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Author Topic: The unexplained in DTS Joseph Pandolfi Expert Film Handler Posts: 213 From: Milford, CT. Registered: Nov 1999 posted 03-30-2003 05:55 AM                     I had something strange happen to me last night when switching the discs in the DTS 6 player. With no discs in the unit the CD Rom and the timecode light lit up. I looked over behind me at the reader and the green led was lit also with no film in the unit(cue Twilight Zone theme)! When I popped the discs back in the lights went off and the ready light came on solid in which later was blinking after it acknowledged the discs I put in. Anyone else seen that happen.  |  IP: Logged Darryl Spicer Film God Posts: 3250 From: Lexington, KY, USA Registered: Dec 2000 posted 03-30-2003 11:47 AM                    Normally when you change out the discs the CDRom light stays solid. If the timecode light stayed on then the timecode board may have been experiencing a brief lock up. Now usually when this happens you have no alternative but to reboot the system because the trays won't even open. If this only happened once I wouldn't worry about it. If it keeps happening you may need to open the unit and check to make sure all boards are seated and conections are not loose anywhere inside.  |  IP: Logged Paul G. Thompson The Weenie Man Posts: 4718 From: Mount Vernon WA USA Registered: Nov 2000 posted 03-30-2003 01:38 PM                     DTS does do weird things. I have one DTS-6D that sometimes will not allow a certain disk to be played in a certain drive. Put the same disk in a different drive, it works fine. I tried to eject a disk that would not play. It drove the DTS nuts! The green LED on the Teac drive just sat there and flashed constantly at a rate of three times a second, and all the other system LED's on the front panel went ape. Yet, the reader LED was still a solid green. In order to remove the disk that refused to play, I had to shut the DTS down and restart. By the way, I inspected the disks for scratches, popcorn oil smudges, finger print smudges, dirt and dust. They were just fine. Karen, do I have some drives ready to go south?  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 03-30-2003 01:54 PM                        The reader LED stays on solid for a couple of seconds when the unit boots up. Maybe in this case the unit reset itself. I also had dts behave in the way Paul described. After rebooting, it would behave normally. I wouldn`t take this as a sign that the drive is about to die.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 03-30-2003 01:56 PM                     Paul, try doing what I do. This is now standard practice for my dts theaters. It takes the guesswork out of whether you have a defective reel or defective dts disc. We do it as soon as the print comes in before it is even built. Insert disc A into a computer with a cdrom. Highlight the entire contents of the drive (it will be a dts.exe file and a folder labeled DTS). Now right click and select "copy". Then go to some unused folder on your computer, or straight to the desktop and right click and select "paste". Then repeat these steps with disc B, of course. If there are any defects on the disc, the computer will pop up with an error warning saying it could not copy a certain file. If you make it all the way through both discs and nothing pops up on your computer screen, the discs are fine. You can then delete those files you just copied over to your hard drive. Further tips: if you are copying a disc and it says "cannot copy file R3T5", then that means that there is a defect during reel 3 of the dts disc. Do not throw the disc away just yet! When your replacement set comes in, do the computer test again. If it turns up saying "cannot copy file R2T5" but that "R3T5" file copied ok, then if you can get to a cd burner, you can make your own compilation dts disc by using the good files between the two. This has happened twice to me in the last couple of months where even the replacement set of discs had a bad file. (David Gale and Old School) I swear it's those new crappy dts cases they are shipping them in. I never had a problem until they switched over, now it is a regular issue. Another standard practice for us is to just burn copies of the discs, then keep the originals safely stored away in the film cans. This way if someone drops a disc moving it from auditorium to auditorium and it gets damaged, we haven't damaged the original and can make another copy to use. Plus it gives us the originals in the event of a last minute interlock and also allows us to "forget" to copy the trailer file (R14T5). The best bang for the buck right now in terms of burners IMHO is the TDK VeloCD 52X burner. CompUSA has them here for $89. It has never made a coaster regardless of the kind of cheap media we have put in it.  |  IP: Logged Darryl Spicer Film God Posts: 3250 From: Lexington, KY, USA Registered: Dec 2000 posted 03-30-2003 03:12 PM                    Hey Brad, I have a curious question here. Can the files from a DTS stand alone trailer disc be copied to a disc that also contains the feature information. That would make it posable for all trailers to run DTS on a two drawer system running two discs  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 03-30-2003 03:26 PM                     I think you can, but only if there is enough space. You would have to cram as much of the movie onto one disc as you could, then put the rest on the B disc along with the trailer disc. The best person to ask this is John Hawkinson. I'm just halfway guessing here.  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 03-31-2003 06:21 AM                     Darryl, Yes and No. As Brad points out, space is a limitting factor. Since the trailers are distributed as one monolithic file for all trailers, copying individual ones is not so easy. But if you want do it, and have a Unix machine (or theoretically MacOS X, though Manny tried to get it working and had problems...I never got around to debugging them), you can play with my software. Also, it's my recollection that the trailer files on the feature discs are named slightly differently than the trailer files on the trailer discs (R14 versus R14TRLR), and you might have to rename the file if you copied it from one kind of disc to another. I think it's likely to not be practical due to the space issue, though. --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 03-31-2003 06:29 AM                        It'd probably be easiest to just add another drive, although you would have to find a place to mount it outside the DTS unit's chassis.  |  IP: Logged

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