Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Report from Dolby server

This is topic Report from Dolby server in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Ankhbayar Altantsetseg (Member # 7538) on 07-04-2013, 11:31 PM:

Hi Everybody,

Help me.

Our management team need some report from Dolby server. We have use DSS200 and DSS220.
Example:
1. Projections playing advertisements starting and finish time/date report in Dolby servers
2. Playing trailers starting and finish time/date report in Dolby servers
3. Playing Film starting and finish time/date report in Dolby servers.

any have suggest report ? [Smile]

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 07-05-2013, 04:33 AM:

The Dolby, like every DCI server, logs everything to XML files. So, the information is there. But without the proper tools, you will have a hard time extracting and converting it into a usable format.

- Carsten

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 07-05-2013, 08:36 AM:

D-Cinema servers log just about everything - security is everything, you know. I'm not sure how far back in time these logs save, but probably quite a while.
The problem is that it will take you a lot of time and effort to pull the information you want out of them. It is not too hard to find what the server has played and when. The problem is that all the clips played are listed by UUID (universally unique identifier), a randomly generated 128 bit binary number shown as a 32 character hex string. You would have to get the UUIDs for every clip you have played to cross check against the log info: as a rule the server presents the "title" and hides the UUID in the gui - finding the UUID for a given title is possible but not made easy.
The entire process to get a list of clip titles and times shown will take a ridiculous amount of time. I would say "NO!" to pulling historical data - that they can have the playlists and schedules from now on to figure it out themselves for future use.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 07-05-2013, 09:10 AM:

In the main log file there is a section called

#### Original filename: clipNameToUUID.log

You'll find the correspondence of the UUID such as:

UUID: urn:uuid:dcebef6a-22f0-4497-b957-269d5fb98a50 Title: CROODS_FTR-3D-4FL_S_EN-XX_OV_51_2K_TCF_20130210_DLA_i3D_OV

But as it's been said, what you're looking for is lenghty process. If you're good at using excel you may want to import the file, or the section you need - and create some kind of macro that search the information for you. Not easy though.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 07-05-2013, 03:13 PM:

Given the datafiles and a description of the correlation between the needed items I don't see it being particularly difficult to write a program to read the files and create a report from that.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 07-05-2013, 03:44 PM:

Since the whole system runs on Linux and the files are in XML format, I don't see any reason why an enterprising individual couldn't write a shell script to run some creative GREP commands and pipe the output to a text file.

It would require an individual with good knowledge of XML and RegExp but, to a person so inclined, it shouldn't take more of a couple of evenings of hacking.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 07-05-2013, 04:59 PM:

I don't think these logs contain any indicators regarding advertisements, trailers or features. Other than playing time, I wouldn't know how to tell one from the other if you don't have an external reference.

Maybe SPL exports would be easier to do that.

- Carsten

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 07-05-2013, 06:04 PM:

You get something like that

2012-02-28 20:04:03,199 INFO [Streaming Progress Tracker for unknown device] playback - Current clip is Black (1 second) 185 JPEG urn:uuid:538262b1-72e4-f6fc-72e9-d95917d304e3, show time offset is 527000

Which tells you when the CPL was played. Not sure you can find out easily the end time though.
You may be able to communicate with the Dolby Server through API though, maybe you can log stuff through them?