Category: Managers Walk Through Series

Ideas Behind The Checklist

The amazing thing about picture and sound is that no one understands either of them completely, even after thousands of years of study. It was only 110 years ago that Einstein proposed what seems to be the best working theory for light, and every year someone makes progress proving another piece of his ideas.

More recently, it was a long and hard 15 year transition from film to digital projection, with a lot of lessons learned. And now it seems projectors are changing again, to laser light…a completely different set of ideas. Audio also has many topics that are argued about in the professional groups. There’s always something to learn.

The point is: Don’t be feeling like you’re the only one who still has confusion in these areas. Those confusions are what we are going to work on, bit by bit, some through these Lessons, and some while doing the practical and important steps of watching and listening to the Manager’s Walk Through Series DCPs – and using the associated Checklist. <!–more–>Be certain that you let us know if we skip a step in explaining these things, if there is a lingering misunderstanding, a word not well defined – use the Comments below, or write to us on the <a href=”http://www.cinematesttools.com/index.php/contact-please/”>Contact, Please</a> page, and when we get it going, please be involved with the forum.

Let’s start. A <strong>DCP</strong> is a <strong>D</strong>igital <strong>C</strong>inema <strong>P</strong>ackage. This package holds all the frames of the movie, all the music, dialog, sound effects, all the subtitles and files for the blind/partially sighted, deaf and hard of hearing, and some extra files that tell which ones to play, and when. Most of the time, these are made so that no one can steal the valuable parts, so they might use what the security people call Encryption. They can only be opened and played by a projector with permission, and that permission comes with security keys that are sent by the studios, or the groups they put in charge (usually the distributors.)

To make all the parts work together, those parts that are described above in that one little paragraph, took 10s of 1,000s of hours of engineering time from groups like the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (celebrating 100 years of activity this year! Congratulations SMPTE!) and more 1,000s of hours from the studios and cinematographers and sound editors and manufacturers. There is a group called the Inter-Society Digital Cinema Forum (ISDCF) which still meets every month to discuss the pain points that occur with the standards and recommended practices that these groups and equipment developed.

That DCP also contains the hopes and dreams of a director and producers who spent 10s of 1,000s of hours to build an idea that they want to transfer into the minds of your audience, using your equipment. Generally, we call this the Artist’s Intent.

With so many parts to the DCP, and so many parts to the equipment in between the DCP and the screen, there is a chance that there will be a problem, and that some of these problems will negatively flavor the Artist’s Intent. Thankfully, many of those potential problems have been discovered and made less likely. But there are some problems that can never be permanently fixed and some circumstances that make problems appear ‘just because’, and that is the point of the Checklists and their associated DCPs.

When things go wrong, we want to discover those problems early, before your customers discover them. And, we want to discover them in a way that we can logically present them to the Tech Support Staff. With good information, they can fix the problems most efficiently.

OK; we’ve covered a lot, and each bit has layers of potential questions. Thanks for reading, and please – ask questions.

Here is the link for the Managers Walk Through Series Report Form. You don’t need a password if you just prove that you are a human.

xkcd1080 – 4K – Fun Color Science for Cinema

There is one moment during this DCP when you will think – That guy crazy~! I can see the red and purple over in the corners of my sight…but wait for it! If you stare at the middle for a few more than a few seconds the purple loses its red and the colored parts of the logo in the bottom corner turns grey. None of it means anything, of course, except to learn that what the eyes transmit to the brain is a constantly moving mosaic of segments that are stitched together in the brain.

Use the passcode QA_b4_QC

It is just, Fun Science. Take a peek of the quicktime movie of the DCP, which are complete with the subtitles. The DCP that you download includes subtitles derived from an xml file. In other words, they are not burned in, but will be created by the projector.

Align1 – 2K

Align1 is stolen from a technician’s dream, then modified for the non-technical user.

Its simplicity hides a wonderful secret. Each time it is seen and heard, the user gains a little bit more ability to distinguish more of what their perceptions are gathering. Eventually their eyes will be like those of a professional colorist, seeing tints in the grey, or distortion in a tone, as a golden ear’d audiophile would. And with other lessons, others of these Manager’s Walk Through Series, they’ll learn how to describe what they perceive to the tech in an efficient way.

Good luck to us all. This is the 2K SMPTE Compliant version. Don’t forget to download the checklist~!

Let’s see what happens with this Vimeo attempt at the quicktime file…

 

Align1_wSubs from CJ Flynn on Vimeo.

Report Form – Manager’s Walk Through

Hi. This is the download page for the original paper version of the Manager’s Walk Through Checklist.

Please take a look at the Online Version. It has evolved to cover many more items, much more fluidly. And like the online version, the form is to be used in conjunction with most all of the Managers Walk Through DCPs – download from that link.


And now! Even these are superseded.

The new checklists are action specific. There is one for Sound, one for Picture and one for Accessibility Equipment checks. Use the pull downs under Checklists on the top right of this page to access them.

The paper version will be changed sometime – please volunteer if you have the time!


It is nice to have a checklist to run through as you examine your auditorium, to remind you of something that you might forget, or to make detailed notes for the tech who needs as much refined information as possible.

However you use it, please let us know if there is something we left out, something that would make the form more efficient for you.

Let us know, successes and suggestions for improvement are what we live for.

Thanks and enjoy everything.

There is no pass code for this document. Just go through the human-verifier, the it will automatically download.  

xkcd1080 – 2K – Fun Color Science for Cinema

There is one point while watching this DCP when you will think – That guy crazy~! I can see the red and purple over in the corners…but then, if you stare at the middle for a few more seconds, the purple in the logo at the bottom corner loses its red and then the colored parts of the logo goes grey. None of it means anything – of course, you shouldn’t be trying this at home – except to learn that what the eyes transmit to the brain is a constantly moving mosaic of segments that are constantly being stitched together.

Use the passcode QA_b4_QC

It is just, Fun Science. Take a peek of the quicktime movie of the DCP, complete with the fake subtitles. The DCP here includes subtitles derived from an xml file that will be created by the projector.

Vimeo Sample xkcd1080

A slide from the Faces One set of the Manager's Walk Through Series

Faces1 – 2K

The passcode is QA_b4_QC

The major idea behind the two Faces Test DCPs is that the Human Visual System and the Human Hearing System work magic. To test the picture in your auditoriums, we have to somehow get around that magic.

One part of the magic is that people’s eyes adjust to different light levels. The eyes and the brain work together to give the best image possible in different circumstances. We have the ability to see in dark moonlight and in bright sunlight. We can see great detail in our center vision, and we can see minute motion in our side vision.

We hear sound the same way. In a quiet room we can here a fan or even a mosquito that is 3 meters (10 feet) away. In a loud kitchen, we can hear voices that are softer than the loud pots and pans. (Well, sometimes.) We certainly can’t hear that mosquito among the kitchen noises, and we can’t see a dark cat go by in the shadows if there are headlights making the the scene too bright.

Usually this magic is a great thing. It is an automatic process that protects the eyes, yet lets us see through an incredible range of light in the right circumstances. But it also means that when we see leaves of green and fields of rice waving in the wind, we presume that the clouds are white and the sky is blue …but they might really be grayish white and a light shade of blue.

This especially happens in a movie theater. The sun or reflections that we see outside are hundreds, even thousands of times brighter than a projector can display on the screen. Yet, we believe it is bright white. And that is what matters to the audience. But we have to check that the projection system is giving all that can be expected, not wimping out or giving too much of one color or not enough of another.

Sound is the same way. It is a rare person who can hear a tone and accurately say with certainty, “That is the note ‘E’ below middle ‘C’ on the piano for example or that it is soft or loud. All we can say is that it is soft or loud in comparison to something else.

Our purpose is to test the system, to see if it has the right amount of light (and sound). How do we get around this amazing capability of the Human Visual and Hearing Systems?

One thing that people can do very well is determine if faces look right. So, your author went to a photo sharing site and dropped a bunch of faces on top of each other and made two DCPs. We think it turned out to be a very interesting way for you to judge the quality the projected pictures on your screen. And, like the other DCPs, there are also clean and distorted and muted high and low notes to judge the quality of your sound. Oh~! and let’s not forget the subtitles…

The passcode is QA_b4_QC

Here is a quicktime version of the Faces1 DCP – Have fun, and tell us what you think. With your help we can make a system that helps you tell the tech what is wrong and eliminates the complaints of the audience member.

Align1 – 4K

Align1 is stolen from a technician’s dream, then modified for the non-technical user.

The 4K version of this test tool is being remade. Not Available Now.

Its simplicity hides a wonderful secret. Each time it is seen and heard, the user gains a little bit more ability to distinguish more of what their perceptions are gathering. Eventually their eyes will be like those of a professional colorist, seeing tints in the grey, or distortion in a tone, as a golden ear’d audiophile would. And with other lessons, others of these Manager’s Walk Through Series, they’ll learn how to describe what they perceive to the tech in an efficient way.

Good luck to us all.

This Vimeo link has a Quicktime file that shows the basics of the DCP, except that the subtitles are burned into the QT file.
Align1_wSubs from CJ Flynn on Vimeo.