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Author Topic: Hey you, you suck! (AKA: Outing bad film handlers) Part 2 Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 10-26-2009 09:36 PM                        Yeah, back when I used Zebra tape, the dotted line NEVER went on the film. The dotted-line stuff is the really crappy tape. Leaves a ton of gunk. The better stuff has solid lines for every other piece. The solid lines should NOT ever go on the frame lines as they can be seen on screen. Unfortunately the other lines are not spaced well enough so that the Dolby Digital can be totally uncovered while at the same time leaving the image area unscathed, at least for the Neumade style. No matter what you do or what brand you use, striped tape has so much area that can never be used and is wasted, shortening the life of each roll. So not only does it cost more than clear tape, you use less of it as well due to the way it is printed so the cost goes up even more... all for no real gain. The money you save on a shitty projectionist who cannot break down a print without striped tape is more than spent on the tape itself. The more screens a theater has, the more true this is. Bottom line: Striped tape is for idiots who gladly pay more for their inadequate skills.  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 10-26-2009 10:22 PM                     quote: Joe Redifer No matter what you do or what brand you use, striped tape has so much area that can never be used and is wasted, shortening the life of each roll. Personally, I noticed the opposite. When I worked at a Loews that became an AMC they made us stop using the zebra tape with the merger and with the clear stuff people were using more because at least with the zebra you had a line marked showing you how much to pull. So after the switch, people would simply end up pulling more, even if you could easily not do it and use less.  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 10-26-2009 10:23 PM                     quote: Joe Redifer No matter what you do or what brand you use, striped tape has so much area that can never be used and is wasted, shortening the life of each roll. Personally, I noticed the opposite. When I worked at a Loews that became an AMC they made us stop using the zebra tape and with the clear stuff people were using more because at least with the zebra you had a line marked showing you how much to pull. So after the switch, people would simply end up pulling more, even if you could easily not do it and use less.  |  IP: Logged Jim Cassedy Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1661 From: San Francisco, CA Registered: Dec 2006 posted 10-26-2009 10:31 PM                     Just as a historical note, if you find and read the original 1971 platter patent by Edwin Potts, it specifies using colored tape for ease in finding the splices betewen reels. (The patent papers also specify that one of the advantages of using a platters is that you no longer need "skilled personel" in the booth to run a show. The patent also says the use of platters will prevent a projectionist from getting fatigued from running beteween machines doing change-overs. I worked many 12-14hr shifts doing change-overs and I can't recall ever getting tired "running" between machines which were about 4ft apart. )  |  IP: Logged Justin Hamaker Film God Posts: 2253 From: Lakeport, CA USA Registered: Jan 2004 posted 10-26-2009 10:38 PM                        Joe We use the zebra tape made by Neumade and it's just as good as their clear tape. As long as you're careful about placing the tape, it does not cover up the SRD soundtrack. I have never had an issue with the tape tearing when removed or leaving behind excess adhesive. I do know this is an issue with other brands because I see it on circuited prints.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 10-26-2009 10:51 PM                        Chris, you need to train your projectionists better if they are pulling that much. Justin, Neumade is nearly bankrupt. The tape itself is quality since it is the same thing as the clear but with "yellow" printed on it as far as I know, but it definitely costs more and doesn't last as long on a per-roll basis if you know what you are doing. Like I said, striped tape caters to those who don't know what they are doing. That's why it is striped, to compensate for the projectionist's handicap. It's a good thing building codes cater to the disabled or most of ya would be out of work!  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 10-26-2009 11:56 PM                     I wasn't the person who was in charge of training at that time. I'd just come in and see a bit more tape than usual being left on the discard end and mentioned it to the guy in charge. Eventually, people got used to it and used less but at first they were using more.  |  IP: Logged Jarret Chessell Master Film Handler Posts: 288 From: London, Ontario, Canada Registered: Jan 2009 posted 10-27-2009 12:10 AM                     quote: Joe Redifer Unfortunately the other lines are not spaced well enough so that the Dolby Digital can be totally uncovered while at the same time leaving the image area unscathed Can a dolby digital/dts/sdds reader even see the track properly with clear splice tape?  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 10-27-2009 12:44 AM                     Did you mean that to be written differently? Because I've never heard of clear tape causing a sound problem. People using said tape incorrectly (and making a poor splice) is a different story.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 10-27-2009 12:45 AM                     quote: Jarret Chessell Can a dolby digital/dts/sdds reader even see the track properly with clear splice tape? Most definitely - I never had any problems with this. And to splice correctly with zebra on digital film is to get that "Splicemark" tape - one colored bar is thinner than the other so the splice will not cover up the SRD track...(and how many times have you seen used prints spliced with "Splicemark" actually had the splice right in order...less than 1% know how to use "Splicemark" tape correctly..)  |  IP: Logged Jarret Chessell Master Film Handler Posts: 288 From: London, Ontario, Canada Registered: Jan 2009 posted 10-27-2009 01:07 AM                     Chris, I wasn't suggesting catastrophic failure or a "blip". If a dts misses a frame or two of time code it just keeps on going... So what I'm asking is can it read it well enough that it isn't missing a beat?  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 10-27-2009 01:20 AM                        With clear tape, absolutely.  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 10-27-2009 03:36 AM                     There's a big difference between a sound problem and a lack of faultless reading. DTS will freewheel for up to four second in the absence of timecode. Failing to read a single TC across a splice wouldn't cause an audible failure. Is your question about audible failures or actual failures? I expect in most situations DTS will properly read through the splicing tape, regardless. It's difficult to tell, though. You certainly can't do so by listening. No so for Dolby Digital. A splice will typically cause a block to not be read. But ideally there's enough spacial redundancy that this doens't cause a reversion to analog. And in SDDS, there is redundnacy between the S and the P tracks which are offset differnetly, so a splice should not cause a reversion to analog. Though there may be psychoacoustic masking (also true in Dolby Digital). --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 10-27-2009 03:45 AM                        In Dolby Digital whenever it "F's" you can usually hear it in the auditorium even though a reversion to analog did not occur. It sounds kind of like light chirping or clipping in the sound. Those with a good ear can hear it in low quality MP3s all the time. More often than not even a clear splice will cause Dolby Digital to F very, very quickly. Since it is so quick and usually on a scene (and therefore sound) change, it is very difficult to hear. Many times it does not F at all. However I read something somewhere that most Dolby Digital films of the past several years actually pre-load the reel change sound into memory as that current reel is playing so that there isn't a blip when the splice passes. Granted, if the splice is horrible there will still be a reversion because it doesn't store more than maybe a half a second of sound in memory, if that.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 10-27-2009 06:26 AM                     Dolby digital will not read, most of the bits once splicing tape (clear or otherwise) is applied. One issue is that the thickness of the tape puts the whole block out of focus. There is also, where the splice occurs where that block, in particular will be cut in half so it is definitely a throw-away. For reel-change splices, Dolby employs "splice-caching." As Joe noted...during the reel, the information around the end of reel splice is loaded into memory so when the reel change occurs, the audio is not dropped or concealed but instead has the full sound information to buffer out. SDDS goes into DCM but the Center channel is 100% backed up so it will play perfectly...the others will have the concealment...which if done for a split second, almost nobody notices as it only affects some channels at a time. DTS should deal with a splice the best...its focus isn't nearly as critical as SDDS or Dolby so it probably still sees the data, zebra tape does not cover the DTS track the way it does Dolby or SDDS either...and then DTS will freewheel for 4-seconds...far longer than any splice should be on the film and still pass through a projector. Steve  |  IP: Logged

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