz
However, for their own reasons, international versions often created an all-new Reel 1...

A major reason was censorship, and that didn't just affect reel 1. For example, as a general rule, at the different age points, the British Board of Film Classification is more tolerant of sex and less of violence than the MPAA. So it frequently happened (and probably still does happen) that a reel containing a sex scene (or a sexually suggestive scene) that was cut in the US was shown uncut in Britain, or one with a fight or torture scene that was shown uncut in the US was trimmed for the UK release, because the UK distributor was willing to make whatever cuts were needed to get a given certificate (rating). In particular, they would not want a major blockbuster to be rated 18, and would change was was necessary to get 15. To a lesser extent, that also happened with 15 to 12 and 12 to PG. If that happened, specific prints of the affected reel would be made for the British market.

Mix and match prints, containing some reels recycled from the US release, and others reprinted by a British lab, were very common. You could see instantly when you got one, because the US recycled reels came on 4" cores (that had been unclipped from the Goldberg flanges of their original shipping reels) and often smelled of the ultrasonic cleaning chemistry, whereas the British ones arrived on 3" cores and often had Technicolor UK (or whatever) lab labels on them.

So I'm guessing that DTS handled these the same way, except that if more than one reel were affected, there would have to have been a reel 14, 15, etc. on the discs.

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 05-03-2016, 09:48 AM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
So I'm guessing that DTS handled these the same way, except that if more than one reel were affected, there would have to have been a reel 14, 15, etc. on the discs.

That's exactly right - additional alternate reels were simply assigned new reel numbers, counting backwards from Reel 13. Reel 14 was reserved for trailers, and Reel 15 was unavailable for use for obscure technical reasons lost to the mists of time. We'd start to worry if a long movie had many alternate reels, because you could run out of either available reel numbers or disc space, and be forced to carry dual inventory.

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 05-14-2016, 05:09 AM:

I've had some help with making a cd with a 20 second ofsett. Not sure if that's the right time, but we can test the " procedure' that way.

Probably take another weeks to test it properly. Keep you informed!

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 05-14-2016, 07:16 AM:

I look forward to hearing the procedure! [Smile]

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 06-17-2016, 12:28 PM:

With help of Markus we produced a 20 second delay disc, thats working fine! The timing is still off, the test was a succes!

So for now it's looking on how to build a proper disc with 223 frames (we counted them) and see how that works!

Markus, thanks for the great idea!

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 06-17-2016, 02:17 PM:

hi

can you be more specific? What do you mean with "a 20 seconds delay disc"? I'm curious!

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 07-01-2016, 02:43 AM:

Hi Marco,

THe time coding on the reel 1 starts different from the international release. So in order it to work, we have to calculate the offset and add (or remove) this on the audio file.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 07-01-2016, 01:54 PM:

yes, but how!