Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: KDM Issues

This is topic KDM Issues in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Geoff Power (Member # 6880) on 04-13-2012, 12:25 PM:

I'm a newby here, and joined because I've encountered lots of issues with our digital setup which I've tried to get my head around. We're a small rural art-house cinema, and converted to digital just over a year ago, running DoreMi on a DCP-2K4. I'm a volunteer projectionist and do some ingesting and playlisting.

One set of issues concerns KDM failures - twice recently a feature has failed to activate because they sent us the wrong KDM, and this week only narrowly avoided disaster. The only feedback we got was "we've identified the problem and are on it" - I believe it was the wrong version number of the feature. On another occasion the KDM was sent by a different distributor to the one who supplied the film. And keys often arrive, or activate, too close to the show date for us to preview the show.

Are these issues normal, or are we just unlucky [Confused]

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 04-13-2012, 03:02 PM:

You're just as unlucky as everyone else.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 04-13-2012, 04:00 PM:

There are several different things you can do on your end to help eliminate KDM issues.

The first is to ensure you are ingesting content and keys as soon as you get them. Don't wait around until Thursday afternoon.

The second is to ensure that when you receive your keys, you are very careful about ingesting the right key. I will sometimes receive as many as 12 different keys for a given feature:
Feature 5.1
Feature 5.1 CC
Feature 5.1 OC
Feature 7.1
Feature 7.1 CC
Feature 7.1 OC
3D Feature...

There is no consistent rule for which you should use for your location. Sometimes is the feature version, sometimes it's the closed captioned version. When in doubt, I would just ingest all the keys.

Third, do not ingest your keys until after you ingest your content.

Fourth, your media server should have some way to verify the keys, even if they are not active yet. There should be a screen which identifies when keys are active, whether a feature has a key associated, and so forth. Our GDC servers will even identify content which requires a key but does not have one, and keys that expire within a week.

I'm not suggesting that you are not receiving bad keys, just that you have to make sure you are doing things right on your end to eliminate operator error.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 04-13-2012, 04:21 PM:

..and to add:

If using multiple servers, the serial number in the key must match the server's serial number, or the key will not work either.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 04-13-2012, 04:37 PM:

...also

If you are using the CC or OC versions, those often have to be ingested after the FTR version.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 04-13-2012, 08:17 PM:

Justin, that must be some quirky GDC thing. For example on a Dolby, you can ingest all keys if you want, before or after or during content ingestion, and yes you can ingest version files first too...it doesn't care. It just works. That being said I'm not aware of any issues ingesting a key before content on a GDC.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 04-13-2012, 08:41 PM:

I have a GDC server and have never run into this issue. The keys for this week's movies arrived about a week ago for some reason so I ingested them then. I received the hard drives yesterday, ingested those, and everything plays fine.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 04-13-2012, 09:42 PM:

Ours arrive via FTP days before the HD's in which the KDM's are already in the servers .. and no issues either.

Posted by Adam Holland (Member # 4539) on 04-15-2012, 08:50 AM:

I have run into several issues recently with keys as well. Mainly from Technicolor. Had an issue with my keys for the LORAX last week, loaded and built Lorax before ingesting keys. Key screen said it was good, but build and control screens didn't recognize it. People from Deluxe had me delete my play list, reboot and reload the key and it worked. Said the play list sometimes acts as bubble and keeps the keys from activating the feature.

Posted by Antti Nayha (Member # 4980) on 04-15-2012, 08:53 AM:

Adam, what’s your server?

Posted by Joris Springer (Member # 4175) on 04-15-2012, 01:40 PM:

In other words, KDM's are just tiresome, annoying and it makes you wonder, can't they invent a more interactive sort of security because sometimes you even have to rush to get new keys because they forgot the movie is playing even longer [Frown]

.

It is a good way of protecting the content but there has to be an easier way to renew the keys and also don't make them valid on the day that movie has to play but do it a couple of days before that.

I also love that Doremi has at the moment a problem that makes the server say "KDM is valid for 0 Hours" in red even though when you check the key it is still valid for 101 days for example.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 04-15-2012, 09:54 PM:

There's a proposal to automate KDM delivery. Details are at http://isdcf.com/papers/ISDCF-Doc8-TheaterKeyRetrieval-TKR-v03.pdf .

Harold