Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Weird track on 'Vera Drake' traiiler.

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 03-26-2005, 05:41 PM:

When I made up the ads and trailers reel this morning (cinema closed yesterday) I put in two trailers, one for 'The Aviator', which we have run before, and one for 'Vera Drake', whch was brand new. This one had a very odd track; it looked like magenta dye, possibly with a bit of yellow in it, it was reddish magenta, with no silver. I thought at first that it was a high magenta track which had somehow missed its re-development. With only a few minutes to the first show there wasn't time to do a test run. I nearly took it out, but decided to leave it in, and remove it before the next show if it sounded too bad, but it sounded fine, which was rather surpriising with red readers. Anyone else seen a track like this?

Posted by Alexander Smith (Member # 1769) on 03-27-2005, 07:28 AM:

I've seen more than a few trailers like that over the years.

I don't have one handy for "show and tell", I've never
noticed a correlation between a particular lab and the
occurrence of these red tracks.

We have Component Engineering Red LED reverse scan analogue
readers so I was (initially) concerned, but the trailers
seem to play fine and sound like any other trailer with the
more common cyan+high magenta track.

Alex.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 03-27-2005, 09:12 PM:

If you have a magenta dye or magenta+cyan dye track WITHOUT silver (dark gray) in it, I suspect the track accidently didn't get applicated. With a red LED reader, the magenta only track will be quite noisy. The magenta+cyan dye track will play okay, but may have a bit of cross-mod distortion, since it would have been optimized assuming silver was there. Any dye only track will be noisy with a tungsten (white light) reader.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 03-28-2005, 02:20 PM:

quote: John Pytlak
If you have a magenta dye or magenta+cyan dye track WITHOUT silver (dark gray) in it, I suspect the track accidently didn't get applicated.

That was what I thought at first.

quote: John Pytlak
With a red LED reader, the magenta only track will be quite noisy. The magenta+cyan dye track will play okay, but may have a bit of cross-mod distortion, since it would have been optimized assuming silver was there. Any dye only track will be noisy with a tungsten (white light) reader.

This was wth red readers; I'm not sure what type they are, I just do relief work there from tiime to time. The machines are Kinoton FP-30Ds, and the new red source fits in the orginal exciter lamp housing. Opening the cover where the lamp used to go and looking inside I can see the end of a horizontal cylinder about 14mm in diameter. Does this sound like a laser reader? It's not a Jax-light, I've seen one of those elsewhere, and it's quite different.

It's difficult to judge the track by eye, and I don't carry a transmission colour densitometer around with me, but it didn't look like there was much, if any, cyan dye, or silver in it. This is what I don't understand, anything capable of modulating red light should be visible to the eye, and I couldn't see anything in this track which looked like it would be capable of doing so to any great extent. It wasn't pure magenta dye, it looked more reddish.

Unusually, I'm projecting on Thursday night, which is when this trailers reel will be broken down. We're runniing the film next week, so this trailer will be coming out. I'll try to get a better look at it, in a better light. I might even be able to borrow it, and scan a bit of the track, then I could look at the separate channels in Photoshop, and see what's actually there.

Posted by Kevin Orman (Member # 3076) on 03-30-2005, 06:43 AM:

Stephen, we had the same track (magenta only I think) on Vera Drake trailer. Sound was audible but was definitely distorted and low-level.
It appeared to have a higher level with more distortion on a red reader and a lower level with less distortion on our white-light reader. What you didn't mention is that the picture was also very unsteady (confirmed on two entirely different machines).
Another trailer with identical soundtrack problem and the same picture instability was 'Merchant of Venice'. I believe that these were both printed by 'Bucks' labs (it didn't say so but I recognised the leader). Not sure if the picture instability was down to the way the trailers behaved in the gate(s) or if they were printed like that.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 03-30-2005, 03:44 PM:

John, it looks like it was a re-development problem. The cinema involved, part of an arts complex, does not open on Sundays or Bank Holidays now. That meant that it was closed on Friday. I did the Saturday shift, which starts early with the morning chldren's show. Normally Frday shows start later to allow for print make-up. Since this all had to be done on the Saturday this week it was a bit of a rush. To make matters worse, the children's film was a very old print, which needed quite a lot of work doing on it; only the first three reels were ready by the time it went on screen. There were three other prints to make up, and with only one rewind bench for both making up and rewinding, I was working just half a film ahead of what was on screen until early evening, so I didn't look too closely at the trailer. It sounded ok on the monitor speaker. Cinema was closed Sunday and Monday. I was not due to be on yesterday, but I got a call asking if I could swap a shift, and as I have been thrown out of the office at my main job, due to wireing painting and carpeting work, I took a days leave to do it.

There were no adverts or trailers shown with the first film, another children's one, but they were shown with the second one. While this trailer was running I switched the monitor speaker to each channel in turn, and it was obvious that there was a problem; I hadn't heard it when monitoring all three main channels, and I hadn't had time to hear it in the auditorium.

I had a better look at the trailer while the feature was running. The dye was all magenta; I think the reason that it looked red on Saturday was that I was looking at it by a low-Wattage tungsten lamp in the rewind bench, which obviously has a very low colour temperature. Looking closely, the track has been redeveloped, but only in a narrow band. When the track is modulated this ends somewhere in the clear area of the first track, so we have one black modulated edge, and three magenta ones. Given this, I'm surprised it didn't sound worse than it did. Where the track is unmodulated, the redeveloped stripe doesn't quite reach the first bias line, and so the edge of the redevelopment can be seen. It's perfectly even, much better than I've seen on many other prints, just in the wrong place. How is the redeveloper applied, is it done with a wheel? If so, it was a long way off its correct position. I've seen bad redevelopment, where it has extended into the DTS, or even the picture area, and where the edge of the stripe has been uneven, but never anything like this. At least if we do go cyan it won't happen again. I still havent seen a single foot of cyan film.

I decided that the trailer had to come out, but luckily I noticed another print of it sitting on top of the sound rack. It's unusual, though not unknown, for us to have two copies of a trailer. The other print had a good track, so I swapped it just in time for the next show. If the second print had been supplied as a replacement due to a known problem then I haven't heard anything about it. There was a notice about a trailer for another film where a new version has been issued, and the original one recalled for some reason, but nothing about this one. I haven't seen the chief since to ask him about this, I had to e-maiil hiim this morning anout some other things, but I'll ask about this when I see him.

quote: Kevin Orman
What you didn't mention is that the picture was also very unsteady (confirmed on two entirely different machines).

I didn't mention it, as it was an unrelared problem, but it was certainly the case, with some of the movement being horizontal. It looked absolutely terrible. I think I only ever ran it on No.2 machine, but I did not have the problem with anything else. I'm not sure if its the same on the new print of the trailer, I'm on again tomorrow, I'll check then.

quote: Kevin Orman
Not sure if the picture instability was down to the way the trailers behaved in the gate(s) or if they were printed like that.

I think it was a printing problem; the way to be sure is to pull the plate and see if the perforation edges are steady on screen.

I ran several shows of 'Merchant of Venice', which looked fine, and did very well selling out most shows, but I don't think I ever ran the trailer for it. I only do reliief projecton word when required, so I can can go weeks, or months without doing any, so I don't get to see everything.

Never mind, bad soundtracks won't happen with digital. [Wink]

Unsteady images won't happen with digital. [Wink]

I'm cynical in my old age, but I bet plenty of other problems will.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-30-2005, 04:13 PM:

This 31 year-old is equally cynical, if that makes you feel any better... [Roll Eyes]

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 03-31-2005, 05:54 AM:

The viscous soundtrack developer can either be applied with a wheel, or extruded onto the film. Extrusion applicators are usually used on the really fast processing machines.

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/processing/h249/h2409_05.shtml

quote:
In Process ECP-2D, the developer produces a positive silver and dye image of the sound track. The first fixer removes undeveloped silver halide from the sound track area. Next the bleach converts the silver sound track image back into silver halide. A sound developer is inserted between the bleach wash, which should be a 40-second deep-tank wash, and the second fixer.

This fogging developer reduces the silver halide in the sound track to a positive silver image once again. The silver and dye sound track image is not appreciably affected by the remaining processing steps....

In sound track development, the most critical specifications are the width and location of the applied bead. Standards SMPTE 40 and SMPTE 41 define the location and dimensions of the sound tracks for 35 mm and 16 mm films respectively. It is essential that the sound developer bead cover the area scanned by the sound reproducer in a projector. However, it is equally important to prevent sound developer from getting into either the perforations or the picture area of the film. The applicator wheel width, velocity, spacing from backup roller, etc., affect the width of the applied bead. For a particular sound processing installation, the normal single adjustment at the time of application to obtain the desired bead width is to fine-tune the distance between the applicator wheel and the backup roller. Of course, the film must be properly aligned with the applicator before coating starts.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 03-31-2005, 04:58 PM:

Kevin, the new print of the trailer is much steadier than the origininal one was, but I don't see how the two problems could be related. The unsteadiness on the original copy was a printing problem, the film itself was quite steady in the gate. Given that you had the same problems with your priint of the trailer, and with one for a different film, I think there's been some pretty poor lab quality control recently.