16-mm sound motion pictures : a manual for the professional and the amateur (1953)

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FILM LOSS 255 prints run on such projectors cannot possibly produce any useful signal in the loudspeaker of the sound projector at 6000 cps. Incidentally, equally poorly controlled 16-mm prints made from a good, yet unequalized, 16-mm sound negative may be expected to show similar losses. A good 16-mm release print made directly from a good 16-mm sound negative in accordance with good current commercial practice shows a loss of 8 or 9 db at 6000 cps. The scanning loss of a projector with a 0.0005-in. slit (such as in some of the Eastman Kodak projectors) is only some 3.5 db. As the total loss in this case would only be about 12 db, it is possible to produce some useful signal at 6000 cps by such operation. With the large processing losses that are common, however, it is almost impossible to deliver a useful 6000-cps signal, on any projector regardless of its slit loss and other characteristics if poor processing of sound film is used. The better present-day sound projectors (such as the Bell and Howell) use a slit of 0.0007 in. ; this slit width shows a scanning loss of 7 to 8 db at 6000 cps. The "loss to the release print" of a good 16-mm print printed directly from a good 16-mm sound negative in accordance with the best commercial practices is of similar order. It is apparent that as quality demands are pushed farther upward, projection equipment, recording equipment, and processing will have to be improved. A conventional post-war Bell and Howell Model 179 sound projector together with such excellent prints from a suitable equalized 16-mm sound negative would prove a revelation to the average user of 16-mm equipment. It should be quite apparent from the foregoing that the quality which appears on a release print can be predicted fairly accurately if the conditions under which the films are to be recorded, processed, and projected are known and taken into account. If the conditions are not known, it is quite certain that the results will be poor and definitely inferior to that which was expected. It has been truly said that the "cards are always stacked against the haphazard film handler." As there has been no standardization of 16-mm projector slit widths or, for that matter, of any 16-mm response-frequency characteristic* for * The Subcommittee on 16-Mm Sound Eeproduetion of the SMPE has been attempting to establish empirically a reproducing system electrical characteristic in the same general manner as that used for establishing the ' ' Standard Electrical Characteristics for Two-Way Reproducing Systems in Theatres' ' recommended by the Research Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on October 10, 1938. To eliminate the hopeless variable introduced by the very wide disparity in (Footnote continued on page %5Q)