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Topic: Digital sound on super 8?
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Rob Young.
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1633
From: Cheshire, U.K.
Registered: Dec 2003
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posted November 03, 2004 10:33 AM
Hi Chip,
There seems to be some confusion over this topic which has been discussed in another thread.
I can't resist commenting any longer!
Sorry to disappoint you, but it is just impossible to record 5.1 digital sound on super 8.
5.1 (Dolby, DTS, SDDS etc.) soundtracks are stored in a digital form, whether it be on the 35mm print as optical blocks between the sprocket holes, or a separate hard drive, such as with DTS.
The amount of digital information required is substantial.
The digital decoders turn this information into the analogue 5 channels of sound for the theatre, plus a .1 of deep bass effects.
Super 8 can ONLY carry analoge sound, be it magnetic or optical. You can achieve Dolby Pro-Logic with super 8, as explained in the previous thred by Brad Miller, but this is NOT the discreet channels of sound achieved by 5.1.
I cannot think of any concievable way to store the amount of digital information required on super 8.
Of course, you can sync it up to a DVD, as perfected by the guys at the British Film Collectors Convention, but this relies upon the digital sound on the disc.
Sorry again, but there we have it.
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Daryl C. W. O'Shea
Film Handler
Posts: 35
From: Midland Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted November 06, 2004 11:37 PM
quote:
Out of curiousity, what does one of these outboard DTS players cost and does it output standard SPDIF (coax or Toslink) at a nominal 48KHz sampling rate? How readily available are the DTS sound track discs to the public?
In addition to the analog outputs Brad mentions, there are also AES (if I remember correctly) digital outputs. You've got to go to analog at some point though, and I can't think of a reason someone with an 8mm setups would want to carry things in digital further than they need to anyway. Then again, I wouldn't be too surprised if someone had a rack of digital processing gear. One guy I know, who runs a pro recording studio, has a digital processing rack setup for his small gauge film's analog sound.
quote:
I'm new to this, what is a shaft encoder? Is that something on the shaft of the projectors motor that keeps the unit in sync with sound?
The other way around actually. It's to keep the sound in sync with the projector (sound is forced to follow the projector speed). Shaft encoders are generally attached to one of the sprocket shafts in a projector. Most output 4 bi-phase pulses per rotation which would be feed to a converter that outputs either SMTPE timecode or DTS timecode directly.
Rob, it sounded like you were ruling out any form of digital sound in your first post when you said:
quote:
Sorry to disappoint you, but it is just impossible to record 5.1 digital sound on super 8.
5.1 (Dolby, DTS, SDDS etc.) soundtracks are stored in a digital form, whether it be on the 35mm print as optical blocks between the sprocket holes, or a separate hard drive, such as with DTS.
Which isn't a very accurate, or at least clear, statement to begin with. You can't store DTS sound on 35mm either. You can however, make DTS sounds work on 8mm the SAME way it works on 35mm. Or you can record the DTS timecode on either of the mag stripes, of course the balance stripe would be sufficient.
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Are you saying you can put the digital sound directly onto the mag. stripe?
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Can't be done.
While in practice that is true, but it's not entirely accurate either. Digital sound could be recorded to a magnetic stripe (people do it every day), but the bit rate on 8mm film would be severely limited by a factor somewhere around 1/10th, making it something you really wouldn't want to do and making an unmarried format like DTS a much better alternative.
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