Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Anyone ever misplace a theatrical DCP hard drive, what are the penalties.

This is topic Anyone ever misplace a theatrical DCP hard drive, what are the penalties. in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Alan Gouger (Member # 543) on 10-29-2012, 03:00 PM:

Curious if anyone has ever misplaced or lost a hard drive what happens. I am sure it happens. I remember this being covered with film but now that everything is hard drive and the media is cheaper
what do they do. What if its no longer in theaters.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 10-29-2012, 05:23 PM:

I don't know about your situation, but I knew a theater owner
who started receivng disk drives even though he did not have
digital cinema equipment installed, nor did he plan to.
He didn't even know what they were at the time. They stopped
coming after a few weeks. That was about 2 years ago, and as
far as I know, all the drives are still sitting in a pile in
a store room.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-29-2012, 05:30 PM:

Sounds like the theatre where I worked in college (in the late '90s) that was getting DTS trailer disks, despite not having DTS. They also occasionally got trailers on 3/4" or Beta SP videotape, rather than 35mm, apparently due to various distributors' cluelessness (and they didn't have video projection).

As to the original question, I'm guessing that, at worst, the theatre might be billed for the cost of the disk (maybe $50) and the cost of the Pelican case that it was shipped in.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-29-2012, 06:53 PM:

Ha! I'll bet they would try to soak you for at least $150, or more likely $300 or more.

It definitely pays to keep the tracking numbers of returned drives. I've had to "prove" that we returned at least 5 or 6 of them over the last two years. That's a problem we NEVER had with film!

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 11-08-2012, 06:59 PM:

Of course, there still exists the problem when the courier forgets to pick up:

Posted by Olivier Lemaire (Member # 5579) on 11-08-2012, 10:03 PM:

nice shot! really awesome.

Posted by Aleksandar Obradovic (Member # 7266) on 11-11-2012, 08:52 AM:

i can tell you that you are lucky one. they are not taking yours DCP's.

I always receive DCP 2-3 hours before scheduled show [Frown]

Eventually distributors will ask themselves "where are our DCPs? can someone check tracking lists?" [Wink]

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 11-11-2012, 11:12 AM:

I received 42 separate emails from Technicolor last week, each with a Microsoft Word file attachment asking about one hard drive (both features and Trail Mix), going back to stuff that I returned last April.

I consolidated all of that onto one spreadsheet, sorted it, and then went through my waybills file, matched each title to a waybill and added the waybill number and shipping date to the spreadsheet. I emailed that back to them and haven't heard anything more about it so far. Good thing that I keep all of the outbound waybills.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 11-11-2012, 04:47 PM:

Best create a log of sorts, but with the "Reference number" listed on your log.

This "Reference Number" is the "Print Number" of 35mm release prints.

For this number, located on the lower left of the shipping label (Example: REF # A1012, or similar) of the case when it's shipped to the respective theatre, is what Deluxe and TECH will be looking for.

And when UPS or similar sends the return label for TECH cases, the "Reference Number" is also on these return labels so labels can be attached to the proper cases. For DeLuxe, it's located on the enclosed return shipping label.

This is a good checksum to ensure that case and label matches so no print loss is eliminated when you log these reference numbers with print title and shipout date.

-Monte