This is topic CYAN DYE tracks FACTS OR FICTION in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Frank Jerkic (Member # 2446) on 05-24-2004, 09:50 PM:
Hey There Everybody,
Well today 20/5/04 I recieved a letter from Buena Vista advising all
us cinema owners that they are making the switch to cyan dye tracks.
The first movie will be Mr. 3000 released on September 24 and you MUST
have a projector equipped with a visable red light analog reader or
you will have NO SOUND
This has caused a great deal of panic with some exhibitors rushing out spending $1,000 per reader per projector
Is this no sound true or is it just a con?
I have 1 Kaylee (for Drive in) and 2 Century projectors (Cinema)to
convert, any ideas on what's the cheapest way of doing this as I hear
of easy do it yourself laser ideas but...........
We were told that this new sound would be in place by 2000 but nothing
happened,Australian Film distribitors know nothing about it, now
Disney is the first to change will others follow.
Thanks for any help
Frank
Nth Qld
Australia
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-24-2004, 09:57 PM:
It's not that you'll have NO sound. You'll probably have very POOR sound.
For more information see this thread:
http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f1/t005104.html
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-24-2004, 10:05 PM:
It is true. Not only BV but MGM will be going to 100% dye tracks.
It is NOT true that you will get *NO* sound. Yes, you will get SOME sound but it will be crappy. It will have low level and poor quality.
This only applies to analog sound. Digital sound systems will be unaffected. Thus, if you play 100% of your shows in digital formats you will be able to play normally UNLESS your sound system falls back to analog. However, if/when you do fall back to analog your sound will go to shit.
I don't know about the $1,000.00 price tag. Maybe. I just don't know for sure because I haven't priced that stuff in a long time. It depends on what kind of deal you can make with your equipment distributor.
I'm sure others will be along shortly to fill in the gaps.
In the mean time, check out www.dyetracks.org
Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-24-2004, 10:10 PM:
$1000.00 for a reader is highway robbery, at least here in the States. Donno about your currency and such down there. DOesn't Panastereo make a nice reader?
Mark
Posted by Frank Jerkic (Member # 2446) on 05-24-2004, 10:21 PM:
Good day again
Jaxlights aprox $1,000 AU to suit Century was price quoted to me last week
not happy lol
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-24-2004, 10:49 PM:
Jaxlites are a BAD idea! More trouble than they are worth. Get the real conversion. Once you do, you won't have to worry anymore.
Furthermore, with a good reverse scan conversion package to red LED, A-Chains will be a breeze! (Once properly installed.)
Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-24-2004, 11:17 PM:
The published paper by Paul Goldberg says the signal level of a cyan dye track on a tungsten reader will be about -11dB in level:
http://www.dyetracks.org/ci.os.0012.reddye.html
quote:
As you can see, the tungsten reader reproduces a cyan dye track print with a loss of ~11 dB, whereas the red LED reader reproduces cyan track and silver track prints with almost equal amplitude.
In other words, on a tungsten reader, a cyan dye track will require increasing the gain considerably, with a resultant increase in noise. This is because the cyan dye is essentially transparent to infrared energy, and cannot modulate it efficiently.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-25-2004, 06:52 AM:
As of this date, the Austrailian Dollar is trading such that 1 US Dollar buys 1.42 Austrailian Dollar. So, our friends down under have a 42% price hike on anything coming out of the states just to get it to their country. Then add on any tarriffs, freight...etc...lastly the dealer mark up and before too long...you are at a high price compared to what you may be used to in the States.
Steve
Posted by Peter Hall (Member # 695) on 05-25-2004, 10:00 AM:
Wow - a Kalee 1 !
Have you considered laser cyan conversion kits ? No preamp, last forever... TO be fair, we sell a laser kit but there is one other on the market too which I believe is OK. Pricing £GBP360 for one of ours, which I believe fits straight into a Kalee lens holder (do you know the diameter ?).
Does the Kalee have a photo cell or a valve pickup ? God knows how a tube would react to white thru cyan light..
But hey, a drive in with a Kalee 1 - no offense but I guess mono sound from a pre Dolby system - if it has plenty of gain up it's sleeve it might be worth taking to BVI and getting a sample to run. But it is a bit naughty of them to tell you that you will have no sound..
Re Jaxlites, I can't really comment but I know a few of our clients have taken them out and installed lasers.
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 05-25-2004, 11:36 AM:
What model soundhead is the Kalee 1 mounted on
CE makes a reverse scan basement reader for the Gaumont Kalee soundheads that were used on the 19-21 projectors
Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 05-25-2004, 11:49 AM:
I'd still like to know...just for curiousity...what level can be attained by cranking the heck out of an incandescent bulb (considering normally they are undercranked) even at the cost of greatly reduced life and increased chance of failure...and upping the preamp gain. I may have to set up one of my incandescent Century soundheads to find out. If only they would make some cyan trailers as has been suggested over and over.
Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-25-2004, 11:54 AM:
Just upping the tungsten light level is not a "fix" for the low level. You need to eliminate the infrared energy to which the cyan dye is transparent. The cyan dye very efficiently modulates the red light, but the infrared energy just goes right through the track.
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 05-25-2004, 11:58 AM:
At Showest one year Kinoton had a quartz lamp conversion with a presion dichoic filter that they claimed would work
Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-25-2004, 12:02 PM:
I assume this is the Kinoton unit?:
http://www.kinoton.com/rotlicht.htm
http://www.kinoton.com/tontechnik.htm
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-25-2004, 02:22 PM:
Peter...360GBP will set you back $920AUD plus freight, tariffs and other mark ups.
Steve
Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 05-25-2004, 05:28 PM:
Gordon & Peter, I don't think Frank is saying he has a Kalee model '1' projector, did such a model even exist.
He in fact says he has '1' Kalee projkector used in a drive in!
It would help if he was to give the model number.
Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 05-25-2004, 05:50 PM:
John, just what is the effect of the IR flooding through? Seems to me that it would just create a constant DC offset on the solar cell output which would be eliminated by the differential input of the preamp.
Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-25-2004, 06:45 PM:
IR flooding through would definately bias the input differential and not necessarily be cancled out just because it is a differential pair... and not all preamps use a differential pair input anyway.
Mark
Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 05-25-2004, 07:36 PM:
The old Ballantine 6/4/1/ solid state system had transformer input to the optical preamplifier. The current from the solar cell would saturate the core of the little transformer and so we had to insert a capacitor to isolate the DC component from the signal input.
This method of DC removal is very effective. In low impedance circuits you have to use a large capacitance to transmit the low frequencies.
KEN
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 05-25-2004, 08:10 PM:
except the old Ballantine 6/4/1 solid state sound system was a bitch at the best of times to service and as they got older keep working
Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-25-2004, 08:29 PM:
I suspect that since over half of the energy from a tungsten lamp is in the infrared, and there is no silver to modulate it, you could easily drive the cells to near saturation.
Posted by Frank Jerkic (Member # 2446) on 05-25-2004, 09:50 PM:
Good day again
The Century's I own are fitted with the TR4B sound reproducer, one has never been converted to stereo (same as it left the factory) the other was changed to stereo by moving the exciter light to the end where the solar cell was originally fitted.
The Kalee soundhead is the 890 which is stereo for the drive in, the solar cell runs straight into a preamp-FM STEREO transmitter, The Drive in went Stereo years ago and our first Stereo movi was WILLOW
Posted by Peter Hall (Member # 695) on 05-26-2004, 10:48 AM:
Steve -
Yes, it is close to $1000, but you never need to replace any LEDs...
Ken -
I have never seen a Kalee 1 - even City Screen didnt use gear that old - but I have run Kalee 2s in NZ so I assumed that there was an older brother. Or maybe Kalee has emerged from the ashes and is taking a leaf out of the Star Wars book and releasing #3 before #1 (or 19/20/21/37 before 1).. Maybe it's a new model !!!
Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 05-26-2004, 02:22 PM:
Peter,
Kalee 11 is the oldest I've used..... I was just pointing out that I don't think he has a model 1!
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-26-2004, 08:31 PM:
Peter,
I know on Ernemanns I've had to replace lasers...they were more expensive than the LEDs
Steve
Posted by Peter Hall (Member # 695) on 05-27-2004, 08:36 AM:
Yes, I've had the same ecperience with the Ernemanns - we use a different laser.
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 05-27-2004, 09:42 AM:
The only ernamann lasers I have had to replace were with Xetron consoles and it was felt that the RF from the ignitors had caused the failures as they had also failures of the MCU in the TA10 automations mounted in the same consoles
Posted by Peter Hall (Member # 695) on 05-28-2004, 09:05 AM:
Interesting Gordon - I think you are onto something. The Erneman ones we have changed were on Ernemann 15s, which I believe borrowed a lot from the Xetron lhouses. Also all but one failure we have had were of lasers in l-houses with bad electrical installations, and the one exception was for a broken lens cover where the processor manufacturer's tech (doing a line up for a premiere) broke it.
Which could bring me to another discussion thread on the frustration of the toos and froos of a processor manufacturer's tech "lining up" a theatre with a single mic in 5 minutes (prior to a premiere etc) and drastically changing settings made over hours of work with a R2 or similar.. And the theatre sounded like poo.. (we now xerox the C64s on a 55/65/200 so that the theatre can hit the "undo" button - easier on a 500 or 650 of course) I had one such tech tell me that he needed to roll off the bass to compensate for tube train noise breaking thru to the theatre...
Ken - fair point. Maybe the machine is so old that the first 1 of the 11 has worn off !
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 05-28-2004, 09:25 AM:
Peter for several houses that I service that get a lot of visiting "engineers" re tuning for one offs I have a spare set of eq cards there they get to use
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