Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Valentino stereo sound

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Posted by Hugh McCullough (Member # 1542) on 08-31-2003, 08:18 PM:

Can anybody remember the film 'Valentino' with Rudolf Nuyerev?
This used an optical track left & right channels only.
The light from the exciter was split by a prism onto the two tracks,
and then projected onto an early type of solar cell.
To get centre channel the system worked like the old stereo record
players. There was no surround.
I remember showing this film at the Leicester Square Theatre in the
early 1970s.
I always thought that this was an early attempt by Dolby to get
stereo from an optical track, but I can find no mention of it on their
web site.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-31-2003, 08:21 PM:

In the 50's two of fox's engineers proposed a two channel with phantom centre optical system that used the old pushpull style of soundheads maybe that is what they used there was a SMPTE article on it

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 08-31-2003, 08:43 PM:

Valentino was first released in the fall of 1977 and was a standard Dolby A optical stereo soundtrack format. The film does appear on Dolby's film list at their site.