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There's been many discussions over the years about moving to 30fps, if only to eliminate the 3:2 pulldown when converting to video for TV and other video uses, but it is NEVER going to happen.

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The equipment was a vic 5 and the conversion itself was quite simple and took about an hour. In real world use I'm sure it could be reduced to 20 or so min. The Vic 5 was especially easy to convert, Kinoton mechs would be more involved as all of the spockets have to be changed, 16 tooth to 12, 32 tooth to 24, this giving the required 25% less pull down. In all other respects film handling was the same.

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It's only draw back is that it would be an all or nothing system as the practicalities of changing format during a show just wasn't there.

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Just how many people does it take to go through and OK having a single film shot 30fps or 48fps? How many stand in the way of shooting a movie in 65mm? How many stand in the way of striking some 70mm prints and having a 70mm showcase screening?

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Not much except the box-office performance of Far and Away. All it takes is one movie for the bean-counters to kill the 70mm revival. Just like one movie (Henry and June) killed the NC-17 rating.
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-11-2003, 01:29 AM:
 
Let it be noted that the demo was only of 1.85:1, not scope. Why, because the really negative impact of the 3perf Compact Distribution print happens when trying to get scope out of this 25% reduction in film geography. Unless the industry simply wants to do away with the scope width altogether, which would make the look of the cinema screen no different than what can be had in home theatre video -- a prospect that should scare the begeebees out of exhibitors -- this 3 perf system basically stinks for scope.

When the system tries to tackle scope, it faces restraints of the laws of physics that are not easily overcome. Designing a system based on the hopes that at some vague time in the future, film stocks will improve enough to compensate for the loss incurred by the system that's being designed is something they would get an F in System Design 101.

Secondly, the very important light gain advantage that scope needs to compensate for the obvious fact that the same amount of available light is spread over twice the screen square footage, will be gone -- no nice big 4 perf height opened to the arc circle. There will not be any aperture enlargement when going to scope. With the 3 perf system the same amount of light that is available for 1.85 will be available for scope, yet stretched over a wider area. This could be compensated for by increasing lamp size and tweaking the optical system and it might work on a smallish size screen, or perhaps the designers can hope that some vague time in the future, lamp technology will improve by 25%. And to make things worse, after the decades of the horrid little shoebox multiplexes that multiplied like rabbits, we finally have come around and understand the marketing advantage and crowd-pleasing necessity for BIG cinema screens. Size does count. The idea of moving toward substantially increasing screen size while at the same time decreasing image geography (and hence actual resolution) is an untenable combination.

You want to save all the things this very questionable 3 perf, Compact Distribution print idea is supposed to save, i.e., film stock, shipping costs, easy print makeup, etc.? Simply convert every shoebox cinema that has a screen size of 25 ft or smaller to Super 16mm with DTS tracks. Do this all over the country -- talk about saving film stock!

You say spherical wide screen 1.85 on a 4 perf pulldown is a waste of light and film stock? Right you are; just use "soft squeeze" anamorphosis to get your 1.85 using the full frame height -- no film waste, no light waste and you'll be adding all that extra film geography to carry more image information. If you want to go to bigger screens, this is an elegant solution to a fairly straightforward problem and it is a win-win -- you gain the extra light without needing to increase energy consumption and you gain extra clarity on the 1.85 format. And no one can gripe about film stock being wasted. The 3perf idea is just BAD out of the starting gate. It takes the original BAD idea (cropping to get wider pictures) and compounds it, then writes it in stone.

But of course the reason why these better solutions (rather than the CP prints) haven't been put into place, as always, begins and ends with money. As Steve says, how to you convert? One day every theatre in the country (let alone the foreign market) magically has the conversion kits ready to go? Look at the difficulty in converting to cyan. And the conversion that never happened: EP reels. 3 perf pulldown (a Technicolor/UA Theatres idea, by the way) idea: DOA.

Frank

PS -- Dolby claims it would take them at least two years to redesign 1) the digital soundtrack, 2) the software and 3) the hardware to compensate for the drop in speed, and even then, there would be the question if it would require only an upgrade in the existing theatre equipment or the need for completely new hardware. SDDS didn't had no comment. DTS will do it theoretically, providing the disks actually get to the theatres.

As for using only DTS code without an analog track, well, not to cast aspersions on the good people at DTS, but without the disks (or disks with playback problems) this would be a major disaster. Unless something major happens with digital recording to make it so reliable as to never need an analog backup track, well, even discussing playing a print without an analog track is like walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon with a 100mph wind blowing. Expecting to find DTS disks with every print....knock it up to 150mph. Oh, sorry, digital without an analog track....been there; done that -- right John P.?
 

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Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 08-11-2003, 03:17 AM:
 
it seems that the conversion of a projector to 3-perf pulldown, taking only an hour or so and requiring only the changing of sprockets, would hardly be prohibitively time-consuming or expensive. not something you'd want to do every day with a 3-perf and a 4-perf film doubled up on one screen, but reasonable once every 2 or 3 weeks. 3-perf could be used for those films that would not suffer from the loss of audio quality. not every film strives for bigness, and films can be great without being big. adapting scope to 3-perf would indeed be dumb. scope should be 4-perf. the system should not be seen as a replacement, but as an additional option. we don't want to render the last 100 years of cinematic output unplayable on new projectors.

this wouldn't happen, but in theory a studio could subsidize a theater's purchase of one set of new sprockets for booking a couple of 3-perf films. it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than subsidizing dlp and could come right out of the print savings.

has anyone ever looked into putting a digital sound system between the frames of a (4-perf) 1:1.85 film? you could fit a lot of data there. then producers would have a choice of big picture (scope) or big sound (flat + super-boombastic frameline digital sound).

carl
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 08-11-2003, 04:06 AM:
 
Three perf pull-down would require more than a simple sprocket change.

If you were only to change the number of teeth on the sprocket so that there were only multiples of three (12, 27 or whatever) and not change anything else (gearing or motor speed) you would have to use smaller sprockets. A smaller intermittent sprocket just 'wouldn't work' with an existing gate since the film has to be pulled through an 'exact' spot.

Now even if you were to keep the same size sprocket (which you really couldn't since 3 doesn't generally go into 16 well) you would still have to use a different intermittent since you'd now need 5 and 1/3 positions instead of 4.
 

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Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 08-11-2003, 08:20 AM:
 
hmmm, according to ken it was done. perhaps an idler roller is introduced between the intermittent sprocket and the gate so the film leaves the gate in the same direction as before. though i don't know what that roller would be attached to.

another worry is whether the smaller sprockets would simply be too small, curving the film too much and not gripping with enough teeth. but then again, they would never have to handle brittle old acetate film.

carl
 

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Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 08-11-2003, 09:40 AM:
 
YES the conversion was done and it was very simple... the ONLY things changed were the sprokets and the lay on rollers adjusted to suit.

There is no need to chage the intermittent as with the smaller diameter of the sprocket a quater turn has only three teeth on it and therefore only pulls down three perfs! The projector motor and shutter run exactly as before so the shutter open time remained the same. In fact if the system was ever adopted the shutter could be adjusted to give greater efficency by reducing the size of the blades by 25%.

I'm not saying it is the way to go... what I am saying is that I've done it and it works. The change over to three perf was simple on a vic 5 and indeed would be on most Vic's. I seem to recall there was also an FP20 kit available for the demonstrations.

There are drawbacks with the system but these are not insurmountable. Who would have thought 15 years ago that we would be doing away with silver in the processing of prints because of environmental issues.

With regards to lighting this frame for scope use.... 70mm uses a beam spreader to light it's wide frame, so why not here also. I don't recall there being a major problem with that.

When the time comes the system may indeed get more serious attention and its problems may be found to be too difficult to overcome.... and maybe not!

There is no reason why Dolby Digital could not use both sets of perferations for its data and DTS use both sides of the frame for it's time code track if needed. The distribution difficulty of DTS dics is not insurmountable and to dismiss a system out of hand for this is simply not reasonable. There is after all electronic distribution to consider as a delivery system.... as indeed is planned for Digital cinema.

I take on board the loss of image area that the 4th perf provided for scope, but that is compensated by the availability of the sound track area. A scope image would need less horizontal expansion and some vertical expansion to achive the correct scope ratio... hardly a revolution in optical science. The overall resolution would be very similar to what it is today. Can anyone do the math to see what the loss or gain would in fact be?

As an option it seems worth while looking into further... especially considering the advances made in recent years with lenses, Digital sound and film stock.

I have just dug out a letter of thanks from Dr A. J. Masson of the BKSTS thanking me personally and the cinema for the evening. This letter is dated 9th April 1987.
The demonstration evening was titled "Three Perfs for Four" and was given by Mr. Rune Ericson and Mr. Bengt Orhall from Sweden.

I'm sure things have moved a just a little in sixteen years don't you?
 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-11-2003, 10:20 AM:
 
The cinemecanica line I could see along with prevost not having an issue with a smaller diameter intermitent sprocket as the movement frames by moving on an arc. But an XL or a Century would have a problem as would the non electronic kinotons that have a one piece trap door and shoe
 

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Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 08-11-2003, 11:34 AM:
 
Hi Gordon,

I do remember seeing a picture of an FP20 with the mod fitted.... but its a long time ago and I can't remember where.

Given time and some money I'm sure there are ways around the differences... as I say its been some 16 years so who knows when an old idea will become new again and find acceptance.

It was a very interesting demo and to be part of it was fun for me as it's something very few people have been part of. I'll do a serch of the net and see if I can find anything.
 

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-11-2003, 05:32 PM:
 
Carl asked:

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has anyone ever looked into putting a digital sound system between the frames of a (4-perf) 1:1.85 film? you could fit a lot of data there. then producers would have a choice of big picture (scope) or big sound (flat + super-boombastic frameline digital sound).

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07.10.1994. We began our first day in Los Angeles at Todd-AO/Glen Glenn Studios, 1021 North Seward Street. After a few phone calls to Mikael Salomon, Richard Vetter, Panavision Inc, Showscan and 70mm Inc we drove to the UA Pasadena Cinema to see a demonstration of the new 35mm, 2 ½ perf, 24 fps film format. A Century projector had been converted to show 2 ½ perf. A reel from "Scent of a Woman" had been printed to this format. Apart from a slight travel ghost, the picture quality was outstanding. The picture steadiness was remarkable due to the slower film speed. The format is called CDP = Compact Distribution Print, a United Artists Theatres/Todd-AO development.

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Lots of discussion on UseNet:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+%22compact+distribution+print%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_qdr=all&selm=daverichDq9wpD.JJM%40netcom.com&rnum=3
 

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Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 08-12-2003, 04:28 AM:
 
Please don't get me wrong.... I'm not advocating a change as such, if it ain't broke don't fix it. I'm just stating that I've seen and used one alternative and it worked very well.

Stephen's concerns over splicing a whole program together is only partially valid. The nature of trailers is that they are made to promote new films, so they are constantly being printed new! The same applies to adverts, promotion of new products... in both cases they would be printed in the required ratio at the required time.... you don't see many 20 year old adverts running at your local do you? and if you do they will be newly printed!

Yes, there will always be older stock to run but again if it's a re-release then that too can be printed in the required ratio.

I don't know much about the printing process but I would have thought not much would change when printing 3 perf stock. The avaerage 6 part feature, some 12,000' would become 9,000' and be easily sent out as a two part print....

Yes there will always be difficulties with any change, especially if money is involved. But the industry has never been one to force change on it's own so it has to come from outside and today these things are an ever increasing pressure, on every industry.

The people who have the most to lose will be the people who shout the loudest. Dolby will want to retain their crown as the industry standard, and when faced with such a challenge will I'm sure rise to it. DTS seems, on the face of it, to be the easiest solution, especially as you can just slip in a French, German, english or whatever disc to play the print anywhere in the world.

Film stock manufacturers would of course be concerned at the potential reduction in sale's of their stock.

As for the electronic intermittent projectors out there, they would need to be able to switch down easily and yet retain the same effective shutter speed so as not to reduce light by a slower running shutter blade. All of these 'problems' can be overcome. All that's needed is an incentive to do so.

Change is inevitable, after all we don't print old silent film on nitrate stock just because that's how it was originally. Therefore there is no reason to demand that we retain 4 perf for the same reason. Film stock has imporved in leaps and bounds so it's not unreasonable to optically reduce prints to fit and retain their original ration. I recall something similar was done for Snow White so the multiplex's could show it better than they would have otherwise. The archives could of course always keep 4 perf masters.

We happily accept old wax disc's and LP's transfered onto CD etc, the same applies to the Vitaphone sound on disc movies... all transfered onto a modern medium which shows up all of the inadequacies of the original system.

If this type of change ever happens, which I doubt in my time at least, it'll be because the industry has been forced to do so. Whatever happens in the future, there will always be a newer, better, way of doing things just around the corner!
 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-12-2003, 11:35 AM:
 
Another issue will be wasted light as the cone of light coming from the lamphouse is round it will need to be condensed into an ellipse to cover the compact frame efficiently
Unlike 70mm larger apperture window when often just defocusing the lamp was enough the smaller frame would have issues
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-12-2003, 12:42 PM:
 
I spoke in err someplace above -- it was UA Theatres and Todd-AO, not Technicolor that was pushing the Compact Distrbution Print, as John's post pointed out. Apologies to Technicolor....they have enough issues for which to hang their heads in shame.

And I am sure no one misses the irony that the company which was the grandfather of the large format 70mm system was there promoting the reduction of the 35mm release print image area.

And while very few techies are against change per se, change that sacrifices quality is not where most of us want to see the industry go. I think you would see most will be resistive to change that would threaten, even slightly, existing levels of quality in present systems -- just wittness the discussions here about cyan tracks. Conversion to cyan certainly has many advantages relating to issues other than sound quality. But tell engineers that by saving water you loose signal-to-noise, even by a few db, and guys start strapping on warrior armor.

One of the things that I find particularly troublesome about the CDP is the idea that all the work done in negative and release print chemistry to eek out even a few more lines of resolution, getting finer and finer grain structure, should be pissed away just so exhibitors don't have to hire professional, well-trained film technicians in the booth who know how to splice film, or that it saves "wasted" film stock (it's only wasted because some other ill-advised people thought wide and cheap was better than wide at the cost of a 1.5x new anamorphic lens). As stated, you want to save film stock? go to S16mm for a huge number of small screen multiplexes. Also the idea that this CDP reverse technology will produce a steadier picture begs the question. That would mean that 35mm is steadier than 70mm and better still, 16mm is steadier than 35mm. Screen steadiness is a non-issue except if you are using poorly maintained equipment as the benchmark. To use it as a reason to degrade scope presentation and analog sound is nonsense. It is not surprising (and one would hope welcomed) when people in the industry who are concerned about quality and who don't have a vested interest in such proposals would stand up an shout "Hell, No."

Thomas Hauerslev said: Apart from a slight travel ghost, the picture quality was outstanding. The picture steadiness was remarkable due to the slower film speed.

Compaired to what? Show us measurements. Using words like "outstanding" and "remarkable" based on a subjective observation at a demo is not meaningful or about as meaningful as people who saw the TI DLP demo and said it was "better than film." The fact that a picture can be described as "outstanding" while at the same time dismissing travel ghost belies an obvious bias. Notice Mr. Hauerslev made no mention of sound quality.

Not to worry, it would be easier converting to Iscovison (1.5x anamorphic wide screen) than the 2.5 perf system because to convert to Full-frame Anamorphic Wide Screen 185 (or FAWS for those who love abreviations), it would take the purchase of a new 1.5x projection anamorhpic, it would be totally backward compatible and best yet, even unskilled labor could handle it -- what a carrot for the exhibitor! Yet even that small change seems too radical for exhibitors to stomach (what? I've got to BUY a new lens?). So the chances that the already rejected CDP idea will make a comeback seems very unlikely....and we thank the cinema gods for it.

Frank
 

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Posted by David Graham Rose (Member # 1450) on 08-12-2003, 03:38 PM:
 
Evensong felicitations to all,

In a post Kenneth McFall wrote:

'As for the electronic intermittent projectors out there, they would need to be able to switch down easily and yet retain the same effective shutter speed so as not to reduce light by a slower running shutter blade. All of these 'problems' can be overcome. All that's needed is an incentive to do so.'

Further to my earlier post, I am unsure if Ken has understood fully how the Kinoton 'E' series projectors on which research is currently being performed operates. The shutter, or flicker blade if you will, permanently rotates at 1440rpm, no matter the number of frames per second at which the operator chooses for exhibition of film stock. Top and bottom loop sizes change accordingly such that the frame is pulled down when the shutter is closed. The results obtained from the 'E' series are rather spectacular due to this phenomenon. It is possible to run 5 frames per second (forwards or in reverse) without any appreciable flicker.

As to whether or not it is 'easy' to change from 4 perforation to 3 perforation pulldown, is entirely dependant on the competancy of the operator. I have recently conducted studies, at large cost to the Department, whereby I have utilised undergraduates from the Department of Cinema Management - a notoriously technically feeble minded set - whereby I gave written instruction on how to achieve this conversion, and as many as 82% of those tested were able to convert the apparatus from 4 perf to 3 perf pull down. Since the Undergraduates used were from the Department of Cinema Management, I firmly believe that should a relative inexperienced Technician be faced with this issue, that no problem would occur. The findings of this study will be published in a document entitled 'Laboratory, Studio and Location Practicalities of Environmental Concerns With Regard To Re-application of Analog Soundtracks and Related Environmental Issues of Stock Preservation'. It is hoped that the paper will be in the next edition of Acta Cinematografia, or the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. (J. SMPTE).

From Cambridge with a number of befuddled Cinema Management Undergraduates, I bid each and every one of you a fruitful evening.
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 08-12-2003, 03:56 PM:
 
I, for one, would love to see "Scope 1.5X" used for 1.85:1 or 1.79:1 aspect ratio. Use the current scope image area (0.690 x 0.825 inches) with a 1.5X squeeze. For the cost of a projection lens, you get 1.5 times more light and the advantages of larger image area on the print. Much better image quality than the "wasteful" 1.85:1 "flat" image area (0.446 x 0.825 inches). NO other modifications are needed in the theatre (same sound systems, same projector pulldown, same film transport speed, same amount of film used).

For SMPTE members, my presentation on "Scope 1.5X" is in the on-line SMPTE Library:

http://www.smpte.org/members_only/library/download.cfm?file=pytlak.pdf

I also wrote an article for Kodak's "Film Notes for Reel People":

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/newsletters/pytlak/feb97.shtml

This great idea is not new. It was demonstrated in 1982 as "IscoVision" by Glenn Berggren.
 

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-12-2003, 04:14 PM:
 
David wrote:

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I gave written instruction on how to achieve this conversion, and as many as 82% of those tested were able to convert the apparatus from 4 perf to 3 perf pull down.

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