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Author Topic: How do you build a print when the leaders are all out of order. Mitchell Dvoskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1869 From: West Milford, NJ, USA Registered: Jan 2001 posted 04-26-2006 12:55 PM                     As Floyd has said, yes there are small portable soundtrack readers. They are officially called squak boxes, athough my spelling may be incorrect.  |  IP: Logged Alan Gouger Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 501 From: Bradenton, FL, USA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 04-26-2006 01:21 PM                        Thanks Mitch I did a search for sound readers and came up with nothing. Your reply should help. I screened the full print last night and I have to switch the order of 2 reels. When I break this down I will make sure I properly label each reel for the next person.  |  IP: Logged Barry Floyd Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1079 From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 04-26-2006 01:32 PM                        Similar thing happend to me a couple of weeks ago. I opened the cans for our print of "THE PINK PANTHER", and all of the heads & tails for each reel were all detached and rolled up together, shoved in the bottom of the can. Without the aid of the "Reel ID" section here on FT, I would have been clueless as to the order of the reels. I'm really glad we have an internet connection at the theatre.  |  IP: Logged Josh Jones Redhat Posts: 1207 From: Plano, TX Registered: Apr 2000 posted 04-26-2006 03:42 PM                        Boy it sure is reassuring that they keep packing the lowest common denominators into the booths, huh  |  IP: Logged Mitchell Dvoskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1869 From: West Milford, NJ, USA Registered: Jan 2001 posted 04-26-2006 05:04 PM                     This is a Precision Labs Model 600 Soundtrack Reader, refered to as a squak box by film editors:  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 04-27-2006 08:34 PM                     Presumably you can get a DA20 to tell the reel number on its serial output as well (how else could Dolby's Screentalk work?). And as you might expect, not only does the DTS-XD10 tell you the reel number, but so does its near-cousin the DTS-CSS. But when we talk about matching up soundtracks, I think for the most part we mean by eye . Because the analog soundtrack leads the picture by 20 frames, the same soundtrack must be duplicated in two places. Because, e.g., for Reel 2, the changeover people need the sound to be on the head leader of R2, but the platter people need the sound to be in the last 20 frames of the film of R1. This duplication (and the process which creates it) is called a "sound pullup." So, lacking any special tools, your algorithm should be as follows: 1. Determine reel 1 and the last reel (from credits, etc.) 2. Rewind R1 tail-out and the last reel head-out 3. Attempt to match heads to the R1 tail and tails to the last reel head. 4. After matching a reel, rewind. 5. Match unmatched ends. Repeat steps 4-5 until done. If you want to be really Hard Core (tm -- ), you can read the DTS timecode by hand. Each timecode sequence goes from tail-to-head, and the first 4 bits are a reel number (next 16 bits are the sequence number). A timecode sequence starts with a sentinel, which is a 5-unit-long white dash. A zero is a two-unit dash, and a one is a one-unit dash, and both can be of either color. Other lengths (e.g. 3-unit to 7-unit long black dashes) are meaningless seperators. Oh yes. And trailers are encoded as "reel 14." I don't recall how attached trailers are encoded; I suspect it is R14 as well. And if you read "reel 0," that means the following sequence number is the serial number. Skip that timecode and go on to the next one. --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Peter Castle Expert Film Handler Posts: 220 From: Wollongong University, NSW ,Australia Registered: Oct 2003 posted 04-29-2006 01:19 AM                     I thought I had seen everything until this week. We received a print of "Mrs Henderson Presents" which was on 6 cores. However only reel 6 had a head on it. None of the others did. There were no cardboard separators - all 6 reels just piled one on the other. A note in the box stated that the last cinema had received the print damaged BUT had also had an accident on their platter and had to cut the film. Thus reel 5 (it had a tail on it) had 4 different pieces of film attached to it with masking tape - but have no idea what reel they were from. All seemed cut with scissors. Not one reel of 1-5 had anything written on the masking tape holding down the film. We gave up after an hour or so and got a replacement print. So whoever had copy 27 of MHP - THANK YOU LOTS!  |  IP: Logged

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