I don't mind the middle of the road. With software in general if updates roll out significant feature adds, I don't mind a cost associated with that development. Obviously if you don't want/need those features there should be a supported branch that continues as well without extra cost. The bug fixes should not be married to the cost of a major update. Most software places are either unwilling or not tooled up to do that level of granularity. And we either get free updates, or mostly paid ones at major version numbers.
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A colleague has a DCP2000 and a ShowVault/IMB in operation. Both have their certs extended. Before, the DCP2000/Dolphin was expiring Dec 31st, and the ShowVault on November 30th.
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Frank, that is normal practice for "One off" venues. (showing up one or two hours before showtime)
During my time at the University screening rooms, I was fortunate in being able to show up pretty much as early as I wanted to as I could inspect prints and set up the projectors even if another class was using the room.
There were a few times when I was time pressed (one where bad weather and traffic had me delayed until just after the scheduled showtime, I was lucky to have had a student trainee on call who set up the room in advance (HIB 100, pics in the Warehouse) and he knew how to run the show if need be.) and a few times with print issues, one of which was on the first of two consecutive show dates..the second day's print had duplicate reel cans sent (two cans of R1-R4) so I was able to get that fixed in time.
There were also a few shows where I was on time, the print wasn't. Those were fun as it required me to shoot RP 40 (with the audience present) on one occasion, and on the others I was inspecting reels while the others were running.
So glad I got out well before the digital debacle took hold. I had no landline or email access to get last minute KDMs or call out for them.
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In our one-off film on film contexts we try to get prints inspected and potentially even a reel or two tested on a day well before the booking, but it's really all contingent on how the space is booked leading up to the show day. We can inspect while other live shows are going on if someone is available to do so, but can't put anything on screen till day of (or god forbid evening of) in many cases (cause the screen is not there prior and no dark days to give us).
We are in the habit of having or ordering blu-ray or DCP backups, so if the print is too far gone we can just pivot. Only in a festival context would we potentially not have a backup, and only done one of those in my tenure so far. I can only imagine the chaos of festivals in the film-only eras, a platter almost feels like MORE work in that context.
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Having worked a few film festivals (other than at the University, where everything was run with changeovers except 16mm and video) platters are a nightmare on film fests. You need to have a TON of extra takeup rings, "cookie sheets" AND loads of room in the booth(s) to store and shuffle prints. I worked one fest in particular where the venue brought in THREE extra platters and MUTs which were used only for builds and teardowns. (I was one of the six people crewing those platters.)
The major art chain in L.A. did a fest at one of their bigger locations where the Chief Projectionist and I ran a machine each in a changeover booth. One memorable stuff up was a studio premier run on picture and track (mag 35mm) where the opening reel was 20 seconds out of sync. We had several rethreads, with me checking the chief's work (and him checking mine), a few attempts on both machines with the same results. We finally, reluctantly, cancelled the show. The studio reps were furious, and tried to blame us. I suggested since the house was now empty, let's try running reel 2. It was in perfect sync on both machines. The chief and I decided to take a closer look at reel 1 and the reel 1 track roll. Any guesses as to what we found? (Hint: splices.)
To get the answer, scroll down:
....... We found that the studio logo picture was added to the first reel. There were no corresponding splices in the mag track. Yep, at the last minute someone at the studio decided to add the logo to the print without realizing it wasn't an optical track print (the logo DID have an optical track, which of course won't read, when we run pic/track the processor is set up to read mag only. Even IF the optical could have been read because they didn't add the extra mag track the sync would still have been way off. Dumbasses. We did get a huge apology from the irate producer on site. ......Comment
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Never-expiring certificates are a really bad idea.
With the IMS2000 and previous Doremi platforms, this was a challenge because of the way Doremi designed the original chain of trust. I'm assuming Dolby just didn't want to reinvent the wheel on that equipment and wanted to put all their efforts into the IMS3000 platform instead. I'm sure everyone here noticed that there were per-server certificate packages for the IMS2000 line. In contrast, the IMS3000 uses the same upgrade package for all servers.
Unfortunately, this is the cost of doing business with film studios, because they require a valid and robust chain of trust from the mixing room, to the distributor, to the exhibitor. There is honestly some really cool tech that has come from that. But yeah, it means we have to deal with this certificate extension non-sense every decade or so. I get the sense that future certificate extensions will just be handled as part of regular software upgrades from Dolby, and it is their intention to make that process as inconsequential as possible.
I'm honestly impressed that they've chosen to provide extensions for out-of-manufacture and out-of-support equipment, that they didn't originally design, FOR FREE. Imagine if Apple were the king of cinema equipment!Comment
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Have you seen current-generation military equipment? Or John Deere tractors? Farmer John has to pay a certified John-Deere tech $5000 to travel and install and pair a $10 MAF with the tractor to allow it to run, and General Shrike has to pay $250,000 to fly a certified Netgear tech out to his destroyer to replace a broken network switch. Those industries stand in stark contrast to the state of ours.
Cinemas have it easy right now.Comment
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It's not for free. They (or the company they purchased) were paid handsomely for that equipment when they offered it for sale.I'm honestly impressed that they've chosen to provide extensions for out-of-manufacture and out-of-support equipment, that they didn't originally design, FOR FREE.
Sorry, "But Johnny threw rocks at the window too!" doesn't make it right.Have you seen current-generation military equipment? Or John Deere tractors?Comment
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I agree with you on both points. I'm also aware that demanding that a company support equipment that was legacy before they purchased the OEM is a huge ask. My point is that Dolby has done that. How they treated customers and end users on this issue should be tech industry norm, as expensive as it is.
Of course corporate predatory behavior is never okay. I think most of your frustration comes from not understanding how certificates work, and how they provide security for the chain of custody for sensitive content. In my opinion as an IT professional, Dolby has gone above and beyond to support equipment well beyond it's expected useful life. Doremi's original implementation of the certificate chain on cinema products caused more than a few headaches. They've adjusted that approach with newer hardware and software, but they didn't force anyone to pay for certificate or software upgrades for old hardware to allow movies to keep playing.
Certificates play a very important role in this industry. Your projectors and servers and amplifiers and even the lightbulbs in your theaters must occasionally be maintained or replaced. The same is true for certficates, and that fact is part of what gives them security. The fact that the certificates can be replaced at all without just replacing the equipment is testament to at least the Dolby's Cinema's division's take on equipment longevity. Saying that servers were "engineered to fail" because certificates needed to be updated makes no sense.
Please don't take this as me being a shill for Dolby. They have no shortage of other problems. On this particular issue though, their actions have been above-board.Comment
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As an IT professional your take makes sense. However, it misses the cinema professional's perspective, which is that certificates are yet another example of the transition from film to digital having shifted up front costs from producers and distributors to exhibitors.Originally posted by Caleb Williams
The film medium itself offered inherent content security. It was difficult and expensive to duplicate, individual consumers did not have the reproduction equipment in their homes (OK, a tiny number of geeks had/have 35mm projections in the home), and transferring it to a medium that could be viewed in the home required the use of expensive infrastructure (telecine or scanner) with trained operators. 35mm release prints were also of such high contrast emulsion that the results were poor, even if they did fall into the hands of pirates. Crucially, the cost of making and shipping these prints was borne by studios and distributors up front, and then recovered via micropayments (box office return revenue) from exhibitors.
DCI digital totally flipped that business model. A DCP, if it were not encrypted, could very easily, and with equipment already present in many homes, be transcoded to a format that would enable mass illegal distribution direct to consumers. The FIPS-compliant security system involving certificates, encryption > decryption processes, and KDMs, was developed to prevent that from happening. The costs of it are borne almost entirely up front by exhibitors (media blocks and all the other hardware and software devices that are present in DCI playback systems, but which are not needed to put a picture on the screen), whereas the cost of copying and distributing the encrypted digital movie are likely 5% or less of what it would cost to distribute the same movie to the same number of theater customers on 35mm.
So the soldered-on ICP batteries, certificate renewals that have to be done or a board costing in the high four figures is bricked, media block batteries that have to be replaced or the same thing happens, and all these other hurdles don't generally get a positive reception from cinema professionals, especially as producers and distributors don't seem to be making much effort to prevent content piracy via other routes (e.g. awards season screeners), and are making it directly available to consumers in the home legally on or shortly after the theatrical release date, anyways.Comment
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Hi Caleb,
The process for upgrading certificates on the legacy servers and the IMS3000 differs as the requirements are different. For the legacy servers, the certificate extension programme was specifically designed to renew the Leaf certificate. During these upgrades, we also introduced support for a new certificate chain, which includes the ROOT and CA certificates, among others. In contrast, the upgrade for the IMS3000 was more straightforward, focusing solely on enabling compatibility with the new certificate chain, without extending the Leaf certificate.
Best regards,
Joseph Boutros
Dolby Support Services team
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Thanks for your perspective on this. From my point of view, as you said, renewing certificates is just a normal part of the job for IT. We have to do that with websites all the time. That last point though, about shorter or non-existent theatrical windows, and lack piracy mitigation makes all of this an understandably hard pill to swallow, with exhibitors shouldering the burden of continuing cryptographic maintenance, with none of the benefits for themselves. I also did not realize that most of the original r&d costs for digital cinema migration and hardware implementations were, and continue to be borne by exhibitors. That puts my original thought on the matter in stark contrast.
Based on some reconnaisance in r/Piracy, I don't believe the awards season screeners are the level of problem they used to be, mostly because of the shorter theatrical window, and shorter time to blueray. Apparently they don't send out physical media, but instead use one-time-streams for the event? However, I also don't see studios going after the plethora of "free movie streaming sites" that pop up by the dozens month after month. All of that magical "forensic watermarking" only to punish an exhibitor when a customer walks out with a poor quality full-length recording.
Joseph, thanks for the look behind the curtain on the program. Leaf cert renewal explains the per-server upgrade package, and also why we can't now run an IMS2000 at <2.8.52 software version. We updated our goldenmaster for those servers to avoid bricking them in the event we need to replace the system ssd.
I will always be fascinated by the details of a project like this, and still remain impressed that the team has pulled it off without major problems.
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Another subtle way the encryption model costs exhibitors money or causes frustration, is in labor when things go sideways. With analog release prints the prep hours were kinda a known quantity that could be budgeted. Either you had the complete print or you didn't. With digital the prep hours should be fairly minimal by comparison so in theory a cost savings, but mishaps cause additional man hours that are hard predict.
But just as an example, yesterday our Deluxe KDM had not arrived the day ahead per typical, multiple managers have their hands in the booking and deluxe management, I got one of them involved on his day off on the way to his child's birthday party, the other was out of town at LDI in Vegas and non responsive. DCCHelp furnished the key within an hour, but only after a follow up phone call. The exact key that they had scheduled for delivery same day as feature for some reason! Many hours after the key went valid on the 8th! Because I had not seen the key ingested ahead, I went in earlier than my typical hour of prep, and I'm hourly. It would even trigger a meal penalty if I didn't waive it.
I was the one that flagged the issue, and could have solved it with DCCHelp this time, but so many of our bookings involve outside entities that merely distribute through deluxe, deluxe is not always able to solve key issues as directly or promptly, and so I have the managers involved take the first swing at issues, even when they are on vacation.
I feel like if a one-off key is gonna be valid for a 2 day window, it should be delivered prior to the opening of that window! ;-)
Even a simple thing like needing to reseat the Dolphin card, which I also had to do recently in my booth, for most cinemas would be a site visit by either their franchise tech, or a contracted cinema tech. Expensive additional costs that are unpredictable.Comment
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You really need to have remote-in capabilities. Costs nothing, but can save a lot of time and hassle.Comment
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