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Author Topic: Lost a show / Learned a lesson Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-12-2012 08:38 PM                        Well -- tonight we are going to lose our 9:00 show. We're playing 2 different movies this week. On Friday night, the second show (on which I had done the standard QC check of running the first and last couple of minutes) started out fine, but about 5 minutes into the feature, the playback suddenly just stopped and went back to the start of the program. (Not the start of the feature but the very beginning of the trailers.) I caught this and was able to pause and skip ahead to approximately the right spot in the feature and things went on as normal. I figured this had just been a freak thing. I attributed it to a power glitch or some other weirdness. So, I let it go. Then last night, the same thing happened again in the exact same spot in the movie. So, I figured, the feature file must be corrupt for some reason. So I planned to come in this morning and re-load it. I came in at about 10:00 this morning, started the re-load process and went about my day. When I got here tonight to start the evening's shows, the status report on the server showed the re-load was only at 31%! I thought maybe the server could use a reboot, so I stopped the download and rebooted the server, and started the download again. It skipped up to 31% right away, then stayed there for about 10 or 12 minutes before it finally went to 32%. Normally it only takes about 20 - 25 minutes to load a whole movie. I'm sure the problem must be in the Deluxe feature hard drive, because the other movie loaded just fine in the normal manner. I didn't catch this slow-loading drive on the original load on Wednesday because I loaded movie #1, then started movie #2 loading and went home. So.....anyway, lessons learned: Verify how fast a drive is loading before leaving for the night...if it's a crawler, suspect a problem. And, maybe that full pre-screen is a good idea after all. At least this movie isn't exactly a blockbuster so we probably will only have a few people for tonight...passes for everyone!  |  IP: Logged John Wilson Film God Posts: 5438 From: Sydney, Australia. Registered: Dec 1999 posted 02-12-2012 10:23 PM                     George Lucas will now come and hunt you down.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 02-12-2012 10:36 PM                        Sounds like a bad hard drive to me. I had one of those a couple of months ago. Started loading The Thing, got to 31% and said "Exception". End of the line. I had to get another drive sent to me. The new drive didn't arrive until Saturday morning so I didn't have a show that Friday night. Ever since I got my digital setup I have sat down and watched every minute of every movie I've played before playing it for the public. With film you can see what you have -- is the film actually present, are all of the reels here, is it assembled in the right order, is it chopped up, is it scratched. With digital you get none of that. As far as I can see, the only way to know what you've really got is to watch it from start to finish. And I'd rather "waste an afternoon" (or late night) and watch the movie that get skunked when I've got a room full of customers.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-12-2012 10:42 PM                        It wasn't too bad, as it turned out. We had a total of 18 people show up for the late movie. I gave free passes to six of them and they were very understanding and said they'd be back tomorrow. The other 12 elected to watch a repeat showing of the early movie instead, and I still gave them passes to come back for another show of the late one. This drive IS ingesting, it's just awful slow. At the rate it's going, it'll be morning before it's finished.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 02-12-2012 11:14 PM                        I just had a thought: Have you tried hooking that drive up via the USB port instead of just plugging it into the CRU bay? Perhaps there's a problem with the drive interface that you could bypass by going through the USB instead. Thinking about it some more, the "boot" that contains the USB interface attaches to the CRU interface so that may not actually change anything. But it's probably worth a try. I had one drive a while back that wouldn't slide into the CRU bay; I think the drive case was slightly bent. I ingested it via the USB hookup instead and while it took a very long time compared to the usual CRU ingest, it did work.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 02-13-2012 12:38 AM                     Be sure to drop that drive down the stairs a couple of times to get it out of circulation Mike. Help save someone else the same grief.  |  IP: Logged Tony Bandiera Jr Film God Posts: 3067 From: Moreland Idaho Registered: Apr 2004 posted 02-13-2012 01:10 AM                     ^^^^ LOL what Brad said.  |  IP: Logged Phil Ranucci Expert Film Handler Posts: 236 From: Carpinteria,CA, United States Registered: May 2006 posted 02-13-2012 01:18 AM                     Probably too late now, but on a GDC "exception" can mean not enough space. Can you highlight in the status page and see if you get a message?  |  IP: Logged John Thomas Film Handler Posts: 75 From: Boston, MA Registered: Sep 2011 posted 02-13-2012 01:19 AM                     It could very well be a bad drive. However, how much free space did you have available? I ask because depending on what type of server you have, getting too close to full causes pretty much exactly the symptoms you've described. On a Sony for example, 75% full is the "danger zone" where movies start to take 12 hours to ingest, and then refuse to play. I believe it's a function of what level RAID is implemented.  |  IP: Logged Richard Orsak Film Handler Posts: 45 From: Hallettsville, TX USA Registered: Sep 2007 posted 02-13-2012 02:46 AM                     Mike, How were you able to book 2 features on a single screen. I've tried many, many times, but never had any luck (unless one of them was basically on second run and I wouldn't want that)... Thanks! Richard  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 02-13-2012 03:52 AM                     Just wondering if you deleted the failed ingest content before you tried to re-ingest, and how full were the drives in the server. I've always maintain to keep the RAID below 60% to prevent ingest problems - get rid of content not being used. Another question that one can think of: after all of the ingests that these servers goes through, what about a good defrag/wipe to clean things up at times?  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 02-13-2012 04:08 AM                     Is that a "feature" of GDC and Sony? I have NEVER seen an ingest slow down on a Doremi or Dolby when it reaches close to capacity...ever! In fact I have done tests on bloating the raid intentionally and ran a few week's worth of shows on Doremi and Dolby servers with only 1-5GB left of free space on the drive. What problems happened you ask? None. Absolutely nothing went wrong.  |  IP: Logged Frederick Lanoy Film Handler Posts: 88 From: North of France Registered: Aug 2009 posted 02-13-2012 04:28 AM                     I fully agree. Once, i saw on my Dolby TMS that there was only 1 GB left on a Dolby SMS screen. It worked perfectly.  |  IP: Logged John Thomas Film Handler Posts: 75 From: Boston, MA Registered: Sep 2011 posted 02-13-2012 04:29 AM                     Brad, I think what's going on is that the total space the server reports is the actual physical space of the drives, but it doesn't take into account that a major chunk of that space is required for parity. If I'm correct, that's a pretty obvious design oversight, which makes me hope that I'm way off. I had the same experience as you when we had a Doremi DCP-2000: 99% full without a hitch.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-13-2012 05:33 AM                        Shouldn't an incomplete or corrupt file have failed the checksum test? Isn't it the responsibility of the player to tell the operator that the files are defective or incomplete? I really don't know, but I am curious as to why it should even be possible to load and attempt to play a bad file. To quote Brad: this is 2012.  |  IP: Logged

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