How did they record sound to film camera before magnetic tape? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pm
content: Magnetic tape didn't come out until the 60's for wide spread use, so how did they get sound in the 40's and 50's when they would record things like interviews of people for the news and other broadcasts where they didn't have a studio, had to be portable and had to make it to broadcast the same day?I know with projectors the sound was made from blowing air through holes on the side of the film, but you can't record like that. If you recorded by a light onto a film track you could only measure amplitude since they didn't have lights that could pulse at 15k hz. All the home movies I have such as my grandparents wedding after WWII had no sound. Even if you could pulse light that fast how would you record more then just a single tone since the light can't make two separate pulses at once? I also imagine that even when having a separate sound recording syncing up the sound to the picture was hard. Is that why they have that black and white thing they snap down when they start a scene they start the sound when they hear the snap line up with the frame that the top part snaps down? What is that thing called? I think they use an ipad for it now a days. When did they stop using actual film in the 90's? I liked the way film looked, you could see this best on dr who where dr who had the afro, the indoor shots were on video tape and the motion looked sharp. Then outdoor shots were more smooth with a soft focus and bright lights not over exposed leaving trails.

author: Gromitt
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2018, 02:39:02 pm
content: They used optical sound, and they still do today.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_sound

author: woodchips
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2018, 06:02:24 pm
content: If interested look at the article "A Phototube for Dye Image Sound Track" in Electron Tubes Vol 2 by RCA. Can download these books.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 07, 2018, 07:07:18 pm
content: Air was never blown thru the film for audio (At least not in any of the common systems).The every early talkies used long playing records, cut in the usual way driven by a geared spindle from the projector, quite the trick to cue them up to get good lip sync.... Since in the carbon arc era you were limited to about 20 minutes per reel before changeover by both the length of the carbons and the desire to not have too much of the very flammable nitrocellulose film on the projector at any given time, this worked. It is worth noting that (particularly in the US) these were seriously patent infested waters.Then came variable density sound tracks, recorded onto the side of the print by modulating a discharge lamp at audio rates and recording it thru a slit, very limited frequency response, and noisy but it sort of worked.The big advance (that gave us 40 years or so of movies) was variable area where the width of a slit is modulated electrically at audio rate and records what amounts to an "AM Envelope" onto the side of the film, this is read by imaging a single heated wire filament onto the emulsion and using a photocathode to produce electrical output. This gave us stereo, then Dolby phase matrix gave us limited surround capabilities. Modern prints use a cyan dye instead of silver for the track and so require a red laser source instead of the heated filament.For film production once electronic recording became a thing, first wire recorders then 'Sep Mag' were used and remained in use up until the 80's. Sep mag was essentially magnetic tape with perforations in the same manner as film that could be run on a follower in sync with the print when reviewing rushes and once you had the film put together the spliced negatives of the film plus spliced together sep mag reels would go off to be combined into a set of common optical masters for printing.There was also a com-mag format used in some home movie gear which had magnetic audio track on the film so home movie gear could record the sound to it like a tape machine.The board you are referring to is a 'Clapper Board' and provides both a sound reference time and the details of what this reel of film is, important when you have dozens of the things to pull together when editing.Yep, I worked as a projectionist for a while.Regards, Dan.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 08, 2018, 03:30:47 am
content: Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmYou are asking two quite different questions, so I will answer this bit first.During WW2 they were having a pretty serious war, so TV, in particular, took a "back seat".Even the TV transmissions in the late '30s in the UK & Germany were pretty limited, as were those in the USA a bit later.(both the UK & Germany shut down their transmissions on the onset of War in 1939).Sound broadcasting of outside events was pretty much established, usually by providing "programme lines" hired from the "telephone company".If you listen to old broadcasts, you will notice a variation in sound quality between when the Radio station had the luxury of proper "broadcast programme lines" which had to meet quality specifications, & when they needed to just grab an ordinary "phone standard" line.If the event sound needed to be recorded, there were machines at the studio, where it was done onto conventional discs you could play on a "quite large" record player.Film newsreels (the ones they used to have in theatres when I was a kid) were, again, mostly scheduled events, & the newsreel cameras, either had synchronised disc cutters, or optical recording, & later on, tape, either synchronised, or a magnetic stripe on the film)You really have your timeline "out of whack" on tape recording, though, "reel to reel" tape machines were pretty much mainstream by the mid 1950s, being widely used in Radio station studios.I had heard horror stories by "old timers" of having to lug the first portable reel to reel machines around.(They were made to much stricter standards than the "home" ones which were available, & quality meant "heavy"in those times).TV Studios usually, if they could, (scheduled events), set up an Outside Broadcast van, set out lots of microphones, & conventional studio cameras, send the video & audio back to the studio for recording, either by conversion into either sound film, or in the later 1950s, recorded on a studio Video Tape Recorder (VTR). Unpredictable events were either covered silent, with an accompanying commentary, or using a sound camera.QuoteNo! No! No! The holes on the side of the film were to fit onto sprockets to accurately transport the film, & sync it with the shutter.The air blowing was to suck the film into position as it passed the gate.There is a whole lot more to film projectors than meets the eye.Quotedmillshas already covered this admirably, but I will go over it a bit, too.The lights didn't have to "pulse", they just varied the light output at an audio rate.It wasn't "rocket science" even then (1920s),-- people had been playing with "light beam communicators" for decades, so they really just had to split the system so instead of a transmitter & receiver, there was a recording medium in the middle.I say, "all", but to actually do that, standardise it, manufacture equipment & supply it industry wide, was amarvel of both engineering & organisation.The film industry was big enough to do that, so when TV came along, there was a solid engineering base to work with.QuoteOnly the very rich could afford sound home movies until magnetic "stripe" tracks became available.QuoteQuoteCovered well bydmillsQuoteThere is a very large crew at a "film shoot", all of whom need to be aware that the "shoot" is underway.The filmed image of the "clapperboard" also signals the film editor that all before that is not valuable material, & can be removed, if required.They used clapperboards back in the days of silent movies, so, although it is useful for the sound people, it is not the original purpose.QuoteFor TV, as soon as they possibly could!Trying to incorporate film into a studio produced programme was always horrific, with the difference in picture quality, gamma, etc, being glaringly obvious.When I worked in a TV studio in 1965, we were still trying to do this, but by the time I worked in another such studio, in 1988, it was long gone.QuoteTo each their own---- I hated it!

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 08, 2018, 01:09:31 pm
content: The telecine machine was not exactly a much loved bit of kit, big, mechanical, very sensitive to dirt, usually slightly unreliable and just generally annoying.Once video got genuinely good enough for broadcast (which to be fair took a while, and the early VTRs had most of the same issues the telecine rigs did, find a picture of a Ampex Quadruplex VTR sometime), the telecine was dropped like a hot rock from day to day use, they lingered for a long time because the library was all on film.....Regards, Dan.

author: JohnPen
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 08, 2018, 03:29:06 pm
content: In the early 60s BBC TV news was using several different recording techniques. For the visual output it consisted of a valve based Ampex and transistor based RCA video recorders as well as valve based 35mm and 16mm telecine machines. Any incoming film to news, either optical or taped sound, was transferred to 16mm magnetic film for ease of editing. The final versions of edited film and sound were synchronised and then magnetically locked together (Selsyn) for transmission. There was also a small sound recording room set up which had a 15 in /sec tape machine plus a consumer twin track tape machine and 2 disk cutting machines (Talysurf). The sound room used to take copies of important incoming radio news from Broadcasting house sources for inclusion in the News. When occasionally using the disk cutters, having run out of sound recording capacity, you had to remember to empty the bag of swarf otherwise it flowed across the floor. Sometimes these disk recordings were played live into the news. A particular memory was the data sound from the Telstar satellite.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 08, 2018, 03:42:35 pm
content: Quote from: vk6zgo on December 08, 2018, 03:30:47 amEarly VTR machines had relatively poor image quality, so at the BBC recording to film was always the marker of high production quality. It may be that digital recording technology today has relegated this to history, but in the past the difference between film and VTR was glaringly obvious.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 09, 2018, 03:02:13 am
content: Quote from: IanB on December 08, 2018, 03:42:35 pmMy experience with quality VTR- v- film was opposite to yours, even comparing across the same system.Even before I worked in Television, the 1962 Commonwealth games were held in Perth, providing hours of live coverage using the very good 4.5" Image Orthicon studio cameras.The live pictures were excellent, & watching the News coverage later, you could see the small drop in picture quality between live & VTR, but some recorded coverage had been done with 16mm news cameras.These were very obviously degraded in quality compared to both other sources.The original requirement set up for BW Television was to "have equal quality to 16mm film" .An obvious problem is, if you start with "equal" then degrade one source by an intermediate process, you will have a lesser quality result. VTRs degraded quality less than Telecine.When the Tokyo Olympics were held, in 1964, the coverage was mainly from VTR tapes flown in from Japan.As there were no standards converters at the time, the host broadcaster, or a consortium of 625 line countries (I don't know which), had supplied a machine for that standard, complete with a "slow motion" setup--- a Japanese innovation at the time.The "Homicide" series produced in Melbourne from 1964, used studio TV cameras for all the internal stuff shot on studio "sets", but the external shots were all 16mm film.This was then included into the final VTR tape sent out to the stations for transmissionWatching these gave a weird inversion of the normal light levels from inside to outside.Nice & bright inside, good contrast, sharp resolution, the action went outside into a Summer day, & the picture became noticeably darker & softer.Telecine strikes again!"Homicide" was sold overseas, including to the UK, so their earlier version must have been Yuk! "kine'd"!One Australian show made entirely on 35mm film was "Skippy", which was sold overseas in many markets.Using film got around the "standards" problem which so bedevilled mass TV distribution before the BBC came up with the first standards converter.I don't know if it was distributed overseas on 35mm, but in Oz, it was optically reduced to 16mm for use on the multitude of Telecines using that film standard.Many of the US & British dramas which were the mainstay of evening TV were done in the same way, & also produced very acceptable quality pictures using standard Vidicon based Telecine chains.I particular remember the American "Quinn Martin" productions as taking a lot of pains to get the best quality they could.Others, however, which had been "kine'd" from originally live TV were horrible.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 09, 2018, 03:26:37 am
content: Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmWhere did you get that idea from? I think someone may have been winding you up. They are sprocket holes and are simply a part of the physical film transport mechanism - and always have been that and only that.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2018, 04:27:36 pm
content: Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmIt was already the standard in studios by the early 1950s. Before that, they also had things like wire recorders and record lathes. (I think you are confusing what was available for professional broadcast use and what was cheap enough to be available at home.)Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmPortable recorders didn't exist. But this didn't matter, because theydidhave a studio with them: they'd have a production truck with all the recording and transmission equipment. So you might have a recorder on-site, with long microphone and camera cables. Or you might just air it directly to the studio and deal with it from there.Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmWhere on earth did you get this idea?!?!?!Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmYes, they did have such lights.Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmHome movie technology had to be many orders of magnitude cheaper and simpler to use than professional equipment. It's only very recently that home AV production equipment has gotten so close to broadcast gear.Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmNo idea what this means. For what it's worth, it's entirely possible to use just pulses (of light, electricity, etc) to encode audio, and we routinely do this with 1-bit DACs and more rarely with encodings like pulse-density modulation.Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmAll manner of systems existed to do this.Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmAlready addressed in detail by others.Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmNever, to 100%. The switch from film to video happened at wildly different times depending on the use case. News and soap operas were among the first to switch to video. Dramas were among the last. (For example,Breaking Bad(2008-2013) was shot on film, but its prequel,Better Call Saul(2015-present) is shot in 4K digital.)Moreover, it wasn't ever a clean switchover.Originally, shows were shot on film, edited on film, and broadcast direct from film.Later, they were shot and edited on film, but then transferred to videotape and then broadcast.Then later, they were shot on film, but edited on video and broadcast.Then they were shot and edited on video.And alongside these changes, digital effects came in on the video side. And then HD and 4K...Let's take the Star Trek TV franchise as an example:The Original Series(1966-69) was (1) or (2). This made it (comparatively) easy to go back and re-scan the film at 2K for the HD restoration and release.The Next Generation(1987-94) was (3). To make the HD remastering of TNG, Paramount had to re-scan all the original negatives and re-edit every scene, including recreating every single special effect, because all of the editing and effects were originally done in standard-definition video. (This remastering was enormously expensive and time-consuming.)Deep Space Nine(1993-99) was (3), andVoyager(1995-2001) was (3) but for the first time, used no physical models of ships, only CGI renderings. Neither of these series has undergone an HD remastering.Enterprise(2001-05) was actually made in digital HD (so technically (4/5)), but oddly, much of the CGI was done in standard-definition, and then upscaled into the final video.Discoveryis pure 4K digital (so also (4/5)).The same applies to cinema, though comparatively little cinema was ever filmed on video, at least outside amateur and art-house stuff. (The Blair Witchproject being a notable exception, having been shot almost entirely on Hi-8 video.)Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmEarly video cameras sucked, which is why film didn't displace them originally. So you might ask, why doesn't the old filmed material look bad on TV, too? Well, because it wasn't converted to film with a video camera. Instead, a device called a "telecine" was used to scan the film to tape, and a telecine was much higher quality than the cameras. (IIRC, you can even do a slower-than-real-time conversion to improve quality.)

author: Wan Huang Luo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2018, 07:28:32 pm
content: This thread delivers. Although the original post was a complete disasterI did enjoy reading the responses. If it weren't for the original post, these quality responses would not have been made. So thanks to all.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2018, 08:48:38 pm
content: One of the big advantages of 70mm film was that it had a 6 track magnetic sound track and many films recorded in 35mm formats were distributed in 70mm just for this.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 03:00:45 am
content: Quote from: tooki on December 10, 2018, 04:27:36 pmOn the contrary, Studio Image Orthicon TV BW cameras, as used in Australia produced excellent pictures, with sharp resolution & contrast.They did have a slightly weird gamma curve, but this could be corrected.Much is made of dark "haloing" around bright objects, but that was mainly an artefact of unfamiliarity with the use of these devices, or in some cases, incorrect adjustment.( it was not easy to learn how to set them up).Those who are too young to have ever seen live transmissions using IOs base their impressions of TV of the period on "kinescope"recordingsThese were made with a film camera "looking at" a picture monitor showing a live TV signal.To avoid visible "strobing", the picture monitor normally used a phosphor with longer than normal persistence, which helped to degrade the picture quality.Some of the early ones like Groucho Marx's Quiz show "You bet your life", looked like they had been filmed in a snowstorm.QuoteNope!---- In fact,that was exactly what most telecine chains were.-----A vidicon camera, illuminated by the light from a pretty much standard 16mm projector.Vidicons weren't too bad in such service, because they were well illuminated, reducing noise which occurred in such devices under low light conditions.They also, conveniently, had a complementary gamma curve to that of a TV display tube.The "storage effect inherent in their operation, made it easier to avoid "strobing effects, but that same characteristic sometimes made them prone to "trailing lines" when objects moved fast.But, better quality than a Studio camera?In your dreams!There were other, much more complex versions of Telecines, using flying spot scanners, which could produce better results than the simple vidicon type, but they were expensive, & fairly rare, outside the BBC & it's like.The reason programmes originally made on 35mm film were reasonable quality is that great care was taken in optically transcribing them to 16mm.QuoteThe very last generations of telecine chains used non synchronous line scanning, followed by a line store, & even later, full frame stores to remove the necessity for synching the film & video rates.They could definitely do such things.http://www.vtoldboys.com/tk_06.htm

author: JohnPen
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 10:33:41 am
content: The other extreme was in the early 60s BBC News used a slow scan telecine set up to send high interest news items to the USA. Each 16mm frame was scanned twice, taking 8 seconds per frame, and transmitted down a telephone line to reach the States via the undersea cable link. It took a long time to transfer a usable film sequence.Both ends needed to be synchronised and often the there were no technical staff present at the USA end because of local time differences and a few times the cleaning staff were talked through the equipment line up from the UK. It worked but was very boring to keep watching to ensure that the transfer was successful.There was also an Image Orthicon/telecine set up for doing an optical standards conversion from USA sources. Very rarely used though.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 12:02:06 pm
content: Quote from: Gromitt on December 07, 2018, 02:39:02 pmFirst 'proper' job I had was as a television repair tech, the guy that owned the company was a cinema projectionist and he had a full 35mm projector in the basement of the telly shop (I'm pretty sure he was pirating films but never caught him out)He showed me the optical track and the pickup for it, beautiful old tech and the amplifiers were using KT88 valves IIRC

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 01:09:09 pm
content: Quote from: dmills on December 07, 2018, 07:07:18 pmIs a projectionist just the guy in the back of movie theaters that forgets to turn the sound on or is this a more prestigious position in a movie studio? The day you threw away your razor blade and slice block must have been like getting electricity for the first time. Movies still use film? When will they switch over to just getting the film on a hard drive or SSD? Does the audio come on a special DVD with all the sound encoding?You know whats great about the internet? Someone can ask a question that you have never even heard of like "how does the magnetic coupling work when you shift to neutral on the turbo encabulator knowing that there is only 0.1" of tolerance?" Then you can look up the thing on Wikipedia and not even check the references then formulate how something works in your mind, what difficulties might arise from use then write an expert response on it making you look like an expert. Putting in an anecdote from "when you worked at XYZ company in the 19xx's" adds even more realism to it. When forums first came out as a kid I would get board and do this and people were none the wiser. Even people that worked in the field would sometimes say "Wow in 20+ years I didn't know that could happen" That was before the word troll was a bad thing that was used to meddle with other countries elections.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 01:30:12 pm
content: Quote from: Brumby on December 09, 2018, 03:26:37 amMy first grade teacher told us that when we used to watch all the reel to reel tapes since our school had laser discs and no VCR's so the laser disk was always in use. I asked why the sound was messed up sometimes while the picture wasn't. MRS JOHNSON LIED TO ME THAT WICKED CUNT! DAMN HER TO HELL!!! I WOULD NEVER GET MY DREAM JOB IN FILM BECAUSE OF HER! FUCK HER LIFE!!!!Anyways… Seems like every rich school district got conned into buying laser disks and other stupid things like the magazine drive and milk that came in plastic bags. When I was younger and did sales I could have just cold/walked in to the school, or maybe given a grand or 500 bucks to the school board members and got those sweet contracts. If you sell a service plan on a VCR at circuit city you can close a deal with a school.This thread is a wealth of info and I'm still not done looking up all the terms and technologies in it. This is why forums > google.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 02:11:17 pm
content: Projectionist is the guy in the back of the theatre, also the guy in the back of the dubbing theatre and the guy responsible for running the rushes during production, it is a highly variable job. I have on one occasion had to duck into someone elses projection room from the auditorium when I was trying to watch a film because the operator was awol and a splice had failed, I went in to drop the dowser and kill the take up torque motor to prevent equipment damage someone must have been confused when they got back, my sark was high when I wrote it up in his projection log book!Back in the heyday of the cinema in the uk, it was a 4 year apprenticeship covering enough of all the aspects of the technology to be able to do repairs to the electrical, mechanical and optical systems. That had long gone by the time I did it, as had nitrate stock (No great loss, the job got MUCH safer once that stuff was retired).The splicing block is actually still around because for film as opposed to video the film is delivered on multiple 2'000ft spools and that is a pain in the arse to project (A changeover every 20 minutes give or take, made sense in the nitrate era and with carbon arc sources), we tended to do a lot of one or two night showings so usually spliced up onto 6'000 ft spools for projection which generally meant one or two changeovers, but places that ran longer usually used either 12,000 foot spools on 'towers' or spliced up an endless loop on a 'cakestand' which had the advantage of not needing rewinding (But had some really amusing failure modes if you were not the one to have to untangle it).Most modern releases are setup for digital projection these days and just come on a (heavily encrypted) hard disk which takes all the fun out of it, but if you want to show older films, well most of it has not been transferred and you still need to do it the old way.Well done 35mm in good condition run in a correctly set up rig gives 4k digital a very good run for its money and often stomps it for quality, but that same 35mm print, after it has been around a bit and had a few multiplex crews scratch the fuck out of it (they never seem to clean the plates), yea, give me 4k digital... 70mm is a rare treat when you get to see it, I have never managed to get to run it myself.I don't see much trolling here, and the talk of early telly systems fits with my recollection more or less (Image Orthicon was before my time), but slowscan for international links, flying spot scanners, and optical standards conversion, yea, sounds about right. Annoyingly by the time I was old enough to try for a job that would have gotten me to Wood Norton John Birt had happened (UK telly types will know to what I refer).Regards, Dan.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 02:25:41 pm
content: Quote from: dmills on December 11, 2018, 02:11:17 pmI've done 'stuff' in the projection galleries of a cuple of multiplexes (we did the machines they played the ads and trailers on), it's an amazing sight, all the projectors in one gallery running from a single reel.managed to watch quite a few films that way, sat drinking tea and eating the projectionist's biscuit stash.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 02:38:09 pm
content: Quote from: vk6zgo on December 11, 2018, 03:00:45 amYour unnecessarily rude tone aside (which is why I won’t bother to indulge you with an extensive reply), your comments do not agree with my experience or research, so I respectfully submit that you’re... not entirely right — or that you completely missed thecontextof my comments.But the main one is: EVERY source I’ve ever seen says that vidicon-type telecines were displaced by flying-spot telecines fairly quickly, and later by linear CCD models. (Indeed, in modern terminology, “telecine” tends to refer to the line-scan type of device, whereas “film scanner” is used to indicate the frame-scan type.)

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 03:05:39 pm
content: Quote from: Beamin on December 11, 2018, 01:09:09 pmSpeaking of looking things up... this is ALL on Wikipedia. I do kinda wish you’d do basic research before asking questions, because your modus operandi is to ask questions based on a ton of misconceptions, which everyone has to clear up first.Is film in use?Yes, but on a sharp decline.When will they switch to digital playback?The overwhelming majority of cinemas already have. I think many keep some film projectors around anyway, in case they want to screen a movie that is only available on film.“Getting the movie on a hard drive or SSD”1. An SSD for this kind of application would be dumb as rocks, since it doesn’t need the performance of an SSD, but the files are enormous, so you’d be sending very expensive SSDs. 2. Hard disks are shipped to cinemas, but it’s moving to digital downloads via high-speed internet or satellite.Does the audio come on a DVD?No. In 35mm, the stereo analog audio, Dolby Digital, and SDDS soundtracks are all recorded optically right on the film. Additionally, the timecode for DTS audio is also on the film, which syncs up the DTS equipment which plays the audio off of CD-ROM. 70mm IMAX also used CD-ROM based audio of some type. But in modern digital distribution, the audio is of course right in the digital files.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 03:08:52 pm
content: Quote from: Beamin on December 11, 2018, 01:30:12 pmLaserDisc was a great format. For schools, it had many advantages, including not needing to rewind, and random access to any segment of a video. It was hardly “stupid”.Quote from: Beamin on December 11, 2018, 01:30:12 pmWell... still, it’s somewhat disrespectful of others’ time to not do any homework on your own. Use google and wikipedia to get the basics down, then come to a forum to fill in the gaps.

author: JohnPen
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2018, 06:27:27 pm
content: Vidicon (Plumbicon) telecines were on the way out in the early 80s in BBC TV news. There was a big changeover to ENG ( Electronic News Gathering) in process then and the need for film facilities was declining. Some facilities were still needed to cater for occasional 16mm film input. There was even a Super 8 projector telecine version with a special shutter and speed control to allow newsworthy home movie footage to be injected into the news. News division did not use flying spot telecines they were normally used for the standard BBC programs only.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 02:33:26 am
content: Quote from: tooki on December 11, 2018, 03:08:52 pmI agree, laserdisc was fantastic, we had some of them in my school and they offered great picture quality and the discs when properly cared for didn't wear out the way VHS tapes do. I knew a few people who had them at home too, nothing else was available that could match the audio and video quality, it absolutely blew away VHS. The big downside was run time and thus having to flip the disc halfway through a movie. DVD solved that while offering nearly as good a picture and it was much cheaper.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 03:17:54 am
content: Quote from: Beamin on December 07, 2018, 02:32:18 pmWhy are you still here? You failed to make even the most cursory research before posting this thread. This is not a forum for random trivia queries from people too lazy to do basic investigations. Had you made *any* attempt to use google or any other search engine you would have found the answers to *all* your questions. Sound from blowing air through holes in the film? Who manufactured such a system and when? Pretty hard for it not to sutter as the film has to stop for the shutter to open and close 30 times a second.In short, this is pure attention seeking bullshit!BTW Women are *not* testosterone free. Look it up!

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 10:40:38 am
content: Quote from: tooki on December 11, 2018, 02:38:09 pmI was a bit bemused by your allegation of rudeness, & having a vague memory of you taking others to task in the same way, I looked back at your older postings.You seem to have "form" for this, in that, whilst happy to post forthright comments of your own, you become offended if others do the same.In the process, I looked at your profile, & from your age, it would seem that in the period of TV history in question, you went from an age of minus 5 to around 18.In another posting, you say you've "spent all your working life on computers", so I fail to see that you haveany"experience" in TV equipment to speak of, so we are left with your "research".I don't know what "sources" you used, but, if it was on the Internet, a cursory Google doesn't find much in the way of information, except for that from the very large organisations like the BBC.Such places were well staffed & financed, & could afford to play with devices like Flying Spot Scanners, but for mainstream TV studios in cities throughout the world, vidicon Telecines, with all their limitations, were the "best they could get" over the, for most BW era.Colour TV was a bit nightmarish for the USA as "early adopters", as 3 tube Studio cameras using IO cameras were huge & unwieldy, so they went for 2 vidicons plus one IO.(the later to obtain the required resolution for the luma component).Ultimately, Plumbicons became (just) good enough for Studio use, & everybody sighed with relief!This is about when Australia went to PAL colour in 1975.Plumbicons also meant an improvement in Telecine chains, which of course, were now more complex, with 3 tubes .The next iteration of Telecines were the CCD line scan/line store type in late 1970s/early '80s?Between '65 & '88, I was working with Transmitters, both Broadcast & TV, so my knowledge of Studio practice during that time was pretty much second hand, but there was enough chatter between different companies to keep a fair idea on what was happening, quite apart from articles in industry magazines.When I returned to Studio work in '88, there was a solitary Rank Cintel CCD Telecine chain, which looked a few years old, & was hardly ever used, so I think my dating is pretty close.As for FFS.This was not a more modern device which could supplant vidicon Telecines, but one of the oldest ones, dating back to the very beginnings of Television.It had much potential------ the slide scanner versionswerecapable of resolution out to the limits of the TV system, but the problems inherent with the full Telecine versions were profound, & to the best of my knowledge, they never played a part in the Australian TV industry, & I would doubt, anywhere else, except the BBC & their equivalents in Europe & the USA.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 01:57:47 pm
content: Again, 1) you didn’t grasp the context of the comments (i.e. responding to the op’s query), and 2) saying “in your dreams” flippantly took it from a teachable moment to me just being “meh don’t care what you have to say”.P.S. Though unquestionably far less than you, I actually do have some experience with broadcast TV gear.

author: JohnPen
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 02:03:03 pm
content: BBC TV news first colour telecine machine went live in Jan 1968. It was a prototype machine and was pretty reliable once warmed up and lined up correctly. A lot of time was needed superimposing the 3 colours though. Grey scales were less of a problem. One problem that did arise was that the equipment modules were not too happy with plug and play shortly after powering down and could blow transistors in the input video chain. This particular video input had a chain of some 4/5 emitter followers all in series and you never knew which transistor had failed. The transistor types used were also hard to get hold of. The problem was caused by a long discharge cycle of a particular capacitor and if one waited for ~30sec after power down all was OK. To be fair it was the manufacturers only prototype.

author: In Vacuo Veritas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 03:11:39 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on December 12, 2018, 01:57:47 pmYou'll need thicker skin than that to survive on the Internet, buttercup. How fragile are you, exactly? A hothouse flower??

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 03:18:50 pm
content: For production, major studios used to generate and distribute special 3-phase power throughout the facility. This power was used to operate the camera motors, and the mag recorder motors to keep them in perfect sync. Sound was recorded on "full-coat" which was the same film stock as used in the camera, but coated with magnetic particles exactly like audio tape. Studios had great banks of these sound recording/playback machines. It took dozens of them (all synced together perfectly) when mixing-down the sound track for a feature film. Of course now, pimply-face kids do multi-track recording and mixing in the basement with "Garage Band" on their Macbook. But there is 60 years of technical progress for you.For distribution, analog optical SOF (sound on film) for theatrical exhibition was implemented as either variable density or variable area. Each had its proponents and advantages and disadvantages. Both could be read with the same projector mechanism a light source projected through a slit and picked up by a photomultiplier tube.The old photomultiplier firebottle was replaced by solid-state devices of various types in later parts of its life-cycle.The sound was printed 20 frames ahead of the picture as that was the standardized location in the threading path of the film through the projector. The "sound head" was located below the film gate and it took some amount of separation to take the stuttering action of the film through the gate and smooth it back out nice and even for sound playback. Many of us still remember the buzzing-stuttering sound if something went wrong in the projector (or telecine chain) when the flywheel/capstan smoothing effect failed.In this photo, you can see the "lamp-house" for the sound head as the gray box under the gold-anodized projection lens.I found it particularly amusing that in the last days of film distribution, they started taking advantage of the space to the outside of the sprocket holes, and even the space between the sprocket holes to print digital multi-track audio data. Ray Dolby (who was on the original team at Ampex who developed the most popular early video tape recorder) developed the scheme that used the otherwise wasted space between the sprocket holes. You can see his "double-D" trademark in the center of each frame.The outside margin (to the left) shows the SDDS digital track, and then the Dolby digital frames between the sprocket holes. And then the variable-area analog stereo tracks (often Dolby-matrixed to 4 channel). And then the timecode which was used to sync to separate CDs which were sometimes used for the audio tracks.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 03:28:18 pm
content: We still use slate and clap-sticks today in modern digital production. But they have progressed to include display of timecode and even back-lit for shooting those dark scenes in your film-noir.There is no substitute for "slating" each take, both visibly using the slate with the scene and take number (and other info) written in grease-pencil by the "clapper-loader" kid. And spoken audibly by the A1 sound recordist onto the audio track(s). And the snap of the clapper is used as the starting sync point for sound and picture line-up in editing post production. Only higher-end big-budget productions can use timecode and genlock (the modern version of the old 3-phase production power) to synchronize the speed of the camera and sound recorders. It is nice to have proper timecode on picture and sound files to allow automated sync of the elements in the non-linear editing software. But for those of us who can't afford it, there are low-paid interns who spend their days conforming picture and sound together. Although with better, more stable TXCO (and even GPS) -synchronized gear, even that job is being phased out.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 03:31:33 pm
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on December 12, 2018, 03:18:50 pmI attended a SMPTE presentation on these technologies when they were introduced. They and DTS all became available at about the same time and there was a rush to be first and establish a new standard.Dolby deliberately choose to use the area between the sprocket holes because their research showed that oddly enough, that area of the film was the least likely to be damaged during routine use.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 05:35:23 pm
content: Perforation damage was a thing, usually when some muppet had laced up with an undersized loop, but it tended to wreck the print.Other then that the perforation area will usually be in contact with metal moving at the same speed it is, and will be well away from the edges of the openings in the aperture plates so should be less prone to scratching damage.Dolby beat DTS mostly because expecting the shipping company to get the right reels to the cinema on time was sometimes a big ask, expecting them to also reliably get the right set of audio disks there as well was at least widely seen in the UK as being a bridge too far. I well remember having to phone round the local cinemas to see if anyone had a case of film they were not expecting and to ask them to put it in a taxi (on one occasion while I had the first half of the film being shown)...That is a nice picture of the business end of an FP30, notice the three lens turret with two lenses installed (probably for 1.85:1 and a 2.35:1 animorphic for cinemascope). We used to run 1.375, 1.66, 1.85 & 2.39:1 with custom cut plates for each ratio and each machine, tended to make life interesting as the rank ads would not work well on much except 1.66 or 1.85:1 so you could easily end up with 6 plates and 6 primes plus the animorph in play if you had a 'scope print in one presentation and something old in the other, surprisingly easy to stuff up (Who, me, "apocalypse now" in ~1.2:1 having forgotten to put the animorth in line on number 2? Never happen!).Regards, Dan.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 06:34:57 pm
content: Perhaps my interest in media and electronics started back in middle-school. I was quite good at setting up and operating those old Bell and Howell 16mm projectors we used in school in the 1950s and 1960s. I knew how to provide the proper loop at the top and bottom of the gate and how to thread the film around the capstan/flywheel in the sound head.I became the go-to guy for all the elementary-grade teachers whenever they wanted to show a film. I got out of many math classes that way and perhaps that is why I had to take remedial bone-head calculus.One of my few encounters with 35mm projection was a pair of old DeVry projectors and getting the rhythm of switching between projectors every 20 minutes (there were no pancake platters back then). Especially hairy was when one of them lost torque on the take up reel and I had to hand-crank the reel for 10-15 minutes. And then jump up and perform the reel change while the film spilled out on the floor.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 07:57:37 pm
content: At one point I had a very interesting 16mm machine that actually had a proper Maltese cross intermittent drive rather then the claw that was so common on most of the 16mm gear.It needed it because the other unique feature of that machine was a three bladed shutter, 72Hz flicker frequency, but MUCH harder on the print due to the increased acceleration forces, the intermittent drove a sprocket about an inch and a half in diameter to get enough perforations to avoid shredding the print (16mm suffers from only having a single perforation per frame where 35mm has. I think the thing must have been someones prototype because I have never seen that on any other 16mm rig (There were some three bladed 35mm rigs out there, again harder on the film then a two bladed or drum shutter design.One interesting snippet is that at the onset of WW2 one thing that became in very short supply was replacement Maltese cross components for the newsreel theatres, seems the Germans had the trick of the required metallurgy for these rather highly stressed parts and it took a while for the English to figure it out.Regards, Dan.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 09:47:28 pm
content: Quote from: dmills on December 12, 2018, 07:57:37 pmAh, yes. The "Geneva Wheel" or "Maltese Cross" mechanical movement. One of the brilliant inventions of mechanics. Sometimes I miss those old-school mechanical solutions.OTOH, this animated GIF is rather like a modern equivalent of the old mechanical intermittent-motion solutions.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 01:03:13 am
content: Quote from: dmills on December 12, 2018, 05:35:23 pmThe only time I saw this happen was with the leader or trailer with results better imagined than witnessed.Those Mylar leaders and trailers which can be reused more times are strong. Once the theater manager thought he didn't need the protectionist to start a double auditorium feature with one film running through two projectors. He did not engage the interlock so when the first projector stopped because it was at the end, the second projector kept going until all of the slack between the projectors was taken up. Since the trailer was Mylar, it did not rip and instead the second projector tore the guide rollers off of the wall and then pulled the first projector over and off its mount tipping it over onto its side on the floor. Then the Mylar trailer finally ripped.QuoteIt seemed weird to me but that was Dolby's justification.QuoteIf that was a problem, they could just use the optical soundtrack. I suspect this varied with region because in Southern California, DTS seemed to be much more popular than Dolby even with projectors which supported both.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 03:02:17 am
content: Chapter 7 of this makes for a good introductory read:https://archive.org/details/principlesofcinema00whee

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 11:13:20 am
content: Quote from: dmills on December 07, 2018, 07:07:18 pmTrivia:The clapper board was invented by an Australian named Frank Thring.Defined by length, the world's first dramatic feature film was the Australian 70-minute film The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). You can see it on Youtube.Aussies invented many things, including WiFi.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 12:33:19 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on December 13, 2018, 01:03:13 amOh, you just brought back a painful memory.A venue I used to frequent had a 16mm projector - a Bell and Howell Filmosound (I forget which model) - and I was the unofficial projectionist - having been the student who ran the same (or similar) machine at school. I turned up late to a session once and another person had threaded the machine. I arrived just as it was turned on and heard an unnerving chatter. By the time I had got to the machine, it had passed the leader and had begun on the introduction sequence. I turned it off and saw the loop was, in fact, almost non-existent. I cringed, rethreaded it properly and the screening continued.After the rewind, I checked the start of the film and felt a cold shudder having seen sprocket holes about 50% longer than they should be. I had to write up the condition report and winced doing so. The film was returned and a couple of days later I got a rather "animated" phone call. The owner of the print was not happy - and I couldn't blame him. His only consolation was that the damage was limited to a section of the film that did not have any essential/important content. If I'd had arrived a minute or two later, there would have been a big bill for the venue.I still grimace whenever I am reminded of that episode.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 12:42:02 pm
content: Another time I had set up this projector and there were about 300 people in the audience. During set up, I found the drive belt for the take up spool had failed. I had just a couple of minutes to work out something.Solution - I just stuck my finger in one of the four holes near the hub and maintained enough pressure for the take-up spool to keep the film winding on properly. That was a fun 40 minutes.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 01:46:48 pm
content: Quote from: In Vacuo Veritas on December 12, 2018, 03:11:39 pmI’ve survived a few decades online just fine so far (including many years as an admin of a forum with 65K registered members at one point), so I think I’m doing fine. My point was that such things just make me tune out the author — isn’t that exactly what people say to do?As for “buttercup” — that choice of wording tells me all I need to know about you.(As for being a hothouse flower, I actually describe myself as a “tropical fruit” since I’m gay, and was born in the tropics, and prefer hot weather to cold!)

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 02:11:36 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on December 13, 2018, 01:03:13 amYep, that was a fairly popular game, you could get a tension activated film cutting knife that installed somewhere on the path to make that particular cockup less damaging. That bit of kit also made a cake stand suffering a 'brain wrap' with Mylar a whole lot less exciting (I have seen a fully loaded three level cake stand pulled far enough over to bend the (fully loaded) bottom platter against the floor).Regards, Dan.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 04:48:38 pm
content: Makes me wonder why the mechanism was powerful enough to do all that damage. Is there a reason it needed to be? Why not have a clutch that would disengage and also kill power to the lamphouse if the tension on the film became excessive?

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 05:15:24 pm
content: You need a butch enough motor to get the whole chain up to speed between the motor dot and the changeover dot (~8 seconds or so), and especially with a 6,000ft spool (The 12,000 ft towers have their own drive motors), there is quite a lot of mass to accelerate.It is also nice if the motor has enough grunt to turn the thing over with the intermittent drive in the striking position (Westrex 7000's looking at YOU), annoying to hit the motor button and have the thing just sit there buzzing at you.The issue only started to matter late in the history of film when the mylar stock became a thing for distribution prints, as before then you would just snap the film, and any projectionist knows how to sort that out.Usually there was a centrifugally operated set of safety shutters in the drum shutter or similar that would prevent print damage in the event of a motor or drive belt failure, but they themselves tended not to do well with a big lamphouse and if you did not get the dowser closed reasonably fast then you may well have to work on the (now stuck) safety shutters. In the UK there were IIRC a residual requirement of the Cinematograph act dating from the nitrate film stock era.Regards, Dan.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 06:18:31 pm
content: Quote from: dmills on December 13, 2018, 05:15:24 pmThe infamous film gate fire sequence from Cinema Paradiso. It was rumored that it frightened some projectionists so much they didn't want to show it.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2018, 07:05:52 pm
content: Yea, not a scene to make any operator happy, cuts just a little too close to the bone.Notice that the projection port fire shutter is closed (This existed mainly to avoid the audience realising that the projection room was on fire so as to avoid panic). I am assuming the top magazine door being open is artistic license (Being as the reel exploding and blinding the operator was something of a key plot event), everyone back then in the business was WELL aware of the nature of the film stock.Regards, Dan.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 01:20:33 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on December 13, 2018, 04:48:38 pmIt was never a problem before Mylar was used. If this had happened during the film itself, the film (acetate?) would have just torn but it happened when the trailing lead which the projectionist adds was going through the projectors and the theater was using Mylar leaders and trailers which last much longer and are much stronger.That was not the only failure at this particular theater. Another time they had someone else start a film and they did not check the take up platter. They had somehow managed to hang the film on the sensor which detects film presence but not tension the arm on the platter so it never started. The result was dumping the entire film onto the floor without anybody noticing. There was so much of it that it filled the hall and reached the ceiling.Then there was the time right after the theater opened when it was new and either the roof or air conditioning leaked. The projectionist had to remove ceiling tiles around the projectors and hang garbage bags to direct the dripping water away from the projectors and platters after a couple films were damaged. With all of the narrow and dead end corridors with ceiling tiles missing and dark green/black garbage bags hanging down, it looked like a set from one of the Alien movies.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 04:12:29 pm
content: They actually printed films on a stuff, it was not just used in leaders (but I can see the attraction for that use), and yea, cake stand fuckups tended be quite spectacularly messy that way.I also have an aircon condensate leak in the projection room story, right into the 415V switchgear it was (It also got into the biscuits, disaster!), I also deployed a trash bag.Regards, Dan.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2019, 06:14:03 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on December 13, 2018, 03:02:17 amThe format of that book reader is about 1000 times better then when googles archived book reader came out several years ago and was just pages and pages of strange characters.Flip your tablet sideways and its like a real book with yellow pages and all. Didn't know that site existed. I love reading old books that no one else would, go to the library in the town I grew up in and you will see check out dates in the 1960 and 70's then the 90's when I took them out. Best part is old books are free. Had to give up my old book habit when my eyes got bad, so maybe this is the solution! Actually best part was finding an old 20$ and $100 bill used as book marks.