my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Operations   » Film Handlers' Forum   » Telecines (Page 2)

This topic comprises 3 pages: 1  2  3

Author Topic: Telecines Bruce McGee Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1776 From: Asheville, NC USA... Nowhere in Particular. Registered: Aug 1999 posted 08-18-2004 04:10 PM                     None of the local TV stations in this market have any in-house telecine equipment anymore. I have 2 RCA TP-66 telecine projectors in my garage. They weigh about 400 lbs each. Its so hard to believe that they cost $80,000 new. Both of these are in running condition, and have power cords attached. I run film on both of them sometimes.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-18-2004 05:25 PM                     I don't think RCA made anything that cost less than $80,000.00! I used to service 4 of those at the station I worked for. They were a pain in the ass when something really broke on them which fortunately was not too often. They were much better and less of a pain in the ass then the converted LW Athenas(kodak Pagents) that the station had when I first started there. There were freon wet gate attachments called PIX something or other on them and I'll never forget the day that one of the hoses let go and there was over a gallon of freon all over the machine and floor. Everyone was higher than a kite.... not sure what the at home audience saw that day as the air switcher also got a good dose and the highs. But there was alot of laughing going on. Mark  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 08-18-2004 09:40 PM                        quote: Mark Gulbrandsen There were freon wet gate attachments called PIX something or other on them and I'll never forget the day that one of the hoses let go and there was over a gallon of freon all over the machine and floor. Everyone was higher than a kite.... not sure what the at home audience saw that day as the air switcher also got a good dose and the highs. But there was alot of laughing going on. I think they were "Pic Clear". I doubt the solvent was a FREON, as it evaporated too fast. More likely methyl chloroform or perchloroethylene.  |  IP: Logged Bruce McGee Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1776 From: Asheville, NC USA... Nowhere in Particular. Registered: Aug 1999 posted 08-19-2004 09:40 AM                     We had 2 LW Athena machines on the #2 telecine when I worked in Nashville. They were known for damaging film more than anything. Both of our TP-66's used pic-clear. Our know-it-all engineer installed the unit in the wrong place in the film path and in doing this messed with the film back-tensioner adjustments. We lost many 400' reels of film due to the tension problems before we wised up and started threading up without the tension arms on the feed reel. Both of the TP's in my garage had pic-clear when I got them. I removed all of that. The LW/Athena started too fast, IMHO. Film would break quickly.  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 08-19-2004 06:47 PM                        That's strange. We had a couple of them at a station I worked at in Eastern Washington. They never gave us any trouble at all. The only gripe I ever had was with the garbled sound we (and every other station I recall) had during the couple of seconds or so after startup. Seems somebody could have figured out a way to hot-start the sound drum. Unless you had a healthy pre-roll, the sound always suffered until the drum came up to speed.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-19-2004 06:50 PM                     "I think they were "Pic Clear". I doubt the solvent was a FREON, as it evaporated too fast. More likely methyl chloroform or perchloroethylene." What ever it was it sure put everyone into the laughter mode after a short exposure to its fumes. Our control room did not have air intake from the outside so the same air circulated and it took for ever to get rid of the funes. ALso everyone was always sick there passing one cold back and forth constantly. Jack, Our TP-66's sound drums had idler motor start ups to get them to soeed really fast. I assume that was another $50,000 dollar RCA option.... Mark @ CLACO  |  IP: Logged Rick Hunter Master Film Handler Posts: 452 From: Melbourne, Australia Registered: Feb 2003 posted 08-19-2004 08:49 PM                     Our TP66s had the fast start sound option & would get up to sound speed in under a second. Pic Clear was added just before they were replaced. Before them we ran Philips machines, can't remember the model number, which ran for years without a fault and with perfectly steady pictures. Our first machines were EMI flying spot machines, they were first installed in 1955 and ran until about 1973. Whilst the Philips were traditional 16mm projectors, the EMIs were constant motion twin-lens machines which could run single & double system 16 and 35mm and in any combination. ie. 35mm picture with 16mm mag (or optical) sound. They could also show 35mm slides. A interesting death defying feature was that the scanning tube EHT of 27.5kV was generated by a 240V 50Hz mains transformer. The circuits for these machines were dated 1949. All these were relpaced by Rank Cintel Mk 2 flying spot scanners (16mm), Fernseh fast pulldown machines (16mm) which sounded like a machine gun when runnning as pulldown was accomplished by a burst of compressed air, and a Frenseh constant motion 35mm machine with a Bauer head.  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 08-19-2004 10:18 PM                  Like Bruce, I have RCA TP-66s. I have a full island with 2 TP-66s shooting into the RCA optical multiplexer that feeds a RCA TK-27 4-vidicon color camera converted to plumbicons. I doubt the sound drum accelerator was an option. I've never seen one without it. All my operator and service manuals, and even the original sales brochure, tout it. They are a great workhorse no matter what the naysayers think they know. That projector system certainly has contributed much worldwide in the history of getting films and TV shows (Yes, and commercials) to the masses viewing that TV stuff. Below are some pics of my 3rd TP-66, "parts machine", that has the "PICLEAR" horseshit. Note the damage to the paint from chemicals that dribbled out of the "applicator". Yeah! “Better living through chemistry”! >>> Phil (Edit by poster for typo) [ 08-20-2004, 12:03 AM: Message edited by: Phil Hill ]  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-19-2004 10:33 PM                     Yep! thats the dasterfly Pic Clear thing. The ones at the station I worled for had rigged in larger containers for the fluid though. Almost a full gallon of the stuff! I wonder of Bruce McGee ever tried a shot of Pic Clear juice? And how does it taste compared to Film-Guard? The TK-27 was a neat camera...4 tubes with the big 1.5 incher for luminance. Did you also get the big 500 lb. steel plate that it all sits on? Thats a hard one to move around! Mark  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-20-2004 09:34 AM                     An interesting telecine machine was the RCA 35mm electronic machine that looked a lot like a FP20 but was all servo motor based They used to do a great job of shredding film when one of the servos would decide to start in the wrong direction  |  IP: Logged Bruce McGee Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1776 From: Asheville, NC USA... Nowhere in Particular. Registered: Aug 1999 posted 08-20-2004 05:55 PM                     I DO wish that FG had been around when Pic-Clear was in use. I hated using Pic-Clear, because our film department strived to clean everything that came through our station, and I thought that PC was a waste of money. The station eventually stopped using the things, and just by-passed the applicators on the TP's. Phil, I aquired a TK-28 about 2 years ago. I was told when I got it that it was ready to go. Powered it up, got a white image from the video out line, lots of smoke, fire, and death. Turns out that one of the PC boards inside had been broken by a hammer. I tried for almost 2 years to locate spare modules for this, but gave up. It is now residing in a TV museum near me. It looks good with a pair of Eastman 25's, and the original slide projector in place. We used TK-27's in Nashville in TV. They were fine machines when they were tweeked right. The TP-6's that we had before the 66's were awful on film, but they did run for about 25 years before I got to them.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-20-2004 06:28 PM                     "We used TK-27's in Nashville in TV. They were fine machines when they were tweeked right." You're dead right on that one. In spite of the large luminance vidicon in the 27 it was always a bit noisier in the RGB channels than the 28 was. Exact setup was the only way to good results. I guess thats why the TK-28 was brought out. Some 28's in Chicago actually had Plumbicons in them instead of vidicons. Those cameras looked really great but had a bit more lag in the image. The RCA servo driven 35mm machines were the same as the Westrex 35mm electronic projectors and were designed by some of the same engineers. There were two FR-35B's that I used to service in Chicago and I eventually ended up owning one of them. Mark  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 08-21-2004 12:36 AM                    Did the Pic Clear setup just wet the film or was the projection itself "underwater" so to speak?  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-21-2004 12:56 AM                     "Did the Pic Clear setup just wet the film or was the projection itself "underwater" so to speak?" _________________________________________________________________ Yes, It actually wet the film but was prety much evaporated by the time the film arrived at the sound drum. It was possible to over do it and put the entire film path under fluid so to say. If the applicator was not set for just the right flow(or it may have been the number of drips per second) the felt pads would be too dry and they would scratch the flim. Also if you got a piece of dirt taken in on one of the pads it would scratch film even if the pads were wet . Mark  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 08-21-2004 09:38 PM                  (So, as this dumbass puts his tail between his legs and runs...) Based on some of the comments about the RCA TK-27 and TK-28, I just looked at my telecine camera and I guess I was on crack when I posted. My camera is an Ikegami TKC-970. >>> Phil  |  IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 3 pages: 1  2  3

Printer-friendly view of this topic

Hop To: Select a Forum: Category: Operations -------------------- Digital Cinema Forum Film Handlers' Forum Large Format Forum Ground Level Feature Info, Trailer Attachments & REAL Credit Offsets Category: Community -------------------- Film-Yak Film Handlers' Movie Reviews The Afterlife Bob Maar's Joke-A-Thon Category: Classified -------------------- Equipment and Supplies Wanted/For Sale Help Wanted/Seeking Employment Category: System -------------------- Software Beta Testing Forum

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.