Looping clip during feature on GDC SX2001 non-imb

[Justin Hamaker]

During our first showing of Boss Baby 2 today, we had an issue where the server started looping a single clip from the movie. It played through the pre-show and trailers fine. The manager at the theatre said the monitor appeared to be having a video feed issue, and I was not able to VNC into the server.

After the server was rebooted everything appears to be running fine. The admin screen indicates the raid and os drives are OK. The show when the trouble hapoened is currently running as I am writing this so I have not had a chance to test the raid or to pull logs.

I just wanted to see if anyone has experienced something similar, as well as document this for future troubleshooting.

[Frank Cox]

There's a tiny file that's part of a DCP that tells the player what order to play each of the files in. Back when digital cinema was new I got a movie that played in the wrong order, just as though I had mixed up the reels if it had been on film. I complained and (Deluxe or Technicolor or Cinedigm or whoever it was at the time) emailed me a little file that I replaced on the server and then it worked fine.

Maybe that little file you have tells the player to continuously play file number whatever in a loop? If so, then the fix is to get them to send you a replacement little file.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I seem to remember there being a box you check to loop a piece of content. Never used it though.

[Carsten Kurz]

Shit happens. It get's interesting if it happens again.

[Justin Hamaker]

This was a distinct playlist sent from the 'cinedigm' LMS. This was the second day the movie played, and it played fine for every other show. So it's most likely a GDC issue or a glitch.

[Steve Guttag]

It sounds like a glitch to me. If you are really curious, you can always pull a log and send it to GDC and they'll tell you what happened. If you are not on the latest software, they'll likely tell you to update it to the latest as that would fix any known bugs.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've had something similar happen with an independently produced DCP, where one reel just kept repeating. This only seemed to happen on Doremi hardware though. In the end, the CPL was probably defective. In this case, the error was easily reproducible though.

B.T.W., could you VNC into the server after the reboot? If you could, then this is a strong indication of memory exhaustion on the machine. Once memory runs out, Linux starts to shoot down processes. It starts to shoot at the biggest memory hugs first. No matter what happens, the results are highly unpredictable. Also, once a machine runs out of physical memory and starts swapping, the performance of the entire system will be going south, often to such extent, that it becomes literally unusable.

[Carsten Kurz]

Some older servers sometimes have or had issues with very short reels. Normally you don't have them, but sometimes they may be part of a CPL in order to put some seconds of black between two scenes or to fix something. It can usually be detected by simple looking at the DCP asset files and check for unusual small file sizes. But, even if something like this is there, it is not necessarily the reason for such a glitch.