Lab decides that Dolby Digital is too much work for the last minute?

[David Ferguson]

I was playing through a film I just got, and all was well, until suddenly the DA20 reverted back to analog unexpectedly. The track had been reading healthy so I wound it back to inspect where it reverted, and found the following shown in the image. Yep, that would cause a reversion all right!

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You'll see that there is a lab ultrasonic splice, and then suddenly, no more Dolby Digital track! If this was a tape splice I'd assume it was another theatre/collector who had spliced together two prints, but given its a lab splice, this is much more unlikely. Also, this is a 2014 print, so all prints would have had Dolby Digital anyway.

Even more unusually, this print was created on a Cinevator (the digital file direct to positive print film machine), which prints the SRD directly on the film, rather than a separate audio negative.

Any guesses how this could have happened? This splice is agonizingly close to the end of the reel - only 26 seconds away - so there's only 26 seconds of footage that is missing Dolby Digital. Which is a bit annoying, but I'll get over it. Perhaps re-syncing up the Dolby CA-10 (the Dolby device used in labs to print the Dolby Digital track) for the last few seconds was "too much effort"?

[Brad Miller]

There was likely some major problem at the end of the reel that failed QC, so rather than junk the entire reel they slugged in replacement footage and in the process simply didn't catch that there was no SRD track. I've received a random entire reel in a print with no SRD where they forgot to turn the light on during printing. I'm sure it was nothing more than an accident, but since the theater that played it in 2014 didn't say anything...here it is now.

Remember also most theaters still running film in 2014 were small independent theaters scraping by. They probably didn't have digital sound anyway so it didn't even affect them.

[Jim Cassedy]

WoW! I've never seen that before! Usually, when there's a 'lab error' during the last minute
or so on a print it's been because it has somehow gotten light-struck, or gotten stuck in the
processor 'soup' causing over-development and/or color shifts. I've noticed there seems to
be an increase in 35mm film-stuff done on a Cinevator. I've had at least 3 in the past month.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Can a modern Cinevator do real-time Dolby Digital? Just curious...

[Marco Giustini]

Off topic

Cinevator: interesting. Prints from a DLP??? I don't mean to start a digital/analogue war but... it feels wrong?

[Jim Cassedy]

Can a modern Cinevator do real-time Dolby Digital? Just curious...

Yes- - The Cinevator can output both DolbyDigital™ and DTS sound tracks, in real time, although you'll need
to source the necessary interface from Dolby and/or the time code generator from DTS to record those formats.

[David Ferguson]

Can a modern Cinevator do real-time Dolby Digital? Just curious...

Yes - but you still need the Dolby encoded Printmaster file for it to be able to do it. The Cinevator can do Dolby Digital in two ways - firstly by hooking up the Dolby CA-10 to the Cinevator, similar to how you'd hook up a CA-10 to a sound camera if recording a sound negative. Or secondly, if the Cinevator has the modern fancy DSA35 sound option, then you can skip the CA-10 and have the Cinevator read the Printmaster file directly.

Prints from a DLP??? I don't mean to start a digital/analogue war but... it feels wrong?

Does it feel more wrong than prints from an Arrilaser, given we now have laser projection? Or a CRT recorder (which I think IMAX still use)?

[Marco Giustini]

Does it feel more wrong than prints from an Arrilaser, given we now have laser projection? Or a CRT recorder (which I think IMAX still use)?

I really don't know how those things work and I can imagine that in such a small setup with very little light involved, a DLP can behave much better than with 30k lumens involved.

CRT recorder... well, I guess if you print from digital it cannot be a fully analogue workflow!

[Sascha Roll]

Well, the problem with all Cinevator prints I've seen so far is that it is basically stuck with ca. 2008 DLP technology, hence I always found the black levels awful and also the contrast rather limited.
For someone who still remembers how good even standard release prints 20-25 years could look in terms of color & contast those prints just seem like a waste of film.
Prints made using the Arrilaser / I.N. workflow almost always seemed to look a lot better to me. But it's also a way more expensive way to struck prints.

[Henry Atkinson]

Well, the problem with all Cinevator prints I've seen so far is that it is basically stuck with ca. 2008 DLP technology, hence I always found the black levels awful and also the contrast rather limited.
For someone who still remembers how good even standard release prints 20-25 years could look in terms of color & contast those prints just seem like a waste of film.
Prints made using the Arrilaser / I.N. workflow almost always seemed to look a lot better to me. But it's also a way more expensive way to struck prints.

It also comes down to the print stock - we had a print of The Godfather struck on Kodak 2393 on an ArriLaser 4k in the mid-2000s and the black levels were incredible - I could not tell the difference between the edge of a dark scene and the edge of our aperture plate on-screen when we pulled the masking back. 250k:1 must have been incredible when 2393 was new, and still puts our digital projector to shame - sad its discontinued now.

[Stefan Scholz]

Contrast ratio is important, more important than resolution for the perfect image perception.
You can try hard, you can use Eclipse projectors and Dolby Vision, have a totally matted, black hall, the security lighting turned off. The very moment you seat people infront of the screen on the stadium, you
achievable contrast is diminished. These ugly, greasy faces reflect so much light back, and it's even worse in a stadium, than in a classic floor curve. From the 6/ 7 digit to 1 figure, we end up at low 4, or even
3 digit figures.
In a home theatre room, with only a couple of faces it can work pretty well, and a lot of what is available can be saved.

So all discussion in theatrical exhibition is theory, overwritten by the reality. We still have to aim for the best source, as this in the end will lead to the best under given condition in the hall.

Cinevator and it's limited recorder contrast is not among it. It might work for PSA snipes, but I doubt it works in great features.
I was stunned by a 2015 Indian film, shot on Kodak, printed on 2393, the print serial number in the 2 digit range 8Down from higher 4 digits)- amazed how contrasty, colorful and bright an
image on film could actually look with latest chemical technology.
Unlike what we got in series printing until 2013, which simply looked desaturated and low contrasty. AS if they were trying to say, buy the new DLP, it's better.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

When I went for THX training in the 1990's, they taught us that when running a new to you film, that one should always listen to a reel or two of the movie through SRD and also through regular SR decoding. Because quite often the SR decoding sounds better. They were correct... They came out to check the first system I installed and they wanted to hear stuff. first. The movie was Twister, and we ended up playing it in Analog SR. So never assume the SRD track is the best to use, and in this case not having the SRD track really didn't matter anyway.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Yes - but you still need the Dolby encoded Printmaster file for it to be able to do it. The Cinevator can do Dolby Digital in two ways - firstly by hooking up the Dolby CA-10 to the Cinevator, similar to how you'd hook up a CA-10 to a sound camera if recording a sound negative. Or secondly, if the Cinevator has the modern fancy DSA35 sound option, then you can skip the CA-10 and have the Cinevator read the Printmaster file directly.

I was aware that you could do Dolby Digital with a Cinevator, although I've never heard about the DSA35 option. My question was a bit more specific, regarding real-time recording to 35mm from digital sources, which is something that Cinevator has as a unique feature. It's not really an important feature nowadays, as we've got plenty of high-capacity and high-speed digital storage options, so it was more a question out of curiosity if it could be done with SRD, in real-time.

Doing "SRD" in real-time strikes me as a difficult process, because the way metadata is interleaved into the format.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the CA-10 reads the Dolby Digital track from an MO disk. That process hasn't really been modernized by Dolby afaik and that process isn't a real-time process.

I don't really know anything about the "DSA35 option", but the thing I googled looks like this also works with pre-processed files and not a live, streaming source.

Regarding the general print quality of the Cinevator: I wasn't aware if they continued development, but you obviously can't compare it to an ArriLaser 4K in terms of contrast. Even the latest iterations of CRT film-scanners had pretty good contrast. Keep in mind that CRT-based technology was actually still considered as a viable option in the first generation of Digital Cinema Projectors. DLP simply beat every other technology in pure light efficiency, at the cost of contrast...

I know some labs and local distributors used those machines for low-cost 35mm production. Given what niche 35mm film has become, I guess it's good there are a few "budget options" still available to produce it from modern media sources.

[Geoff Jones]

The very moment you seat people infront of the screen on the stadium, you[r] achievable contrast is diminished. These ugly, greasy faces reflect so much light back, and it's even worse in a stadium, than in a classic floor curve

LOL

I don't know about Germany, but here in the U.S., at most chains, the amount of light reflected back onto the screen from patrons is insignificant compared to the amount of light shining directly onto the screen from the floor lights, exit lights, and wall decorations.

[Sascha Roll]

Coming back to the main topic: Had this Print on my bench Yesterday. Only one reel (#3) out of 5 features SDDS... ?

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