Personally, I've never experienced any IAB drop-outs during continuous playback. However it does happen regularly when using the skip forward/backward functions of our projector. The IAB generally "comes back" automatically after a few seconds (when skipping forward) or may require additional skipping to recover (often when skipping backward). The switchovers at reel boundaries and on drop-outs are automatic and go unnoticed from a technical POV.Wolfgang Woehl wrote: Thu Aug 27, 2026 11:49 am Huh, interesting. Does "IAB unavailable" happen? Often or rarely?
I'd love to hear other feedback on these questions.
They're expected to...Do these compositions play correctly on all systems in the field?
You are right !SMPTE (and RDD 52 as well) says "should" (preferred/recommended), not "shall" (mandatory), wrt AuxData presence consistency throughout reels. Big difference. So, spec-wise these compositions are ok. I'm just seeing an interoperability issue - behaviour like automatic switchover or ignoring or failing silently is not specified/defined, to the best of my knowledge.