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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Issues with Digital Projection in general
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Monte L Fullmer
Film God
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Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted 08-17-2018 02:20 AM
I'm writing this note to get feedback from locations around the film-tech world on the reason of this topic:
At your respective location(s), what kinds of issues has their been with this Digital Cinema now that it has been on the market for a good couple of decades, especially when the huge rollout happened a little over 5 years ago.
For Example: Content corrupts, TMS issues, storage drives crashes, rectifiers going out, light engines having their image issues, network failures, where bottom line weekly reboots if units are to stay online due to VPF contracts, .. and the similar.
..just situations that were rare to never happening when we were running film.
Thx - Monte
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Scott Norwood
Film God
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Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 08-17-2018 07:04 AM
Disclaimer: I don't deal with this stuff on a day-to-day basis. My involvement with digital cinema is largely limited to screenings at festivals and special events.
The biggest problem that I have seen is the non-standardization of DCP formatting and delivery.
It is possible to make a valid DCP that does not play and to make an invalid one that does Some DCPs will play on some server/projctor combinations, but not on others. Not all servers support all frame rates (24, 25, and 30). All servers will read ext3-formatted drives, while some but not all will read HFS+ and NTFS formatted drives. Homemade DCPs are often made with titles like "My DCP" that can be difficult to find in the list of files on the server. Generated subtitles are still problematic. Many festival movies are mixed as left/right stereo, even though that is not a cinema format. Finally, I have seen a number of festival DCPs where the wrong container size was chosen (such as 2.35 in a flat container).
We don't these problems with film or with broadcast videotape formats. Those who work in regular cinemas probably don't have these problems with major-studio releases, either.
On the plus side, the equipment has been more reliable than I would have expected, and D-cinema has forced many theatres that previously had substandard sound systems to upgrade to modern equipment. [ 08-17-2018, 09:16 AM: Message edited by: Scott Norwood ]
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Barry Floyd
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1079
From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 08-17-2018 11:26 AM
On the lines of what Frank mentioned, the big black box scenario was kinda scary when we first installed it back in 2013, now not so much. You really have to play by the machines set of rules and don't deviate from them. Certain things have to be turned on in a particular order, but that's really not that big of deal. Know your passwords to everything, know how to use your diagnostic software (i.e. Barco Communicator) to diagnose your problems, know where your security keys are and how to use them, and do your preventative maintenance on a consistent schedule. You take care of the machines and they will take care of you.
Spending a week in Rancho Cordova, California at the Barco training school really helped ease my fears of the dreaded black box. The only issues we've had related to digital projection has been either an on-board battery die or in one instance a switched mode power supply went out on one of our 23B's. I will say that when the power supply went out, the 24/7 technicians at Barco were able to help me diagnose the problem and had the replacement part flown to me from the other side of the country within 12 hours. The extra money spent for the extended warranties really paid off in that instance.
With 35mm, we didn't have to deal with extended warranties as we were dealing with machines older than me, but they were all mechanical and relatively easy to fix.
We play mainly (99%) first run features, so we really don't seem to have the issues of non-compatibility that Scott mentioned.
Digital projection has eliminated the time consuming build up and tear down of films, and I don't miss that one bit. Film was less forgiving if a metal shaving or speck of something got embedded on a pad roller in the soundhead and destroyed your print on the first run of the night.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
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Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 08-17-2018 12:15 PM
I have the same feelings about the "black box" thing, but problems have been relatively minimal, although with digital, a real problem usually means canceling the show. In 8 years and two months, we've had the following problems I can think of:
One distribution hard drive problem (had to "skip past" the problem area of the drive, causing audience to miss about 20 seconds of the feature each night, but the shows went on)
One defective lamp (replaced under warranty - show went on after bulb was changed out)
One server failure (upgraded the server to a media block with external storage, paid for by insurance since the failure was caused by an electrical surge - closed for three days while it was fixed)
Three server hard drives fail (replaced whole set each time, and lost one show each time)
I've had to have technician Mark remote-in numerous times to fix small issues, like clearing an error message I wasn't familiar with or installing updates...things like that.
We've had zero problems with keys, drive delivery, etc.
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Martin McCaffery
Film God
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Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 08-17-2018 05:49 PM
As someone said, we're all beta testers now. I desperately want to get rid of the machine I have, but do I get a laser machine, or stick with xenon? I'd have to go to my notebook to get most of the problems. I think we are on our 5th IMB. Replaced the prism set, power supply ballast, lamps cannot maintain 14fl for longer than a week (now show at 8.1 and no one has complained), recently lots of ingest problems. Batteries run down. One hard drive in the RAID was bad when we opened the box, since then it has been fine (though the ingest problems could still be related). Weird unidentified aspect ratios. When showing DVD/BluRays, quirkiness about handshaking. As has been said, when they work they are fine (except for the light in my case) but when they have even the littlest problem you're off the screen.
Maybe if I were younger I would find them fascinating. Now they are just annoying.
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