Mission Impossible 7 and Dolby DSS200 servers

[Stephan Shelley]

Happens with DSS 100 servers as well. Running 4.7.8 software and Christie CP2220 and CP2000ZX. So there is a series 1. 4.7.8 is the last software available for the 100s.

Replacement 2K does not have closed captions or any HI/VI like the 4K. Puts them in violation of ADA laws there.

[Philip Jones]

I would say it is happening in quite a lot of places without anyone realizing. You can watch a fair bit of it before it becomes apparent, and to the untrained eye they might not even register there is anything particularly wrong for large parts.

[Stephan Shelley]

Update received a version file with the captions and key for playback via email from deluxe.

[Leo Enticknap]

Replacement 2K does not have closed captions or any HI/VI like the 4K. Puts them in violation of ADA laws there.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the ADA only requires you to offer HI, VI, and CCAPs if they are actually present on the DCP. If they are not supplied with the movie, you can offer the movie to customers without them. If I remember correctly, though, it has to be made clear on your listings, website, Fandango, etc. if the ADA amenities are not available for any given screening. If so and if your customer hadn't put that disclaimer in their listings, this could still be a problem. In any case, Interop supports HI, VI, and CCAPs, so it must just have been a rush job error not to include them in the DSS legacy version of the DCP.

If it were an absolute legal requirement to offer HI and VI audio, plus CCAPs, with all public screenings, then the arthouses would be totally snookered. Many of these DCPs don't have that content, and some of those that do have the HI and VI tracks only in the foreign language that the main audio is in.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I agree with Leo.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...44.pdf#page=31 "A public accommodation shall ensure that its movie theater auditoriums provide closed movie captioning and audio description whenever they exhibit a digital movie that is distributed with such features."

Also see https://www.qsys.com/resource-files/...equirement.pdf and https://hallikainen.org/org/DojNprm/

Harold

[Jesse Crooks]

We just had an issue that is similar to the MI7 color fringing problem in a number of ways. In this case, it was flashing pink in the highlights when objects were in motion. We ran the same DCP (Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, which is 4K) at three sites and it only manifested on screens with CAT 862s.

It first ran on an IMS300 and was tested at another venue with a CAT 745 with no issues. The public screening at the second venue got bumped to a smaller auditorium with a CAT 862, which is when the problem first manifested. It only manifested after the show had been running for a bit. When it first happened there was a brief hiccup when it froze momentarily, and then the pink flashing started. Based on the symptom of color flashing I thought it was an ICP issue and advised the projectionists to reboot which temporarily resolved the issue, but it came back after about 20min. After some additional troubleshooting we ended up moving it back to the auditorium with a CAT 745 and it played without issue. At the third venue the exact issue occurred when it was tested using a CAT 862 (and again on their second screen with a CAT 862). It had the brief hiccup observed at the previous site, and the same pink flashing. The projectionist who reported the issue at that venue said it was the same exact problem he observed with a DCP of Easy Rider we played in 2019, which we ultimately had to play on Blu-Ray.

Given the similarities between this and the MI7 issue, and the fact that the studio claimed that the “legacy hardware” was the source of the problem, I’m wondering whether we should be concerned about additional compatibility issues with our CAT 862s moving forward.

Has anyone experienced these issues for titles besides MI7? If so, how often has it happened, and is there any pattern with regard to distributors, authoring software, etc?

[Carsten Kurz]

This issue is growing pretty weird.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I've read that this MAY be due to the use of particular Analog Deviced JPEG decoder chips in the playback systems.

[Leo Enticknap]

Given the similarities between this and the MI7 issue, and the fact that the studio claimed that the “legacy hardware” was the source of the problem, I’m wondering whether we should be concerned about additional compatibility issues with our CAT 862s moving forward.

This appears to be a bad interaction between one of the industry standard DCP mastering systems (e.g. Clipster or the Easy DCP Creator plugin for FCP - one of the ones the studios use) and the cat862's decoding hardware, as Harold mentions. It's obviously not just affecting the one movie, as you saw the problem on Poxy Now as well.

If so, and given that Dolby has declared the entire DSS line to be EOL (i.e. there isn't going to be a firmware update for the cat862 to address this), I fear that the studios will do the same thing to the cat862 as they did to that GDC model a few months ago: simply announce that as of a cutoff date in the near future, no further KDMs will be issued for cat862s. If I had any of these still in revenue-earning service, I would at least be asking my booker either for an assurance that this isn't going to happen, or if it could, to make plans to retire and upgrade my DSS200s.

[Steve Guttag]

I think the problem with the GDC server was one of security. That isn't the case for the DSS server line. I would think Dolby could influence the studios regarding the mastering of content. It isn't like they haven't been able to make content that works with the DSS line for 18 or so years. The idea behind having "DCI Compliant" equipment is that it will be supported. For sure, the vast majority of our DSS services (over 200) are still in service but, 1 by 1, they are starting to be replaced as mediablock failures come up. However, mere power supplies or motherboards remain replaceable to keep them going. I just changed a motherboard this week, in fact.

[Carsten Kurz]

I think that the studios and Dolby will urge mastering companies and makers of encoders to adjust their product. Maybe some code optimization creeped in that caused this issue. I don't believe this is a non-resolvable future compatibility issue, as 24fps 2k/4k had been stable in Interop and SMPTE for years now and there was no formal need to revise J2K now.

I just hope this is not an issue of CAT862s slowly degrading (like e.g. a heat spreader glue slowly deteriorating). But that's very unlikely as the issue seems to hit all CAT862 under the same circumstances and only with specific DCPs.

[Volkan Sezer]

Same problem playing oppenheimer movie in Dolby DSS200

day movie gave subtitle and subtitle gone, I restarted but no result

I will try ICP and projector update

Projector Model - Barco DP2K 15C

[Ioannis Syrogiannis]

You mean that there was an issue with the image as well as subtitles, Volkan?
If it was only the subtitles, it could be something else.
A server update might be handy also, for SMPTE DCPs. But, if the server is with a cat.862 media block, you will (probably) need a key from Dolby for that.

[Jesse Crooks]

We also have one screen with a DSS server where the captions for the Flat version of Oppenheimer don't work. The other screen in the same theater with identical equipment has no issues. I advised them to delete and reingest on the problematic server but they have yet to do it. We had started its run using the Scope version to hide some stuck pixels, but switched to Flat after we replaced the light engine. The captions did work for the Scope version.

[Carsten Kurz]

We ran the same DCP (Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, which is 4K) at three sites and it only manifested on screens with CAT 862s.

This is a repertoire title. Can you post the full CPL name? It usually contains the creation date. Wondering wether that DCP contains a recent J2K video encoding, or an older one. If it is an older encoding, and CAT862 fail with it, that's a different story. If you look into the CPL XML, you will also find the software that created the DCP (which is not necessarily the same software that encoded the J2K, but, pretty likely it will be).