Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Lamp On, Dowser Open, No Picture

This is topic Lamp On, Dowser Open, No Picture in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 07-13-2018, 08:31 PM:

Solaria One
First show ran fine. Second show with a slightly different playlist that should not have affected anything, the trailers ran fine, but when it changed to the feature, there was no picture (not sure about sound as there is a long silent opening).
Lamp was on and dowser was open and the file was playing.
We stopped and loaded the film, no playlist. Still no picture.
Reloaded the first show playlist and jumped to the feature. Still nothing.
Shut down the lamp and after it finished cooling, rebooted the projector (we have a very patient audience). Reloaded the first playlist, jumped to feature and everything ran fine.
Just one of those digital things or the sign of something getting ready to go?
Projectionist will inspect the second playlist after the show. It is just a copy of the first with a shutdown command at the end.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-13-2018, 11:29 PM:

Valid keys? If the keys are not valid, some servers will allow previous content in the SPL to play until the locked content comes up, then playback stops.

Others will freeze a SPL completely from playing. The ICMP for Barco does this.

I’ll share my experience today: new tent pole feature. Starts okey, plays Preshow and trailer content fine, but when the feature hits, the image goes enlarged and squeezed. All my cues are good. Thus, switch the projector to Flat 3D and the image goes normal. I’m not playing any Flat 3D content.

I had to completely rebuild my SPLs for this tent pole feature, with correct cues and all. Ingested the new SPL to the assigned houses and redid the scheduler for this updated series. All went fine afterwards.

I blamed the digital ghosts on this one

Friday the 13th hit us hard today.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 07-14-2018, 09:45 AM:

Key valid. Ghosts in the machine? We'll see what happens this evening.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 07-14-2018, 10:05 AM:

Not claiming this is your problem, but I've seen similar behavior when the NAS decided to get wonky because of a failed disk. It only happened at this particular feature, probably because the feature was on an affected block.

Instead of ejecting the defective disk from the NAS, it decided to hang on, making NFS unbearably slow and sometimes totally unresponsive (the hallmarks of software RAID...). Unfortunately, the Solaria didn't handle it gracefully either, it tried to start the feature, but there was no picture.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 07-14-2018, 10:33 AM:

A potential problem with the ICP in version 4.2 and beyond is it will put the mirrors into a grey state for protection. I forget, exactly, when this should happen but the net result wll be no picture and what you will see is some light coming out as it is projecting a grey pattern.

One thing I use as a troubleshooting tool is to load a test pattern (any DLP projector). if that pattern comes up, you've just eliminated half the signal path as the problem isn't the ICP on out.

If you then clear the test pattern and the image is there, the problem was the ICP when into this grey state. If it isn't, on a Christie, I'd then try loading a different channel (say flat instead of scope) or switch between a DVI port and the server to force the projector to reload all of the settings that should create the signal path you need.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 07-14-2018, 12:38 PM:

Disks are probably due for a fail, but it did eventually play.
Went dark after we changed aspect ratio's, so that could be the culprit. We didn't think to check if anything was coming out.
Wait, watch and see what happens.

Posted by Arnold Chase (Member # 7988) on 07-14-2018, 09:49 PM:

I don't have any experience with Series 1 projectors, but when I had a similar thing happen to me with my Series 2 (Lamp was on and dowser was open and the file was playing), but nothing on the screen, I found that the wrong channel file had been selected, which had the projector looking for a different video input source.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 07-15-2018, 08:43 AM:

On certain Christie machines we actually have had dowsers that quit working in the shut position(down). If you look at the way they are designed, it's backwards.If the dowser malfunctions and quits working it's in the shut or down position, so you are screwed. Why could'nt they have designed them to be opposite? Up is shut and down is open? That way if they malfunction, at least your show can still play......

We fixed this by removing the dowsers altogether.