Goodfellas Audio Issue

[Kirk Futrell]

We received a DCP of Goodfellas that was made 20220621 by Deluxe, to play this past week. We always do inspections before putting anything on screen but in this case we missed an issue because it is not obvious when just listening to it in a theatre. We had a couple of complaints from our employees during a screening that the sound was "strange" "something weird going on". When we looked at the levels (gif attached) we noticed that dialog was showing up in both the center and left channel. Upon further inspection and soloing channels we found it was indeed playing in both those channels at once. Also the Right channel seemed to be mostly absent except for what should maybe be in the surround channels. The surrounds were very low in turn. The opening of the movie during the titles seems mostly correctly mixed but and most of the early scenes have a lot of audio going on so its not obvious. Really its only distinctly noticeable when you stand next to the speakers or look at the meters.
We did a lot of troubleshooting and played it in three different auditoriums. One auditiorum is Doremi/Showvault with Datasat AP20, one is Doremi/Showvault with Trinnov OV2, and one is Alchemy with Datasat AP20. The same thing happened in all auditoriums.
So we contacted Deluxe who told this that it has played at about 40 or 50 venues without anyone mentioning it so obviously we are doing something wrong. They overnighted us a new drive with the same file. So we deleted the file we had and re-ingested this newly provided file. You guessed it, same issue.
I am attaching the results of a Doremi "sanity check", I'm not exactly sure what most of it means but it did flag "assetExistence" as an issue. We have shown thousands of DCPs without ever seeing this issue from a discrete non-LTRT mix. We ran the SMPTE channel ID tests and everything is normal on our end.
So, we let WB and Deluxe know our findings. Deluxe called us later the same night that we got the new file to ask if it was fixed. Our projectionist told them no, it was not fixed. Today we got an email from WB saying they talked to Deluxe and after they talked to our projectionist they determined it was an equipment issue (?!?!?!) They also claimed they "did internal checks of the DCP content and could not replicate the issue".


So my question is What the...heck? Could this possibly be our equipment?

Do you know of a DCP checker that can test encrypted DCPs? Doesn't seem likely.

[Carsten Kurz]

Channel assignment and levels are baked into the audio MXF. While some servers allow to reassign channels, none allow to mix DCP audio channels (with the exception of surround channels in cinema audio processors).

It may well be that those other locations simply did not notice the issue. I suggest you play a part of the affected passages (those with dialog on center and left), shoot a video of the AP20 display, and send it to Deluxe. They should be able to look at the unencrypted assets and see wether the issue is replicated there. This is a repertoire title, and such things clearly can happen during the remastering process. However, dialog coming from center and either left/right is not a mistake under all conditions. But I guess you have a reason to bring it up here. What's happening on the image during these passages?

On the other side - I wouldn't be too concerned. I can't judge without listening to the track, but this should not be a show stopper. It's good, though that you pay so much attention and actually bother to contact Deluxe and Warner about it.

Two years ago we played a regular release of a french/italian movie which showed severe digital distortion/digital clipping in the center channel during a scene. The distributor/studio hadn't noticed this before. This was actually an unencrypted DCP, so I was able to load the affected part into an audio editor and demonstrated the clipping to them.

There are ways to do similar things even with encrypted DCPs, but you need to have some expensive equipment to tap the multichannel audio, and usually it's not a good idea to communicate such capabilities to external parties like studios.

[Leo Enticknap]

The fault as described sounds like what would happen when playing a phase matrixed SVA 35mm print through a cell with a misaligned A-chain, which can cause a bleed between the center and other channels. I almost wonder if the DCP was made cheaply, by one-light scanning a timed interneg and track neg, rather than an output from a full scale restoration project.

[Marco Giustini]

the fact that 40 venues didn't report anything means nothing to me

Run a 5.1 channel ID. If that works, then you're not doing anything wrong.

That being said, I remember there was supposed to be an option in SMPTE content where channels were routed to the name of the channel configured on the server and not to the number. So "Centre" channel will go to "Centre" channel regardless of the venue as long as the output has the channel NAME properly configured. With interop you just have channel 1-2-3 etc and Post Production have to route the proper channels to what it's expected or the routing will be incorrect in the auditorium.
Does this make any sense at all?

[Kirk Futrell]

Thanks everyone. I should also mention that is a 4K DCP which is part of the reason I had higher hopes for the treatment of the audio.

I suggest you play a part of the affected passages (those with dialog on center and left), shoot a video of the AP20 display, and send it to Deluxe. They should be able to look at the unencrypted assets and see wether the issue is replicated there. This is a repertoire title, and such things clearly can happen during the remastering process. However, dialog coming from center and either left/right is not a mistake under all conditions. But I guess you have a reason to bring it up here. What's happening on the image during these passages?

Carsten,
I actually did shoot and send a video to our programmer who sent it on to WB. (I tried to attach it to my post but it was no longer animated when I added the GIF) What is happening on screen during the times when the audio is both L and C is pretty much any dialog. We even tested when there were three people on screen to see if the person on the right would come out the right speaker, but no, still Left and Center, even if it is just one person speaking from the center.

On the other side - I wouldn't be too concerned. I can't judge without listening to the track, but this should not be a show stopper

And as it turns out it wasn't a showstopper and most of the public didn't notice, or at least didn't complain. But in this time when articles like the recent one from Vulture are making the rounds about how no one cares about cinema presentation anymore, we want to be different than that. We want to differentiate ourselves from the chains who won't pay techs or projectionists. And it's disheartening when a major studio and their media distributor don't believe us and tells us to "ask our integrator". Since we never have had an integrator, I am asking the best and brightest here on Film-Tech

The fault as described sounds like what would happen when playing a phase matrixed SVA 35mm print through a cell with a misaligned A-chain, which can cause a bleed between the center and other channels.

Leo, I wondered about that too, if it came from an LT RT source and they screwed up the matrix conversion. Or some have suggested they got the track IDs wrong when exporting from a video file.

the fact that 40 venues didn't report anything means nothing to me

Marco,
I one hundred percent agree with that. I rolled my eyes very hard when they told me that. Most of those venues don't employee anyone that checks anything. And if they do have one person checking things they have to do it for 14 theatres and then pop the popcorn and count the money too, so they don't have time.
We ran a 5.1 ID test and our 7.1 test as well. All played as normal, just like every single other film we are playing. So thank you for confirming we aren't crazy and it's not our equipment. I am definitely feeling like I am being gaslighted by Deluxe, haha.

Thank you all for being my "integrators"!

[William Kucharski]

So we contacted Deluxe who told this that it has played at about 40 or 50 venues without anyone mentioning it so obviously we are doing something wrong. They overnighted us a new drive with the same file. So we deleted the file we had and re-ingested this newly provided file. You guessed it, same issue.

As someone who has received the answer "no one else has complained" to every audio complaint I've ever made to anyone at any level of the distribution chain, this doesn't surprise me.

On the other side - I wouldn't be too concerned. I can't judge without listening to the track, but this should not be a show stopper. It's good, though that you pay so much attention and actually bother to contact Deluxe and Warner about it.

If I were a patron, I'd walk out and ask for a refund (I have under similar circumstances before, but see above.