Lord of the Rings Special Edition 2023 version nightmare

[Steve Guttag]

It would appear that distributors are going out of their way to screw things up. The authoring of the current Lord of the Rings: Return of the King anniversary edition was authored with negative image sizes and it is causing TMS systems (and possibly some servers) grief. They are right in that some TMS systems cannot even "see" this file so it will not schedule shows for a movie it cannot see. How does something like this get out? How incompetent does one have to be to not see how much grief this is going to cause to everyone that plays the movie?

Below is the note to the manager (I hope their number rings off the hook and the email just fills up):

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO INGEST CONTENT FOR THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING 20^TH ANNIVERSARY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

As a reminder, if you are not a DCU Connect installed location, but received a hard drive, please be advised that you will need to ingest the feature content directly onto the server for your projector instead of through your TMS. If you try ingesting the content through your TMS, you may not be able to see the feature DCP.

If you have any ingest issues, please reach out to our support team at theater.support.us@digitalcinemaunited.com or call 424-298-8297.
For all KDM/key related questions, please email our 24/7 KDM support team at us.kdm@digitalcinemaunited.com.

[Leo Enticknap]

(I hope their number rings off the hook and the email just fills up):

And that whoever made this mastering error is transformed into a crawling, lizard-like creature and made to carry a CRU drive on an epic journey to chuck into the top of a volcano...

[Carsten Kurz]

This company approached us for our server certificates in order to built a certificate database for KDM creation back in early 2017. We supplied our certs, but never heard from them again. I thought they had long vanished.

[Brad Miller]

The blame here really needs to be directed toward whichever post-production house authored that DCP, not the Digital Cinema United people, as they are merely distributing the KDMs (and possibly the content).

[James Gardiner]

I disagree, the "Digital Cinema United" group made an error here. This should have been spotted before wide distribution was allowed.
For example, to get a DCP into the Deluxe distribution, it needs to pass a large QC automated check where they look for every issue that has ever resulted in a Dark screen.

The "Digital Cinema United" may be new/green and not have evolved their QC systems as much, but it is still a black mark. It should not have gotten through to wide distribution with these errors.

But S#!T happens, we learn, we move forward. I expect "Digital Cinema United" to lift their game after this.

[Jason Raftery]

I disagree, the "Digital Cinema United" group made an error here. This should have been spotted before wide distribution was allowed.
For example, to get a DCP into the Deluxe distribution, it needs to pass a large QC automated check where they look for every issue that has ever resulted in a Dark screen.

Deluxe is hardly perfect either. Surely others got burned by the re-release of RRR last month they mastered and distributed that would fail out at the same spot on every show on DCI-compliant but older model Doremi and GDC servers. Sites had to revert to the original 2022 release that was mastered by a different outfit, which played fine.

[James Gardiner]

Deluxe is hardly perfect either. Surely others got burned by the re-release of RRR last month they mastered and distributed that would fail out at the same spot on every show on DCI-compliant but older model Doremi and GDC servers. Sites had to revert to the original 2022 release that was mastered by a different outfit, which played fine.

This is a touchy subject, this issue. There appears to be a JPEG encoding error that is within spec, but causes this error. They have been working on it for over a year from my understanding.
As its in spec, and they don;t really understand what sequence of encoded bitstream causes the problem, they are having a big problem trying to identify and as such test for the error.. beyond actually playing it through a real player.

This problem exists for everyone. Deluxe mainly experiences it as they are the biggest content agent in the world.
From my understanding, they have numerous people working on the problem and have for quite some time.

[Geoff Jones]

In late 2021, a DCP of the extended edition of The Return of the King (as well as the other two films) played in theaters through Flashback Cinema. This reportedly used the 2020 4k remasters. As far as I heard, there weren't any problems. (The screening I attended was flawless.)

I take it Fathom can't use the same DCPs?