This is topic 16mm - Is this possible/feasible in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 06-22-2006, 07:29 AM:
 
Hi all

I have a 16mm projector but have never been impressed with the optical sound. Also many older 16mm films you can buy have gone pink and are, compared to dvds, expensive.

However would the following idea be practical in a home setting? We will ignore copyright issues for a moment - I am just interested in whether it is technically possible.

First you buy a dvd of your favourite movie - in my case "What's Up Doc".

Next you, using a dark room,project the image on a screen and then using a 16mm camera make a 16mm recording of the film. You record the sound using a digital format on the 16mm optical soundtrack.

Finally you get the film developed and project it in your home.

Feasible?

Regards Peter
 

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Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 06-22-2006, 07:39 AM:
 
There would be some difficulty in keeping the picture and sound in sync, especially if the film had some splices (sections removed.)

I knew a guy who had developed a system to use the existing soundtrack itself on a flim as a 'sync generator' which might be workable for a project like this, if someone really wanted to do it.
 

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Posted by John Koutsoumis (Member # 1855) on 06-22-2006, 09:45 AM:
 
I like 16mm and wish it was continued as an alternative distribution format but why don't you just project the DVD and watch that. High end DLP projectors and DVD players give incredible results in the home. And if you are a fan of the classics it's a must.

But yeah there's something about watching 16mm...

Sound on 16mm can be fantastic. Depends on the print (they vary a lot) and the projector sound head.

Plus if you film it on 16mm neg film as opposed to reversal the print will be a bit pricey and not really worth it. Also the camera film rolls are not that long. Maybe 1000ft max, even if that.
 

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Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 06-22-2006, 10:45 AM:
 
Harder than keeping picture and sound synchronized would be trying to capture the projection without horrible flickering problems. The difference of DVD/television frame rates to a film camera frame rate would produce an unwatchable image, I would reckon, that would make the challenge of your project hardly worth the effort. I'm sure there are ways it COULD be done, though.
 

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Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 06-22-2006, 11:13 AM:
 
You can shoot most LCD monitors which will yield a flickerless picture.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-22-2006, 11:56 AM:
 
Technically feasible (the picture part, at least) but horrendously expensive and for no obvious benefit, I'd have thought. Two hours worth of 16mm raw stock plus processing would cost a couple of grand at least. If your source is a DVD, what projected picture quality benefit would there be making a DIY kinescope to 16mm over just projecting the DVD? It would just be throwing money away, I'd have thought.
 

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Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 06-22-2006, 02:25 PM:
 
A friend of mine ran his 35mm, mono print of 2001 A Space Odyssey along with the matrixed Dolby sound out of his Laservision player, as an experiment. The player was right next to his seat. It played perfectly in sync, only needing a bump every now and then at reel changes.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-22-2006, 03:11 PM:
 
Years ago I ran Carl Davis silents with the sound from a hi-fi VHS. As the projectors both had inverters on them, we rigged up TV monitors next to the machines, and simply adjusted the projector speed on the fly so that the two stayed roughly in sync, simply by cross-checking what was on the TV with what we could see through the portholes. Of course, being music only and with no attempt at lip sync needed, there was a greater margin of error for what would 'look OK'. OK, the audio was only 2.0, but the shows looked and sounded pretty good IMHO.
 

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Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 06-23-2006, 06:30 AM:
 
You would have a film of a television picture. Every glorious line.

FWIW, if the camera shutter is 144 deg. or less (I think it is), you will not have vertical retrace problems with NTSC. (Not sure about the format in your country, Peter.)
 

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Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 06-23-2006, 06:45 AM:
 
Australia has the PAL system but many players can handle NTSC as well.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-23-2006, 08:29 AM:
 
Transferring PAL either way is dead easy, with no need to mess around with pulldowns. Just increase the camera (kinescope) or telecine speed to 25fps and that will just scan each frame twice for each 50hz cycle. 99% of punters won't notice the difference. You can't get away with that using NTSC, because you'd end up with 30fps (60hz), which people would notice.
 

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Posted by Cameron Glendinning (Member # 3516) on 06-23-2006, 08:49 PM:
 
20 years ago I use to film TV sets when I worked at australias ABC TV Channel 2, They were called kini's I think, we did them so video footage could be used in film based production at the editing stage. at a time when all shows (except news)location productions were shot and produced on 16mm. Pal @ 25 frames per sec, depending on what style of camera, one had watch for the rolling scan line in the viewfinder, with some if you could see it in the viewfinder it was not on the film, with others what you saw was what you got.
Apart from NASA footage the results were not too exciting.
The cost? today 10 minutes of 16mm film neg is probably $350, prossesing and workprint the same (all up $700) now how long is the movie?. Reversal Film would be cheaper but lesser quality. A Trip to officeworks and you could buy a $899 W/S DLP 4 colourwheel Video Projector that would look better than a kini. DVD in Progressive Scan mode for video projection can look pretty good.

[ 06-26-2006, 07:49 AM: Message edited by: Cameron Glendinning ]
 

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Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 06-24-2006, 01:21 AM:
 

quote: Cameron Glendinning

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The cost? today 10 minutes of 16mm film neg is probably $350, prossesing and workprint the same (all up $700) now how long is the movie?. Reversal Film would be cheaper but lesser quality. A Trip to officeworks and you could buy a $899 W/S DLP 4 colourwheel Video Projector that would look better than a kini. DVD in Progressive Scan mode for video projection can look pretty good.

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quote: Cameron Glendinning

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A Trip to officeworks and you could buy a $899 W/S DLP 4 colourwheel Video Projector that would look better than a kini.

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quote: Peter Berrett

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have a 16mm projector but have never been impressed with the optical sound.

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quote: Cameron Glendinning

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A Trip to officeworks and you could buy a $899 W/S DLP 4 colourwheel Video Projector that would look better than a kini.

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The only decent looking colorwheel system ever devised is the CBS Color system colorwheel based monitor that has been restored and is actually working at the TV Museum in Ohio. Probably good looking because the CBS system is an additive color system. I have yet to see any good looking DLP or LCD colorwheel based televisions. There are always some artifacts introduced by the spinning wheel one way or another. CRT's still rule and occupy the best of the best HD television projectors.

Mark
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 06-25-2006, 08:12 AM:
 
Mark, we had 4 Eastman 25Bs in our complex, and one of them was purchased by the Brooklyn Museum. Although I may have mentioned this before, we ran what had to be a reduction print from the original 35mm neg of MICROCOSMOS -- it was letterboxed at 1.66. When I came into work for the second shift, I looked at the screen and I swear at first I thought I was watching 35mm -- the image was THAT excellent. Only when I looked up at the booth did I realize it was the 16mm.

If Hollywood wanted to save all that money on prints, which seems to be their sole motive for the push to digital (it sure isn't to offer something that exceedes the QUALITY of 35mm), they could have easily gone to 16mm, at least for those thousands of theatres with around 150 seats and small screens. 16mm done right can look pretty damn impressive. OK, they would still have to ship prints, but at a much reduced cost and the exhibitor would only be forced to spend $50k on a new projector instead of $120k.

Oh, and just to emphasize how stunning the engineering was on those Eastmans, I once was running Kodak 16mm weave and jitter test film and was a little disappointed when the registration lines were moving around more than I had anticipated. Then I removed the apeture gate assembly and low and behold, the sprocket holes of the test film which were then visible on the screen were rock steady whereas the image was not. The intermittent precision on this machine exceeded the tolerances of the test film printer!

We still have them set up in both theatres and mostly they are used for film festival material or some silent films where 16mm prints are all that are available. But more and more filmmakers who enter works in these film festivals have unfortunately pretty much abandoned 16mm in favor of video production. And it shows.
 

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Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 06-25-2006, 01:44 PM:
 
I've always been a proponent of horizontal 16mm. With a width of about 3 or 4 normal frame heights, the image area is close to, or greater than, that found in 1.85:1 35mm.

This, of course, is the Reed Film System.
 

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Posted by Cameron Glendinning (Member # 3516) on 06-26-2006, 06:38 AM:
 
The basic point re the DLP projector vs 16mm kini is that the 16mm kini is not that great. Ultimately it is an expensive film copy of video signal from a TV set.

Yes, that $899 Acer 4 segment dlp projector does suffer from rainbow, I have a similar projector at home and use a gray screen to minimize the effect but accept the occasional imperfection for the joy of a big screen. Its so cheap and the pictures not bad ! I have a lovely crt w/s television for quality viewing!
LCD projectors also have drawbacks, blown pixels are one and they also have a big fly screen effect / even 3 panel / until you get into HD and then LCD's tendency to slowly go green.
7 segment dlp projectors start from $1600 and are a better cheap option.

On the other end of the spectrum, the cinema that I work at has recently bought a cineo 3 HD W/S DLP from projection design, its a e cinema stlye of projector. It's results are stunning on our 30 ft screens. Our old 16mm projector, with a modern print can still outperform it, just. Audio wise though, even though 16mm can be very clean, DVD's 5.1 is noticably better.

The best audio I have heard for a 16mm presentation was when I briefly worked at the National Film Theatre in London, England, in 1994. We did a super 16mm presentation with Dolby Stereo audio interlocked from 35mm magnetic film /magnatech. It sounded great! What was truly wierd was the screen masking being set for 1.33 on the left of screen and scope on the right ! presenting a w/s image off centre!

[ 06-27-2006, 07:35 PM: Message edited by: Cameron Glendinning ]
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-26-2006, 03:24 PM:
 

quote: Tim Reed

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This, of course, is the Reed Film System.

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Tim,
This has existed since the mid 60's. At the Museum Of Science And Industry there were two exhibits that I used to maintain... one was the Farm Exhibit and the other was the Circus Exhibit. Both used Simplex X-L's that were modofied by Worth Baird at La Vezzi. They were converted to run 16mm vertically. I can't remember if the image was two or three frames long but a special image rotator lens presented the verticle from the film image as a wide screen 2.21 image on the screen. The Sears sponsered Circus exhibit was shown in its verticle format to give the impression of the height of the high wire act. Both films were originated in Todd A-O 65mm. The end result image on the verticle screen was ok but the image on the Farm Exhibit sucked big time due to poor optical quality of the image rotator lens. Long ago this stuff was replaced with other exhibits and it no longer exists. BTW:The 16mm film was run from endles loops and they got about 6 months out of a print.

Mark
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 06-26-2006, 11:39 PM:
 
And in this hypothetical, our commercial 16mm system would utilize DTS code so it could have exactly the same sound quality with the same number of channels as 35mm. I've been told that 16mm release prints have already incorporated DTS placing the code in the original analog track area with no modification to the projector at all -- the audio out can be fed with some modification to the DTS processor.

Scope would be conventional 2x anamorphic, but 1.85 would, of course, be what it should have ALWAYS been with 35mm, ISCOVision, i.e., a mild anamorphic squeeze/stretch instead of cropping, unless the Reed-A-Rama system is employed for Super Wide Screen Dimension.
 

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Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 06-27-2006, 01:21 AM:
 
... and you could do a vertical squeeze on a horizontal 16mm VistaVision to give you 4 x 3.

Seriously, folks, the DTS on 16 was a good idea. So was ISCOvision Colortech sound and all the other ideas.

But look ... in the sky ... its DIGITAL!
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 06-27-2006, 03:00 PM:
 
DTS has been used with 16mm prints:

http://www.dtsonline.com/cinema/specialvenues/

quote:

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DTS is capable of playing back up to 10 channels of digital sound for 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm prints in 5 perf, 8 perf, and 15 perf.

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Some of our screening rooms have EASTMAN Model 25 and Model 30 16mm projectors, and they are NOT for sale. These projectors were designed and built by the same Kodak folks who designed the Lunar Orbiter in the 1960's.
 

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Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 06-30-2006, 09:17 AM:
 

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen

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Tim,
This has existed since the mid 60's.

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Yes, I came up with the idea when I was four.

quote: Frank Angel

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unless the Reed-A-Rama system is employed for Super Wide Screen Dimension

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You got it, pal!

Btw, Frank... we're still waiting to hear your radio spots posted here. You think I'm kidding about this, but I'm not.
 

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