Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (1950-1954)

width stripes are being alternated in posijtion from film to film for this purpose. Mr. D'Arcy: I have an answer to that one. [We have applications which involve conjtinuous loop projectors, which are used extensively by educational and commercial [people. In such cases head wear occurs lalways on the same side, though of course jthere is some possibility that the striping jcould be alternated in position within the loops. Mr. Ken: It might even be sufficient for Ithe manufacturer of such film loops to alternate the striping on the prints, and then just interchange prints once a week or so depending upon hours of operation. William H. Unger (Elliot, Unger & Elliot, \Inc.}: We produce commercials for television. I've been very interested in the discussion this afternoon because we would [like to do something to improve the sound iquality on 16mm release prints, but as far 'ias I can see, the solution, as far as we're iiconcerned, is still to be found. There are jseveral problems that I feel the various SMPTE subcommittees should possibly 'consider in more detail. Mr. D'Arcy: What is the first major problem you foresee? Mr. Unger: Well, there's a considerable problem during, first of all, the interim (period. The TV stations, of course, are now all equipped to run photographic sound tracks. We'd like to supply them with magnetic tracks. What happens when you have a magnetic track spliced in with some photographic tracks? No conjsideration has been given to this. There Jare certainly going to be a lot of producers who will be supplying photo tracks. If !we went ahead and supplied magnetic ^tracks, even if the stations were set up to run (them, when you get a 20-second spot Ispliced into the middle of a reel of other ^material to make a half-hour or a fifteen ;,minute show, including station break, a lone-minute commercial, and the 20-second 'commercial, if that one 20-second commerj;cial happens to have a magnetic track on lit, there's an awful chance that it is going to I get lost in the shuffle because somebody I will forget to throw a switch. Another problem: It was reported this i morning, by Westrex, that 200-mil pushjpull variable-area photo tracks could be i used and suggested that you could print off lone half of them. Actually we have been using such tracks and we do make our release prints from one half of them. There's a tremendous advantage to us in doing so because we record push-pull negative. This is a little unconventional, I realize. We make push-pull positive prints and then edit these tracks, which gives us good prints for re-recording and also gives us a safety factor. These films are handled a great deal ; if a print becomes scratched or dirty, it's very simple to make a second print and match-cut it to always have a clean print for re-recording purposes. Mr. Dimmick: I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Unger, for your discussion is very interesting and I wish we could continue. We are a good deal over our allotted time in this room, however, and must close both the session and the convention. I suggest you outline the problems, and any suggestions you have, in a letter to me for consideration by the Magnetic Sound Subcommittee of the SMPTE Sound Committee. We thank Mr. D'Arcy for his very fine presentation. Also I thank all of you present for attending our symposium and for your expressions of interest in these very timely subjects. Editorial Note Mr. Unger subsequently submitted the following additional comments to conclude his discussion. The problem I was about to outline concerning our method of making release photo tracks from one half of 200-mil pushpull original variable-area tracks is that it is not possible to half-stripe them (to provide both photographic and magnetic reproduction from the same film) because the release tracks are unilateral. A somewhat similar situation prevails in the case of conventional 100-mil bilateral variable-area tracks. Unless the half-striping exactly splits such tracks, severe distortion may result in reproduction of the residual photo track. It has been our experience that nearly all reduction printers produce some sound-track weave; unless the magnetic half-striping follows this weave very closely, the remaining photo track may become practically useless. The problem of differential head wear using magnetic tracks of less than "standard" width has already been discussed. We feel that it is a very serious one which E. W. D'Arcy: Standardization Needs 531