DTS Mystery Sync Test Disk?

[Jim Cassedy]

While looking for a small part I dropped, I found this DTS disk stuck between one of the
racks and a brick wall. (Or should I have said 'stuck between a rack and a hard place' ? )
I was working here in 2023, and I have no recollection of ever receiving or seeing this disk.
Based on the date, this would have been around the time we played OPPENHEIMER in
70mm. But I'm really curious about the "DTS SYNC TEST" Can anybody shed some
light on this? Was there a film loop or something that went with it?

DTS_SyncTestDisk.jpg

[Alan Lyman]

Yes,I think it was with Oppenheimer,we got a loop and disc for synctest,and a piece af vertigo and DTS files,for test purposes.

alan

[Christos Gartaganis]

That makes a sense only for 70mm prints where an analog soundtrack is not present to adjust the reader's frame offset by switching the sound processor between analog and digital audio.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Someone really does not trust our ability to count frames in the film path. lol (well and then apply the goofy formula... so maybe it has it's place).

[Pete Naples]

Someone really does not trust our ability to count frames in the film path. lol (well and then apply the goofy formula... so maybe it has it's place).

In this day and age though, the DTS player may well be inputted to a digital processor of some sort, which has some latency. So the old 'count the perfs and do the math' might not be spot on.

[Jim Cassedy]

In this day and age though, the DTS player may
well be inputted to a digital processor of some sort, which has some latency.

Pete has a very valid point. We had to skew our frame count slightly when setting up
our DTS reader because our Trinnov (digital) processor adds a tiny bit of delay, and
I think our large, acoustically cavernous auditorium doesn't help the situation. Until
we figured this out, I was quite perplexed, and I kept counting, and re-counting frames,
thinking I had somehow counted wrong or mis-calculated the DTS delay formula.

For setting DCP audio, I've got one these digital "Sync-One-Two" sync checker boxes.

https://www.rspeaudio.com/sync-one2-av-synchronizer?

[Pete Naples]

Pete has a very valid point. We had to skew our frame count slightly when setting up
our DTS reader because our Trinnov (digital) processor adds a tiny bit of delay, and
I think our large, acoustically cavernous auditorium doesn't help the situation. Until
we figured this out, I was quite perplexed, and I kept counting, and re-counting frames,
thinking I had somehow counted wrong or mis-calculated the DTS delay formula.

For setting DCP audio, I've got one these digital "Sync-One-Two" sync checker boxes.

https://www.rspeaudio.com/sync-one2-av-synchronizer?

Your OV2 will have somewhere around 35ms latency. You can put it is low-latency mode but you lose some bells and whistles.Better just to adjust sync to get it bang on.

I use one of those boxes for digital cinema sync, I got fed up of running the test DCP, asking 5 people their opinion and getting 3 different answers.

[Jim Cassedy]

I use one of those boxes for digital cinema sync, I got fed
up of running the test DCP, asking 5 people their opinion
and getting 3 different answers.

lol! That's almost precisely why I started using one of those sync
testers. I once explained it to a friend by saying " it solves a lot of
arguments ". I liked that that I could get an actual quantitative
answer as to the sync situation, instead of using vague phrases
like "it's a little off". I recall a time where two film-makers were
doing a QC check of their DCP before a big screening. The one
guy said he thought the audio was 'two frames late' the other
guy said it was 'two frames early". - - and the 1st guy's girlfriend
came up with yet another estimate of how far off she thought it
was. No way was I going to get in the middle of that.

[Sean McKinnon]

This disc has a corresponding loop similar to the same "flash frame" sync check DCP's to accurately locate sync to a specific spot in the auditorium (per spec) with a SyncOneTwo device or CatchNSync (SP?) app. We worked with universal and the other stakeholders involved in the 5/70 release to produce these as an extra "tool for the tool box"

Jim,

If you need the loop that goes with it I think I have some left.

[Ryan Gallagher]

This disc has a corresponding loop similar to the same "flash frame" sync check DCP's to accurately locate sync to a specific spot in the auditorium (per spec) with a SyncOneTwo device or CatchNSync (SP?) app. We worked with universal and the other stakeholders involved in the 5/70 release to produce these as an extra "tool for the tool box"

Jim,

If you need the loop that goes with it I think I have some left.

It makes sense when I think about where most people set their DCP sync adjustment from (the cinema server)... so any separate processor is not typically doing the lifting there. If the processor or other 70mm path introduces it's own delay then additional offset adjustment might be needed in the DTS playback (beyond frame offset math).

I'd be interested in the loop too but I'll give priority to booths that aren't shuttered for renovation right now.