Darth Mallwalker said:
Talking of repeats, I found several repeated frames in the preview last week:
9188 & 9189
15218 & 15219
26022 & 26023
27276 & 27277
I remember you mentioned replacing some dark shots from an Eastman source.
In such a scenario, if the first frame of a shot got repeated somehow
or the last frame of a replaced shot had been repeated ...
[... even then I still wouldn't understand. Who am I trying to fool?]
Those examples given are all from the middle of shots. How bizarro!
Cue the P.R. guy to tell us once again
that all problems will have been solved by your top men.
Just keep repeating it ...
-later
I think it has to do with framerates and the encoding software used to generate the previews. I know that the team has put together a 23.976 fps GOUT sync'd version of the LPP to see if it was all there, and the only frames that are missing are at the Reel changes. (This happens because most cinemas in the 1980s had switched to a platter system, whereby all 6 reels would be spliced together onto a giant reel allowing the theater manager save some $$ by firing his highly trained projectionist and hiring some spotty teen to turn the machine on and off. Because they couldn't project the Heads/Tails of each reel, the first and last frames of the film would have to be spliced together, and would quickly get damaged and cut off the next time they were spliced. This wouldn't lead to audio sync issues since the audio track was right there on the film.)
Anyway, since there is no reason to repeat any frames (except at the reel changes, and then only in order to sync to the GOUT). It looks to me like the preview may have been rendered at 24 fps in such a way that frames were duplicated here and there, rather than just slowing down the existing frames, then it was encoded again at 23.976 fps which may have decimated some of those extra frames or may have been simply sped them up. Provided the final render does not go through the same process this should not be a problem, and if it was the watermarking process that did it, then that shouldn't be an issue.
And as you say, I'm sure they will have Top Men working on the final render, ensuring such mistakes won't happen...