- Well folks, it’s official! Poor Vincent’s disc is cursed! Seems like the authority facility really messed this one up, but after reading Vincent’s report, I’m completely satisfied and glad that they’re sending this thing back to authoring to have it done right. Why put out an inferior product when you know it can be better? Here’s Vincent’s explanation, which covers it all quite well:
So Don May over Synapse got the A BETTER PLACE check discs today, and- YOU GUESSED IT!- they are all fucked up! YAY! ANOTHER DELAY! Oh, Joy!
The fault here lies SQUARELY with the authoring facility that Synapse used for this title out in Los Angeles. Excerted below is Don’s e-mail to said company this afternoon after he started checking the discs- since the authoring facility in question still has to fix the DVD, I’ve omitted the name of said DVD authoring facility from this post, but when the DVD is release they will be credited for the authoring/compression so you’ll all know who it is who fucked up this time.
Anyway, here’s the jist of the very odd error that turned up on the DVD as per Don’s e-mail (my check disc will be arriving tomorrow, so I can share in the goodness of incorrectly mastered DVD myself!)-
“The most INEXCUSABLE problem, is that after the introductions, the deleted scenes and the mono scenes during the Dolby Comparison section, there are noticeable audible “beeps” when the scenes are over. Now, when I was at *BLEEP*, with *IMPORTANT PERSON WHO WORKS IN HIGH PLACES AT BLEEP* in attendance, we questioned *PERSON AT BLEEP IN CHARGE OF THE “A BETTER PLACE” PROJECT* about these beeps and told her our concern. She TOLD us that the beeps would NOT be present on our final discs. This was obviously not true and I cannot, for the life of me, understand why your employees would tell me (and *IMPORTANT PERSON WHO WORKS IN HIGH PLACES AT BLEEP*, an employee of *BLEEP’S FATHER COMPANY*) to not worry about them because they were only an emulator issue. Well, this is NOT an emulator problem, it is very apparent on my final check discs. Keep in mind that I have not personally gone through the whole disc, so there may be other problems apparent that I have not seen yet. The “beep” issue is something I cannot BELIEVE is present on my check discs when your employees told me they wouldn’t be. This is an issue that is going to cost both our companies more time and more money to fix. Unfortunately, our disc will now not make our street date of July 24th and this has me very upset. Distributors, fans of View Askew and long-time Synapse customers are now not going to get their discs on time. I trusted that what your employees told me was correct and obviously it wasn’t.”
So there you have it. Making the actions of *PERSON AT BLEEP IN CHARGE OF THE “A BETTER PLACE” PROJECT* even more inexcusable is that Don May was talking to a friend of his who works at another MAJOR DVD company that recently did a project at *BLEEP* as well, and when Don started to go into the weird “beeping” error that was on A BETTER PLACE, his friend told him that he had the exact same problem with the title he mastered at *BLEEP*! Not only that, but he had done his project A FEW MONTHS BEFORE DON TOOK “A BETTER PLACE” THERE AND ALSO WORKED WITH *PERSON AT BLEEP IN CHARGE OF THE “A BETTER PLACE” PROJECT* ON HIS PROJECT! What this means is, *PERSON AT BLEEP IN CHARGE OF THE “A BETTER PLACE” PROJECT* KNEW that the “beeps” Don was hearing when he checked the emulation would be on the pressed DVD because she had run into the EXACT SAME PROBLEM mere months before, and yet she LIED to Don and told him that the “beeps” were an emulator issue only and wouldn’t be on the final discs! Fucked up, no?
Suffice to say, I’m not happy, Don May is not happy, and I’m sure all of you who ordered A BETTER PLACE will not be happy, either. On the plus side, Don said the DVD video and audio quality are outstanding, but we simply can’t approve the disc to be pressed if there are al of these errant “beeps” popping up when they shouldn’t be there. *BLEEP* has to REDO the authoring and navigation to correct the errors, which will take till the end of next week, then send the (hopefully) corrected tapes to Taiwan which will then take another 10 working days to get us new check discs which we then have to check with a fine-toothed comb for any errors before we can give them the go-ahead to press the final DVDs. So what does that mean as far as release date? IF *BLEEP* corrects the errors WITHOUT CREATING NEW ERRORS (with these people it doesn’t seem to be entirely unlikely), that’s gonna be at least a month delay- remember, that’s IF the next batch of check discs are okay. The way things are going, I’m not announcing a date this time. Who the hell knows what can happen when the company mastering your DVD flat-out lies to you and fucks it up? All I (we) can do is hope and pray that they get their shit together this time and do the fucking thing right so I don’t ever have to write another post like this again.
Very saddened and quite annoyed,
Vincent
We’ll keep you posted on this story as it unfolds, and of course report a new projected release date as soon as Vincent gets it all sorted out.
