No subtitles with Black Panther in ShowVault

[Steve Guttag]

On a Doremi server, one has the ability to choose to let the projector render subtitles/captions. So, if one enables the subtitle engine, they should ensure that the tick boxes for projector subtitles is disabled. In "Device Manager" for the projector, "Enable Subtitles" should be "No". Then ensure that the Subtitle Engine has been added to the devices and is enabled. Similar setups are available for GDC servers too. On the whole, I've found server generated subtitles/captions are more reliable than projector generated subtitles via CineCanvas. There are just too many things to go wrong with CineCanvas.

S3 and S4 projectors (non TI made ICPs) no longer support projector made subtitles too.

[Ioannis Syrogiannis]

...
S3 and S4 projectors (non TI made ICPs) no longer support projector made subtitles too.

That relates to the fact that projectors of those series seem to not support media blocks/servers not rendering subtitles locally.
When I was looking for compatibility between Barco S4 and Cat.745, early on, there was nothing on the horizon.

Rendering the subtitles on the server is generally a useful feature, since it's more forgiving on issues like the lack of font files, or glyphs missing from the compressed ones (I find such cases once in a while).
Yet, that cultivates an attitude, a notion that the fault of sub-standard subtitle versioning is the fault of screening equipment, rather than mastering.
I have read/heard so many times "This DCP played well before, on many occasions" from mastering facilities. Claims that on some of those cases were proven false.
And I was lucky if a DCP was unencrypted, or interop, in order to spend so much time to troubleshoot and locate the issue. Because you can't see what happens on a SMPTE subtitle font file, nor on an encrypted one.
All that, in a "labour lost" to reassure a customer or collaborator that there is nothing wrong with the equipment or its configuration.

[Carsten Kurz]

Server side subtitling get's updates and bug fixes more often than projector/ICP firmware.

[Leo Enticknap]

Agreed with all that Cinecanvas/projector side rendering is the less preferable option for dealing with subtitles. It was a particular nightmare with Series 1 equipment at the time of the Interop to SMPTE transition, especially as Europe went over to SMPTE DCPs pretty much instantly, whereas Hollywood stuck with Interop for 2-3 years longer. I was working at the Egyptian during that period, showing a ton of European arthouse movies on a DSS200 and NC2500: it was a living nightmare. We were told that every single one of the very frequent updates was necessary to ensure that something didn't break, but those updates tended to break something else, which was usually the ability to play subtitles.

The reason I was interested to hear more about the specifics of Marlon's issue is that I still look after a small number of sites that are struggling on with older servers (no Series 1 projectors any more, but several DSS and older GDC servers), and do play foreign subtitled movies. I would have been interested to know what, exactly, broke the ability of Marlon's system to play projector-rendered subtitles, just in case the information could have come in useful. But like everyone else, I'm relieved that within 2-3 years at most, troubleshooting this will become as obsolete a skill as the ability to drive a car without synchromesh in the transmission.

[Carsten Kurz]

Well, it may be that initially only the one title actually had issues (Portuguese subtitles, so, probably mastered locally). Seems that before they had no subtitle issues. Then the technician tried to fix it - and then probably, disabled it while trying to solve it. As Marlon says, they had no subtitles on any DCP after the technician had been there.

I remember that a colleague called me right when they received their new Barco S4K Laser+Alchemy-X last December. During the installation, they installed the most recent software updates. However, on the very first movie they showed, subtitles were missing. I sent them two simple DIY subtitle test DCPs (Interop and SMPTE), which both played okay. Seems there was something wrong with the subtitled VF they tried to play.