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All of the films in a three state area come out of SLC. I do not have much of a problem in Colorado though, at least so far.

Hey, Photoshop is not such a bad idea at all, I just got the 6.0.1 upgrade too. Could the SRD tracks be photoshoped back to normal? Heck, they could at least be sharpened and gamma corrected all automatically too. Darn, this version can even be automated!
Mark Still @ Homebutnotforlong
P.S.
In case none of you have figured out why I use the @ GTS or @ what ever feature, its is cause my last name is so darn long that no one can pronounce it or let alone spell it correctly anyway! I am also hiding from those funny guys that ride aound here on bicycles that do recruting. Sorry I'll keep my last mane to myself as long as they're on the loose!

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Slanderous? Certainly not. But I don't necessarily agree with you that the prints were necessarily at fault. In just what way were they at fault? Was the density off? Did the blocks move into the perforation area or move laterally out of range? Was the azimuth out of range...just what was so wrong with them?

As to how good you are on tweeking the SRD (or SDDS) systems as compared to myself, I can not say. I can say that I have not had the problems you are describing. I do tend to do more than just a "basic" alignment though. I even get SDDS tracks to run reliably...only the 2000 series spaz have I not been able to control...the 3000 series systems have been solid. (and not to let DTS feel left out, no problems getting them running at their best either).

As to the GTS pricing, put it in the Buy/Sell section not as part of a film-handlers forum information. I'll have to do a search but I recall a reference or two to dealer pricing and that is supposed to be confidential.

I'm done.

Steve

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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"

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Firstly, sorry if any of my comments were responsible for triggering the "spirited exchange" between Mark and Steve. Mark, thank you very much for your generous comments, they are very much appreciated. Steve, you know I value and respect your opinions and I regret that we do not always see eye to eye, but it would be a boring world if we all agreed on everything.

Secondly, I just wanted to clear the air regarding my view on the relevence of playback standards to the original post in this thread. Since Dolby became involved with film soundtracks and to their eternal credit, there have been well defined standards which many of us in the industry have supported and tried to maintain or improve upon. The difficulty lies in soundtracks from the pre-Dolby era, when standards were few and far between and records as to what standards and methods were applied are not so readily available.

The approach taken by Dolby for handling "legacy" soundtracks was a reasonable one, but one which compressed more than half a century of evolving technology into one solution, Dolby's Academy filter. The filter is applied in two forms, one for optical and one for magnetic the latter being a sort of half strength version of the former. The problem with this approach is that it assumes the worst case for ALL soundtracks, so films mixed in the early 1970's get the same treatment as films mixed in the 1940's.

The case for a fixed optical Academy filter is more justifiable than the magnetic filter, because there was a pre-emphasis applied to optical mono films which theoretically needed de-emphasis on playback, a situation that does not however apply to magnetic. I believe there is a good case to make the magnetic filter variable and/or maybe even apply single-ended noise reduction techniques to reduce noise and hiss on very old or abused prints. We have been designing just such a system for our Panastereo CSP4600 magnetic processor.

Franky I had not considered applying this to optical mono, at least until I read Dave's post, and his observations raised the possibility that maybe the optical filter deserved a closer look.

That's it! I am not advocating changing the way films are played in a general sense, as Steve seems to have assumed, I am simply for trying to get the very best results possible from pre-Dolby films and not just writing them off as "they sound lousy and that's the way they are supposed to sound".

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Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935

You got that right!

The variable filter is probably the best approach (bass and treble, if you ask me)

As to pre-Dolby films as they go throughout the decades from sound on film I would say that the sound systems of the era certainly did change with the late '40s early '50s seeing a turning point but having measured many of these old theatres with the older sound systems, the frequency responses were not too flattering and clearly dialoge was the most emphasised portion of the frequency spectrum. I think the Academy filter on the Cat. 109 pretty well represents such systems. It is logical to presume that the films were mixed for such systems, at least to some degree.

Presuming your new filter design allows for this (and lesser filtering) then I think the best of all worlds will be had.

Steve

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Gord, I gather you are referring to that little red box with the sliders (a Cat whatever, I've forgotten the number) that you can plug a Cat 22 card into and use it for single ended noise reduction. I used to use one in post production in my days as a mixing engineer, very handy device. However that is a studio tool not a cinema product.

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Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935

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