quote: Gordon McLeod

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Which films do you need the tones and noise for

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quote: Gordon McLeod

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I found Universal was very consistant title to title but even dolby encoded sounded at other facilities and different oxides were all over the place on both level and EQ.

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I've never dealt with this, but it is an interesting subject. For Gordon or Louis: In broadcast equipment, switching tapes around was discouraged, because many tapes required different recording bias and eq settings. However, these settings were used to bring the tape's PLAYBACK as close to the NAB standard as you could get, so they could be played back on most anything. From that background, I'm curious why there should be any real deviation on films that would require print-specific tone sets at the playback site... unless the labs didn't have their recorders calibrated to the same standard in the first place???
 

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Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 02-15-2006, 11:00 AM:
 
70mm recordings did indeed wander all over the place as to level and response. You could not even trust the recording direction to be the same as the picture frames as there were diferences in level and EQ running "Heads Up" and "Tails Up". I had one 1000 Ft. roll where the recording was clearly done tails up and projectionists would invariably, if they were any good, thread it heads up but the dialouge was backwards. I even had one test roll where the mag stripes were somehow applied to emulsion side and stuck yet.

Tom Holman did some great work getting different studios to get onto one standard and staying with it as there was a big print run on wither Return of The Jedi or Indiana Jones that could not be filled using one recording facility.

The quality of the HF response improved to the point that Dolby MPU preapms had to be modified to lower the mid and HF response to "flat".

The last 70mm Mag tracks I saw a few years back came from a British faclility and the Mag stripes were so thin you could see through them. Sounded pretty bad too.

I, like Gordon nce had a giant box of loops on every 70 release, but they are probably in some warehouse at Dolby Labs.
 

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Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 02-15-2006, 05:22 PM:
 
My favorite was receiving some test film in advance of the film and then finding the R-1 can also had test film for the feature...the two test films did not agree with each other on level or response. Which do you go with then?

The problem is when the test film is sounded versus when the print is sounded and how things have worn at that point. The goal is to have test film that was sounded at the same time as the print was so you have a match.

One trick I've used with great success is to play the "leader" of the print and listen for the "slate" which is normally some guy stating what the track is and also the sync pop. The sync pop will often give you a good feel for the channel balance on the reel since it is applied to all tracks. At the Uptown, we ran an old print of Raiders that had faded a bit...there were complaints on the sound until I came in on my Saturday shift and ran the slate...I set the levels based on the slate tone and whola...everything came into balance AND the levels were now tracking right for the Cat 22s. The problem was that Raiders was pre-1983 and the recording levels were lower (as were the tracks skinner on the heads themselves). This lower level had the NR circuits mistrack.
 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 02-15-2006, 09:49 PM:
 
often if I have a title with no noise available for I will play a reel with only one channel live (centre) and adjust by eaar what sound acceptable then run a noise loop and set the other channels to match and then replay the reel listening for music and other variables
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 02-15-2006, 09:59 PM:
 
If I don't have actual noise and tone, I start with a loop from the same vintage/studio if there is no noise or tone on the leaders. I then run the actual film and get the LCR balanced and sounding good, then add the surrounds and sub tracks until I am satisfied with the overall sound. It isn't perfect, but there's not much you can do without the proper loops.

What I hate is when some bonehead has "built" a good print between multiple prints! Almost always the sound quality changes drastically at their splices or between reels.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-16-2006, 03:18 AM:
 
It's a trade-off, I guess. If you've got one print, two reels of which just happened to get stored in the boiler room and went pink, what's the lesser of two potential evils - compiling a print from multiple sources which has reasonable colour throughout but with audio variations, or putting up with variable picture quality but with consistent sound?

This isn't just an issue with 70mm. From the '60s onwards, many archives had deals with studios whereby they'd cherry pick from a batch of de-inventoried 35mm release prints. For that reason it's not at all uncommon to get a print with a VD track on reel one, bilateral VA on reel 2, RCA Duplex on reel 3, etc. etc. In that scenario you just have to rehearse the whole thing and then keep making volume changes throughout the show.
 

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Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 02-16-2006, 01:14 PM:
 
I also did a lot of 70mm premieres in the olden days. If you have any specific title, I will look into the large carton of 70mm test films and try for a match. Louis
 

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