Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Adpack Failure

This is topic Adpack Failure in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Geoff Power (Member # 6880) on 08-08-2016, 04:45 PM:

Just had an issue where a Pearl & Deal Adpack failed to run on Doremi, skipping straight to the trailers 10 minutes ahead of schedule. If the Adpack has ingested and appears in the asset list, then it should be able to play? Presumably one of it's ads was corrupt, but I'm puzzled as to why it shows as a valid asset, and how we can predict such a failure without previewing every single playlist. We're only a small volunteer-run arthouse theatre and not really set up to do full previews (especially before the feature keys become active!).

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 08-08-2016, 05:09 PM:

Well, what does P&D say? Any other cinemas having the same problem?

You could generate a detailed report on the Doremi and submit it to the online log analyzer. But that doesn't prevent it from happening again.

- Carsten

Posted by Matt Smith (Member # 9425) on 08-09-2016, 08:18 AM:

Are the ads sent as one clip or each ad is an individual DCP? It is likely something is corrupt there as you say but I do not think it would skip everything...

I saw something like this recently where we rebuilt the RAID on a Doremi and the feature would be skipped completely in the playlist and go straight to the show end. The content was fine, everything else (trailers, ads) played fine. So we cleared the KDMs and rebooted the server, worked fine after that.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 08-09-2016, 09:48 AM:

I've seen something like this from ScreenVision (they have individual ads for their automatic download service and early/late ad packs for traditional delivery)...there was a Chevy truck ad that was corrupt and when the servers hit that ad or ad pack, the whole CPL would be skipped over.

On the Dolby servers (DSS line) those clips would have a red "X" in the upper right to signify that something was wrong with it.

Posted by Steve Moore (Member # 4753) on 08-09-2016, 10:11 AM:

We have contacted P&D and Unique regarding this, as we have had a couple of sites with this over the last few weeks (and I know of another outside our chain too.) No one seems to have any real answers. Unique did tell us a few weeks back they were working on a new version of transit server software that pulls the files to the local server rather than push it. I await to hear when this will be implemented.

Posted by Geoff Power (Member # 6880) on 08-09-2016, 10:58 AM:

Thanks for the replies. I did as Carsten suggested and ran a logfile report, which I then fed into the Dolby log analyser. (At this point I should stress that I'm way out of my depth here, but my Ops Manager is on holiday and I'm trying to keep things running!).
The analyser indicated 6 faults corresponding to the 2 instances of playback failure, all along the lines of ...
"Line 41112:[Mon Aug 8 10:25:38 2016][INFO ]: AsRun: "32ff2575-c14d-4686-a083-8ea70c36cf76"," ","00:00:00.00","00:00:08.05","0","0","I"

Where I understand that "I" indicates incomplete. It then suggests I look at the "Asrun (Playback log) in the Odetices log", but when I try that it tells me I'm not authorised to view that resource. Any more clues here?

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 08-09-2016, 12:24 PM:

You can unpack the diags archive - there are a few levels (zipfiles inside zipfiles inside zipfiles) - and find that logfile.

Posted by Steve Moore (Member # 4753) on 08-09-2016, 12:45 PM:

Geoff; just out of interest can I ask what film you were playing for that show? We have a site this week that keeps stopping during shows saying Security Manager missing and have to reboot the server (this was one with the P&D ad problems this week) and showing corrupted doremi eS/N too and the show stopping. A reboot would cure it but then it did it again. So far today I'm not aware of any problems. However the reason I ask is that the playout error in your log is identical to one we had when we looked at the doremi detailed report.

I realise that might be completely unrelated and we could have a faulty dolphin card or motherboard, but just trying to work out if there are any common factors! Thanks

Posted by Geoff Power (Member # 6880) on 08-09-2016, 04:29 PM:

Steve - the film was "Learning to Drive", and the Adpack was similarly titled. Hope that helps.

And thanks Dave - I'll have a go at unpacking the Zips within Zips!

Posted by Geoff Power (Member # 6880) on 08-11-2016, 05:35 AM:

Just previewed all next week's Ad-Reels by creating one playlist with just the Ads, and found another one throws an error (Embrace of the Serpent). Sent report to Unique Helpdesk and got the following reply, which is along the lines of Steve's comment above:

"Thank you for the good report, yes I can confirm that we are aware of the problem. There is an mastering inconsistency in the reel which the Doremi is unable to handle. We are investigating this with the mastering team now. Pending update"

I therefore recommend that all sites showing P&D ads via Unique preview them before committing.

Posted by Steve Moore (Member # 4753) on 08-11-2016, 06:13 AM:

Thanks Geoff. Our problem was with finding Dory and the actual show stopping.
We have had issues for quite a while on and off (and certainly most weeks the ingest failing across many of our sites and having to re-scan the transit and start again.)
Each Thursday when I make up playlists I usually check the first minute and last minute of each reel to check they play. Let's hope they do finally iron out these issues! Thanks for the update

Posted by Geoff Power (Member # 6880) on 08-11-2016, 08:15 AM:

I queried with Unique that feature transport may be similarly afflicted, and just got the following reply ...

"It does not affect feature delivery. You may use old rating appropriate adreels until resolved. They have put a 1920x resolution DCP in a pack of 1988x files which is causing the issue. Currently awaiting new DCP from the studio to rectify the playlists."

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 08-11-2016, 11:47 AM:

How do these Adpacks actually look? Are they a single CPL, with different ads cued up in them as short reels, so you can't put them on the timeline or delete them individually? If they'd mix different container sizes/resolutions, etc. like this, that certainly calls for trouble. Video and audio of all reels in a CPL need to be of same type.

- Carsten

Posted by Geoff Power (Member # 6880) on 08-11-2016, 12:53 PM:

Yes Carsten, they just appear as a single CPL and I've never tried to open one, but they insist that you cannot meddle with the individual Ad components ... not that they are visible anyway.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 08-11-2016, 01:32 PM:

Then that is the issue. Note that DCPs/CPLs can be made of reels like in the old film days. For an adpack, the easiest way to do this is to arrange every single ad as a reel and cue them up in the adpack CPL. But if you do it like this, you need to make sure the video and audio in each of these adds are conformed to the same resolution/container type and audio channel arrangement. The safest way to make sure they avoid this issue is to reencode all the trailers in one go to the same target specs. But that doesn't allow them to shuffle around reels/ads for different add packs so easily.

- Carsten