Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (1930-1949)

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110 GOLDSMITH August The preceding comments refer specifically to 16-mm and 35-mm film used by available personnel in everyday available equipment, under normal circumstances, and with routine commercial processing of the film negatives and positives. That is, these comments apply to everyday conditions as now experienced. Once a film transcription of picture and sound is available, it can be used to modulate the image transmitter by one of several available methods. Thus, the pictures may be intermittently projected upon the screen of a camera tube, using as required a regime suitable for converting 24 frames per second on the film to 60 interlaced fields per second of the television transmission. Alternatively, the film pictures may be scanned by a flying light spot, which is itself a focused image of a raster-forming spot on a lowpersistence, high-intensity picture tube. It has also been suggested that nonintermittent projection of the film upon the camera tube photosensitive surface be used. This process has not as yet found commercial exploitation. The film transcription itself may be made in a variety of ways, two of which may be mentioned. The most obvious and direct method of producing a film transcription is by actual photography of the face of a monitor picture tube or kinescope which is reproducing the program to be recorded. This method has the advantages of high speed, simplicity, and low cost. It has the limitations that the record necessarily can be no better than the image produced by the electrical portions of the television system up to and through the monitor kinescope. Further, it lacks any capabilities of cutting, editing, or substantial and flexible revision of the recorded material. As a result, this method is a present-day expedient. It produces program material fluctuating around an acceptable level. Presumably direct kinescbpe recording could be improved if certain fairly radical steps were taken. For example, if high-resolution and wide-gradation-range television systems were used between the studio camera and a precision monitor kinescope, the picture available for photography would be adequate or more nearly so. Such a procedure might well justify the use of 35-mm film for recording the picture, at least for the transcription negative. This would enable the full capabilities of such an evolved television system to be realized and would provide film transcriptions which might well be, as previously suggested, better than the conventional television broadcasting system over which they were later to be transmitted.