Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: KDM Hell

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Posted by Roy Servis Jnr (Member # 8944) on 05-05-2017, 04:12 PM:

Hi,
Just wondered about your thoughts on kdm deliveries - good or bad.

Is there anything that could be done better? would really love some feedback!

Any ideas on ensuring theatre information is kept updated.

Happy to talk online or offline.

Regards,

Roy

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-05-2017, 04:19 PM:

Never had any issues with the deliveries, opening the package and extracting the actual key when using the email system.

But, sometimes where the key is generated, a bit of code gets entered in wrong making the key inoperable..

..and that has been the only issue with KDM's that I have experienced.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 05-05-2017, 05:02 PM:

The only bad thing I see is KDMs being delivered late. Some of our distributors seem to have internal rules about sending out KDMs only 1 or 2 days before the feature should play. That's pretty late if you want to program shows and schedules and want to be sure the KDMs fit the features. Also not enough time if something goes wrong. Other studios send out KDM on the day the movie was booked. Wondering what they could be doing wrong...

It's annoying, but I wouldn't call it KDM Hell. All in all, we have few to no issues with KDMs at all.

- Carsten

Posted by Roy Servis Jnr (Member # 8944) on 05-05-2017, 05:04 PM:

Thanks Monte and Carsten for your valuable feedback.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-05-2017, 06:47 PM:

I don't remember any issues, except for last week our booker assumed we would open "Guardians" on Thursday night, but we had already advertised the previous movie to play thru Thursday. But when I went to play it last night, I found an expired KDM. Five-minute phone call to Deluxe fixed the issue though. So, no horrible problems at all.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-07-2017, 01:14 PM:

If Deluxe/Technicolor is handling the KDM issue, there is very rarely a serious problem. The worst case scenario is a phone call a couple of hours before showtime, but they will respond with the correct KDM pretty much instantly.

The only times I've had a close shave with Deluxe/Technicolor were:

- Once, when they couldn't raise anyone at the (again, smaller and arthouse) distributor that had hired them to authorize the issue of the correct KDM.

- Once, when we replaced a server/media block and moved the former one to the other auditorium in the same building, Deluxe/Technicolor failed to record the correct serial numbers in their system correctly, and there then followed a few days of having to call them to have a KDM issued for the correct media block serial.

If KDMs are not handled by Deluxe Technicolor, however (and especially if you're dealing with a DIY-er using DCP-o-Matic, and who doesn't really understand what he or she is doing), it can be a nightmare, especially with smaller arthouse distributors, and those in a different time zone to yours. We lost two festival shows last year because a KDM was issued in Europe for their local time, for a very tight window, and without the issuer realizing that we are nine hours behind them. In one case, the KDM was only actually emailed to us (by an automated system, I suspect) after it had closed! No-one was able to answer our calls or emails, because it was 2am in Athens, and it was a small distributor with no 24/7 phone support.

Another thing to watch out for is if one distributor handles two separate movies with the same title. We had this last week when playing Orson Welles's The Trial. Rialto sent us the correct DCP drive, but a KDM for a 2004 Filipino movie of the same name. This was caught in time to issue the right KDM, but is still a potential danger point; and is one of the reasons why I encourage the other projectionists here to use the UUID when identifying a given CPL in phone/email exchanges, not the ISDCF name: it reduces the chances of confusing two DCPs, especially in situations where multiple versions arrive on the same drive, such as an unsubtitled OV and an English-subtitled VF. We've been issued the wrong KDM in those situations, too.

Posted by Roy Servis Jnr (Member # 8944) on 05-08-2017, 03:58 AM:

Thank you all for you're great feedback.

So it seems as long as you have 24/7 telephone support nothing seems an issue.

What about live chat?

What are your feelings on updating server certs yourselves via a web site? either with a secure login or authenticated link?

Having the ability to download recently issued keys?

Roy

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-08-2017, 07:47 AM:

I think it would be great if all the major issuers would have a comprehensive web-interface where you can download your KDMs and manage your certificates. Maybe even something like an API to hook up your TMS, which in turn could distribute it to your servers.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 05-08-2017, 12:39 PM:

I suppose one other point is not to assume that all servers are exactly on time. The clock on mine, for example, is currently about 40 minutes behind. (That's supposed to be getting fixed within the next month or so.)

And if you want to insure a proper presentation, be sure to allow enough time for the projectionist to screen your film himself before showing it to the public. And don't assume that dealing with your film is the only thing that he is doing that day.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 05-08-2017, 05:18 PM:

Out of curiosity, how many different KDM senders does everyone deal with in different countries? I remember, when we installed a new media block a year ago, I sent certificate/serials to 5 email recipients I gathered from recent KDMs we received. These were the only companies we were receiving KDM emails from.

That was a rather simple process. Within (literally) seconds, we received conformations/new KDMs from these issuers. None of them were studios, all were 'just' service/mastering companies.

How is that in other countries?

- Carsten

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 05-08-2017, 05:33 PM:

Just Technicolor/Deluxe here. Fox does their own keys but they come in with the Technicolor/Deluxe stuff.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-10-2017, 04:00 AM:

One can get their Fox keys directly from:

www.foxkeys.com

User:Fox
PW:Fox

Find your country, then state/province, city, and location.

It's all there.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-10-2017, 11:39 AM:

quote: Carsten Kurz
Out of curiosity, how many different KDM senders does everyone deal with in different countries?

The answer to that is going to depend on what sort of theater you are. A typical Harkins or AMC 10-plex will probably get all of them from Deluxe Technicolor. At the other end of the scale, theaters like ours (which are very arthouse and festival heavy) will receive KDMs from 40-50 different issuers each year, located everywhere from Punta Arenas to Novosibirsk (I'm not joking: I have received KDMs issued in these two places), some of which will be one-offs who we will never deal with again.

Even so, I'd say that about 70% of ours come from Deluxe Technicolor. Most of the ones that don't are festival related (the major arthouse and rep/classics distributors in the US tend not to encrypt their DCPs), and the big festivals tend to hire someone whose job it is to wrangle them, make phone calls to Sodomistan in the middle of the night, etc. etc. The gnarly ones are the festivals that our own programmers organize, for which the KDM hell falls on us.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-10-2017, 06:12 PM:

Thus, it looks like getting keys for tentpole features isn't the issue...

But the keys from indies and obscure locations seems to be where this issue lies....

Posted by Chase Taylor (Member # 778) on 05-10-2017, 06:44 PM:

I have enjoyed Cinergy from MiT, it has an option for KDM delivery and that has made my life so much easier. I have all my keys emailed to them and they ingest them for us.

The other great thing is if I have a feature that does not have a KDM ingested yet for a scheduled show or is about to expire without an holdover key it will alert me via email or text to let me know.

It will also do Health Monitoring and if something goes out of range (lamp hours, fan failures, etc etc) it will text or email you too.

Chase

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 05-10-2017, 10:32 PM:

quote: Carsten Kurz
Out of curiosity, how many different KDM senders does everyone deal with

My situation is almost the same as Leo's. 95% of what I'm involved with are
special press/preview or producer QC screenings, followed by both public and
private 'special event' screenings and film festivals.

As others have mentioned, tracking things down from obscure producers in far
away countries is often necessary when dealing with festival content.

But here in the USA, I, like a lot of others, seem to deal directly with Deluxe
Technicolor, most of the time, and I have always found them to be very helpful
24/7 whenever I've needed to track down a KDM issue.
They get a big [thumbsup]

from me.

... and very often, when I've had an issue, it hasn't really been their fault,
but that they were provided with bad information, or sometimes even NO
information from whoever booked the screening.

Sometimes I am running content several months before public release, or
stuff that's still in a 'rough cut' stage, so the drives are custom duplicated,
and often the titles don't appear in Deluxe-T's 'normal' system yet.
So it takes a bit of effort on their part to track down what I need.

Sometimes I don't get keys and/or content until the day of (and occasionally
just a few hours OR LESS) prior to one of these special screenings.

A couple of weeks ago, I was screening an upcoming film for its' producer
and some local media people. Deluxe-T issued me a kdm, but the director
was flying up from Los Angeles and bringing the DCP with him, so I wouldn't
have it in my booth till he arrived at the screening room.

Of course his flight was late, and he got to the screening room a little less
than an hour before the screening time. Deluxe/T-color had already sent me
a KDM, but it didn't match the drive the director brought.

In fact they sent me FOUR friggin' KDM's and none of them worked.

It turns out that the film I was showing was still 'a work in progress' and the
director brought the latest rough-cut version which which had only been "DCP'd"
the night before. But the new version was copied onto a drive that still had the
CPL info from one of the earlier versions on the label.

To make matters more tricky, whoever dubbed the DCP hadn't updated the
"version" field in the actual CPL. (So, like, I had two "FTR-3"s.). . and whatever
version it was wasn't appearing in Deluxe's system.

I had to fish out a couple of the UUID's from the content files, pass them along to
Deluxe & they miraculously managed to get me a working KDM with a few minutes
to spare before the scheduled show time.

Since I've had to deal with this type of thing on multiple occasions, I've become
rather adept at deciphering KDM troubles when they don't work. I actually enjoy the challenge. It's like solving a puzzle.

Posted by Tim Sherman (Member # 569) on 05-10-2017, 11:31 PM:

Only issue I have ever had with keys was 3 or 4 years ago. The file name was so long that winzip would not unzip them. The same KDM unziped perfectly using 7zip.