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Dolby Digital SR-D optical codes reverse engineering

This is a draft ! Patent: US5710752A

Thanks to the creator of the Gugusse roller for providing a capture of raw codes.

 

DA-20 decoder teardown

Standard rack-mount decoder for SR-D tracks. Takes video of the scrolling codes from a fast 512x1 CCD sensor (called soundhead) and outputs 6 analog audio channels along with some control signals for the cinema processor thing.
Installation and user manual available on film-tech.com. This website is AWESOME.

CAT. NO. 670

YEP 100A ESC control board

Video processing, analog filtering, analog to digital conversion, small FIFO.

 

CAT. NO. 671

Two of these are used for a total of 4 video processing DSP blocks.

YEP 100A ESC control board

Video digital processing, data extraction from the 2D codes. Each DSP has a small bootloader ROM for configuration by the master DSP56002.
Each DSP has 128k x 24 work RAM.

 

CAT. NO. 673A

YEP 100A ESC control board

Master controller, PLL for film speed tracking, Reed-Solomon EDC, uploading of programs to DSP boards, RS-232 external comm.

 

CAT. NO. 675A

YEP 100A ESC control board

AC-3 decoding. The Zoran chip has an embedded CPU of unknown architecture, ROM is external.

 

CAT. NO. 686

YEP 100A ESC control board

Audio DACs for final output. Linear voltage regulators.

 

CAT. NO. 611A

YEP 100A ESC control board

Cinema processor, user configuration interface, digital/analog audio switch.

 

2D code format

Dolby calls the transparent or opaque dots "fixels" for "film pixels".

Total: 76*76 fixels
Four 8*8 fixels corner markers (7-bit 2D Barker codes to find them with autocorrelation)
A center 12*12 fixels logo
= 76*76 - 4*8*8 - 12*12 = 5776 - 400 = 5376 data bits

Four codes per frame at 24 frames per second:
4 * 24 * 5376 = 516096 bps = 504kbps = 63kB/s

Bytes are packed in 2*4 fixel blocks, bit 0 top to bottom, left to right.

Seems to be a 1-out-of-3 interleave.

Raw ASCII data with no interleave: "DOLBY SR*D".
Special code every 44 codes = 11 frames = slightly less than half a second ?

 

Firmware

Flash contains all "applications" for the DSPs.

Stuck into IDA without knowing the memory map. Found the hard way that the entry point is at $4000, which isn't standard and doesn't match any startup mode of the DSP56002. So something on the PCB such as the Altera CPLD is mapping $4000 at $0000.

32kB bank switching done via the 2 lower bits of PORT D. Bank appears at $6000+.

Work RAM at $3900+, probably starts below.

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