A newspaper article was brought to my attention regarding the presentation of a 3D Live Via Satellite football game at a competing theatre, and I laughed so hard that I cried. My theatre was not lucky enough to be one of the 81 theatres to present this football game in 3D, as we were committed to other satellite broadcasts later in the week, but I’m sure we would not have had the problems that this rival theatre had. Here’s an excerpt from the newspaper article:

…

Those in attendance saw the action in ways they have never seen it before. Fox, using a separate crew from its traditional national broadcast, featured play-by-play man Kenny Albert with analyst Tim Ryan and camera angles not typically seen.

As something new, there was an expectation of good and bad from the broadcast, and that expectation was met. Yet, from 7:34 p.m., when the audio of the live feed announced “Welcome to Miami in 3-D,” it was clear this was not a typical broadcast.

The negatives were obvious. No running game clock. Rare graphics with the down and distance. Missed action. For whatever reason — most likely something about the curve of the plastic — the 3-D glasses don’t work well unless worn upside down. Go figure.

…

My best advice for those working in 3-D is to seek out help from Disney. Those of us in Central Florida know what that entertainment company can do in three dimensions. Disney has figured it out, starting with glasses that work well right-side-up.

…

The first part is pretty straightforward, until you get to the third paragraph, and then to the final paragraph.

1. The negatives were obvious. No running game clock. Rare graphics with the down and distance. The technology and implementation of the technology still has bugs. These bugs can only be sorted out by trial and error. Obviously, these are complaints about features offered via television that are not offered for the 3D broadcast. Somewhere along the line, when the core of the 3D broadcast is in its final stages of betterment, these features will probably be added. For now, you just have to accept that you gave up these things to be able to see the game in 3D, which is something not widely available with television.
2. Missed action. As with any television broadcast, it doesn’t matter how many cameras you have. You are always going to miss something. With the new technology, there are going to be fewer angles and some bad shots. Of course, you have to give them a chance to work these things out. It’s not going to be perfect the first few times around.
3. For whatever reason — most likely something about the curve of the plastic — the 3-D glasses don’t work well unless worn upside down. Go figure. Now, I can’t stop laughing. First, I was laughing because I know what the problem was and how to fix it, and then I was laughing at the brilliant investigation conducted by the writer into the cause of the malfunction with the glasses. I’ll explain everything after this next bit.
4. My best advice for those working in 3-D is to seek out help from Disney. Those of us in Central Florida know what that entertainment company can do in three dimensions. Disney has figured it out, starting with glasses that work well right-side-up. This is where I cried. The magic of this paragraph is in the full lack of understanding the writer shows for his subject. A sports writer should not write about technology. I’ll explain this, along with the previous item, below.

I have to begin my explanation with item four. Disney may have a name in the Digital 3D market, but they are by no means the name for the technology. Disney Digital 3D is distributed as a method of 3D presentation in the digital market. The name implies that the movie is processed for 3D projection and projected with digital technologies, as opposed to the standard film presentations. Disney Digital 3D still requires third-party hardware to project the feature in the correct 3D format. Disney has not developed 3D glasses or projection technology, so they are not the people to talk to when it comes to getting things right for third-party presentations. The real name in digital 3D projection is currently RealD, and here is where things get interesting.

The hardware being used by the theatre in the article is the RealD system. The glasses being handed out, which were worn upside down, are specific to the RealD technology. I won’t go into the technicals right now, but the projection is based on polarization of each frame of the movie specific to the eye that is meant to view that frame. The Z-Screen at the projector “encodes” the image as it makes its way to the screen, and the lens that matches that polarization “decodes” the image so it is seen by that eye only. If the Z-Screen polarizes a frame for the right eye, but it is meant to be seen by the left eye, things look wrong, and flipping the glasses fixes the issue. Here’s the thing, though. RealD thought about this when they designed their system, and there is actually a switch on the back of the RealD processor that inverts the polarity! The projection manager or tech at the theatre in question should have noticed that the polarity was reversed and flipped the switch to correct the issue! It’s not about the curve of the glasses, it’s about the understanding of the technology by the projectionist who is presenting the show.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that there are some things that not all projectionists know about the hardware they are working with, but the person in charge – the projection manager or lead technician – should have been the one calling the shots when it came to something as large as a live 3D presentation of a football game that is also being covered by the newspaper. This person should have been aware of a pretty significant piece of information regarding the hardware in use. Especially considering that this switch occasionally has to be flipped depending on the 3D feature being presented, which is why the switch exists!

Good times.

And then there was the issue that I had at my theatre with the satellite broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera. This is where my headache was spawned. Midway through the first act of La Rondine, the audio popped and I wasn’t sure of what caused it. I checked the soundrack and metered the outputs from the processor, but came up empty. Then, 50 minutes into the first act, the audio disappeared. I had zero output from the decoder and zero input from the feed. The audio wavered before finally returning… at 55% of nominal. Through the rest of the first act and the entire intermission, the audio dropped out only to return at no more than 55% of full. I spent nearly 45 minutes trying to find out if the problem was on my end, or if it was at the transmission site. As it turned out, the broadcast site had an issue and every theatre presenting La Rondine was experiencing the same issue and following the same troubleshooting steps. Ultimately, we offered all of the guests a gratis ticket to another Met Opera, and sweetened the pot with a raincheck to come back and see a movie on us, so there was no animosity towards the theatre. However, we also do encore presentations of each opera via DVR, so the issue remains. We’ve been informed that the encore presentation will not have the same problem, but that would mean they need to rebroadcast the opera to the DVRs and request a QC for proper presentation. I’m really not looking forward to that. La Rondine is one of my least favorite operas.

I finally got a day off today, but I spent much of it doing nothing. I haven’t been feeling well – the plague is going around – so I slept for a few hours this afternoon in hopes of feeling better, but to no avail.

The whole weekend was a disaster. The tech that I was waiting on finally showed up Friday night at 11:30pm! It was far too late to start anything, so he called it a night and went to his hotel room while I had to stick around for another 90 minutes until the last show dropped. Luckily, the Movie Tunes were turned off, so I didn’t have to listen to that crap.

Saturday was no peach, either. The tech was scheduled to roll in at about 10am to get started on the wiring, but instead, he didn’t show up until after 11am. I wonder what it’s like to not have to be on time for anything. My schedule was supposed to be 12pm to 1am – a lovely 13 hour shift – but I got a text message just after 11am telling me that the tech finally showed up. So, like all responsible people, I said fuck it and went in an hour late!

After showing up at 1pm, the tech decided it would be a good idea to make a smart-ass remark about my tardiness – to which I kept my calm and said nothing – and Saturday officially began for me. For the next six hours, I found myself doing all of the work of rewiring the conduits to the new projector. At 6pm, the tech made it known that all of the rewiring was not a necessity, but was in fact his desire to remove the old wiring and replace it with new wiring at his own discretion. Needless to say, I was not happy about finding out that all of the work I had done wasn’t even part of getting the new projector installed, so once the new pedestal and projector were in placed and the wiring was set (7pm), I went downstairs – and that’s where I stayed. The tech continued to work until just after 11pm, then came downstairs, made another smart-ass remark , told me he would be back at 10am to finish the install, and left. I waited for the last show to drop and headed out myself.

Sunday morning, I was scheduled to run shows, so I had to be in at 10am anyway. I showed up, the tech showed up, and we both got started. The big exception was that I was actually doing work, while the tech was dicking around with his dance music for the first few hours. Things finally came together at 2pm, when it was time for me to see how the new projector worked. Fortunately, it is all run by computer, so comprehension was not a problem. Not that it would have been a problem anyway, but it was much easier to ingest the instructions as they pertain to a computer.

Unfortunately, the tech is an idiot, and required that I do the same thing over and over and over and over… You get the point. The one thing that was left to do was install the dimmer control and set it up, so do you think the tech stuck around? He left shortly after I did, which was just after 7pm, and decided he would finish up on Monday. Lucky me, I also had to go in Monday morning – which was supposed to be my day off – just to have the DTS system reinstalled.

I went in at 9:30am Monday with every intention of being out of there by 1pm. Unfortunately, the install of the DTS system took longer than expected, and I didn’t get out of work until 3:30pm – and I wasn’t even finished the install. I still have to install the timecode reader, but I can do that on Thursday. Lucky me, I get to go in just after noon on Thursday and I get out at 1am, then I come back in and work an 11am to 1am shift Friday!

You can probably guess how excited I really am. Coming up next weekend, we get our 3D silver screen installed. I can’t wait!

The whole purpose of my 40 hour weekend is so that one of our projectors can be swapped out with a RealD projector, and I have to be here while the tech is in the building. Unfortunately, the tech hasn’t shown up and it’s too late in the day to get started, so since I’m stuck here until 1am, I have nothing to do but wait until we close.

Thirteen hours of my life down the drain for nothing. I’m not even sure that the tech is going to show up tomorrow, either, so I may be working another 13 hour shift for no reason!

And to top it all off, I now have to work on Monday – my day off – so the Rear Window Captioning and Descriptive Audio can be installed in theatre eight, because the DTS system is not compatible with the new projector.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been doing anything today but working and refining my upcoming 2.0 release of TSE.

I expect to have it ready for release sometime within the next five hours. Probably eaier than that. Some of the code was a pain in the ass, but I think I have it worked out.

Stupid admin pages!

It would also help if I didn’t keep forgetting semicolons.

One of my projectionists pointed out that the picture was almost completely dark in one of the auditoriums, and asked if I would come take a look at the lamp.

I took a peek into the lamphouse thinking we were back to the same issue we had several months earlier, and to my surprise, I saw a planet forming!

I killed the rectifier and let the lamp cool down, opened the door, and this is what I saw:

Xenon - Complete Lamp

And upon closer inspection after replacing the lamp, here’s what I was left with:

Xenon - Envelope Close-Up

Now, a new xenon looks like this:

Xenon - New

So, as you can see, the lamp decided that it wanted to be swirled black and blue with white clouds. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen a Xenon do. I mean, aside from exploding and killing people in the face.

Last weekend was pretty boring, but with a planned crowd of at least 600 people for a single showing of Fireproof, things are looking a little less boring. Well… At least for two hours.

It doesn’t help that everything else that we opened today is complete garbage, either. I’m expecting to be bored again once all of the interlocking excitement is over.