Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: CP500 and A-Type/SR

This is topic CP500 and A-Type/SR in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by David Whitbeck (Member # 894) on 12-13-2003, 02:44 PM:

We have these MovieFone trailers built onto every movie that only have an analog soundtrack, no digital. Most of our CP500s default into A-Type for these trailers and I can only think of 1 or 2 that default into SR. My GM has stated that A-Type is inferior and that he wants all of these to run in SR. How can I get the CP500 to default to SR rather than A-Type? Is this going to be processor based or automation based? In all reality, does anyone honestly think it will make that much of a difference playing it in A-Type rather than SR?

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 12-13-2003, 05:34 PM:

Look at the leaders of the trailers- there should be something indicating what sound format they should be played in. ONLY play them in SR if it says "SR" on the leader- anything that's not SR encoded sounds awful when played with it. My rule of thumb's always been run it in Dolby A unless it says otherwise (SR, Mono, silent, etc)
If these are actually SR, the 500's should be defaulting to that if you start the show in Digital- if they're defaulting to A check that it has SR cards installed. The last place I worked with CP500's, you had to program the automation to switch them to Dolby A or punch it in manually- for a while the first trailer on each film was a PSA with no format labeled, so I set the starting format to A-type and had Auto Digital on so it went to Digital as soon as the first digital trailer started.
I'm typing this from work (non-theater) so hope I don't sound too confusing!

Posted by Rick Long Jr (Member # 541) on 12-13-2003, 10:23 PM:

More info is required. What kind of automation? And more importantly, what kind of digital? If it's SR-D it should default to SR all the time. If DTS it could be as simple as moving a jumper on the D715 board (if so equipped).

Posted by David Whitbeck (Member # 894) on 12-14-2003, 04:20 PM:

It's SR-D(basement) with a Harkins/Component Engineering TA-10. Unfortunately all of these trailers that we have no longer have their heads or tails so I can't determine what it was recorded in.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-14-2003, 05:00 PM:

I think by default you mean the automation pulses the system to sr or a type and since the auto you said was pulsing it to a type and the cp500 is set for autodigital I believe it will stay in A until it sees digital and then it will default back to SR when the digital ends which is the failure mode for SRD.
So if the print had say a digital trailor before the motviefone then they would default back to SR if there was no digital trailors before it it would stay in the format that the automation had pulsed it to
The odds are these logos are SR since there has been almost notheing encoded in A type for some time

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 12-14-2003, 05:13 PM:

Dolby for a long time has promoted SR to the trailer and advertising producers to the point of special licensing to expand the market; so the chance it is SR "type" encoded.

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 12-15-2003, 10:12 AM:

My CP500's used to do this too, when the analog trailer was the first trailer programmed. I just took format 04 off of my soft keys, since we don't get A-type prints usually.

Posted by David Whitbeck (Member # 894) on 12-24-2003, 12:35 AM:

So basically the automation is pulsing the CP500 into A Type when it should be SR? That would mean the automation needs to be fixed. But rather than going through that it may just be easier to remove A Type altogether from the softkeys? If that's the case that's what I'll do. If we ever get an A Type print for some reason then I'll just add it for the time...