Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Using a moviola with a platter & related ideas

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Posted by Matthew Bailey (Member # 601) on 12-05-2001, 08:52 PM:

I have sevaeral ideas in using an upright or horizontal moviola in
a projection booth. The first idea woul involve using an upright or horizontal moviola with a film platter such as with a Christie Autowind platter for example but it would be more challenging to figure out the film path & placement of rollers if it was used with a
horizontal moviola. An upright or horizontal moviola would be
ideal for use as a power rewind or MUT. Both types of moviolas wold be a necessity for inspecting newly arrived prints & trailers prior to build-up. An upright moviola woul be useful for paying out & taking up
film to & from projectors in a changeover booth but longer reel arms for an upright moviola may be needed for using with a 4000 or 6000
foot reel changeover arrangement. Other ideas for an upright or horizontal moviola would be for inspecting a print while it is being shown during single print interlocks betwen projectors.
If you can find a way, you can probably attach to an upright moviola
an SDDS,Dolby Digital,or DTS reader to play back the print while it is being viewed on the moviola's screen.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-05-2001, 10:17 PM:

Matthew,
The upright units are real clunkers. I used to repair them for post production houses in the Chicago area. The viewer is not really meant to be used for any sort of judgement on picture quality. It is strictly a viewer and thats about it. It just has a frosted glass screen. While the optical readers on the uprights worked ok, the mag playback was often noisy and very inferior, due to early solid state circuits used, many were still tube, so installation of a CAT 701 or that sort would be mandatory

.

The flatbed Moviolas and KEMS had much better picture modules and viewing capabilities. The best are still the very late model KEM units. I never liked Steenbecks much, kind of a volkswagon as compared to the KEM's. Geez, the KEM flatbeds were going for only 60 grand or so all decked out last I heard! Otherwise even these flatbeds are usually just passable for picture quality, again meant to just act as a viewer for the editor, but these won't give him a headache like the upright(or director) will. On a KEM the sound fares really well, and alot of them come set up to record on mag stripe to make temp mixes.
Moviola made an interesting variation calleda Videola. This was a flatbed editor with no viewing screen. Instead a high quality 3 tube(in those days)camera was mounted on the lower back and with a special camera lens you could pick up an aerial image that was projected by the picture module. Many were used for direct film broadcast at TV stations, and also for copying over Nitrate film as these did not subject the film to any heat at all. You could even do transfers at any frame rate as a large segmented (20 sided I believe) prism simply dissolved one frame into another. Video quality was determined solely by the quality of the camera used.
Mark @ GTS

Posted by Josh Jones (Member # 447) on 12-13-2001, 10:25 PM:

again I have to ask, Why?