8mm Forum: Derann's 'new 'stripe

This is topic Derann's 'new 'stripe in forum 8mm Forum at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Maurizio Di Cintio (Member # 144) on November 11, 2007, 05:14 AM:

I am experiencing some problems with the greish stripe which has become common since about 2000 (replacing the more brownish one): I get a recording that has a rather poor sound output even if recording at full level: plus it is noticeably distorted, as if the contact between stripe and head is not good enough. My GS 1200 records wonderfully on older pre-striped film stocks as well as on Derann's prints from the '90s and my own striped films (laminated Agfa F-5).
I was wondering if anybody on this forum is getting the same results and possibly what are the reasons.

Thanks.

Posted by Mark Mander (Member # 340) on November 11, 2007, 08:15 AM:

Hi Maurizio,I think that this is a common problem when recording with the GS1200 on grey stripe.I had this problem and had the recording capacitor changed very kindly by Mr Elmo(kevin Faulkner)and now get great results.Not every recording is perfect though and have had problems with grey and brown in the past so i record on the front leader to test it first.This subject has been discussed in the past so if you go into search and put in GS1200 recording theres a thread "brown stripe"as well as others,have a look at those best Mark

Posted by Lee Mannering (Member # 728) on November 11, 2007, 10:59 AM:

I am sorry to say I have experienced problems recently also and having attempted a re record on the grey strip twice and on Elmo, Sankyo and even Eumig it appears a bit of a bad batch of stripe paste is the culprit. I mailed Derann and I am sure they are looking into it. On closer inspection the paste was lumpy and caused drop out and a lower register sound popping noise, particularly bad if using good quality full range speakers. At one point I even thought about digging out my old high spot stripe remover but this seems to defeat the object of buying a brand new film.

I only post this personal note as I would hate to see Maurizio start to point the finger at his projector when if fact his problem may well be due to the films actual magnetic paste stripe as has been the case here.

Incidentally, I re recorded two new features which had the grey stripe purchased earlier this year and they are both perfect with excellent stereo sound. These were recorded on a GS800 Elmo by the way.

As I say, I tend to feel a bit of a bad batch of Paste Stripe is to blame and I am sure the next issues will be back to normal knowing Derann who are extremely fussy.

Posted by Chip Gelmini (Member # 44) on November 11, 2007, 12:11 PM:

This week I have received a print from Steve Osborne of Derann's Pinocchio. This is a cracking print with the laminate grey stripe. Reel 4 there is a glitch. Upon close examination on the rewind bench, there is a very obvious error when the stripe was applied. The track is more like a drip and it actually smears onto the frame picture area at this location.

It appears this new stripe must be a liquid that is carefully applied to the film and dries quickly. This could have been where the applicator became jammed, then when it released, more than the correct amount came out. In theory, this could have been right before the bottle of supply needed to be changed.

For me, I shall probably play the print through the projector speaker and see how bad the problem is for the droput. Before that, I might even do what I suspect will be done: Hand crank to this location and simply remove the two or three frames in question. Since I live in the USA and it took almost 8 months to get the print once the order was confirmed, I'd rather fix it like this and keep what I have rather than deal with time consuming exchanges.

While I am slightly dissapointed with this particular problem, I am still very happy with the purchase anyhow. I have other grey stripe prints that run quite well, so for every few that run well you should expect one out of the crowd to have a slight error.

Chip

[Confused]

Posted by Lance Alspaugh (Member # 27) on November 11, 2007, 06:35 PM:

Always an interesting topic for this Forum Member. Even with our GS capacitor's changed, we have never been impressed with the Grey Stripe Quality 99% of the time. Recently just received a print for remixing of "End of Days" from a client. It had the Grey Stripe and we were unable to achieve decent results on a Stereo remix. We are fortunate to have a couple of GS machines and gained the best results by adjusting the position of the sound heads, which by the way is a tedious process to do. Most of the problems inherent in the Grey Stripe for us has been lots of noise and pops along with overall poor fidelity. We have been unable to purchase new prints from Derann for this reason even though we would like to. For us, if the print cannot be remixed with high quality sound, it is not worth purchasing it. Without question the folks at Derann bust their behind's to supply high quality product for us and have virtually mastered the visual part of S8 prints. The stripe problem is probably beyond their control as the original style magnetic striping business is no doubt on the slow side.

Posted by Lee Mannering (Member # 728) on November 12, 2007, 04:20 AM:

Ah Lance. I have the very first print of the Super 8 release End of Days and the sound stripe on this is perfect throughout. I do fear we have a bad batch of the liquid paste stripe which was used and hopefully this will by now be rectified.

Chip. If you ever locate a super 8 copy of the documentary about Super 8 which I produced in the late 80’s enthusing about 8mm, you will see Derek at Derann showing us how the stripe is applied to the film for release prints. It’s a complicated process which requires the correct FRESH mix, carefully applied, and the film then goes into a speed drying cabinet prior to winding down. The critical part I think is the machine clean down after use. If correct cleaning, and it’s a lengthy job, is not carried out well debris can find its way onto the next job and make for poor striping into the frame area and worse. If you want to see the machine shown on my super 8 doc you need to look for “Cinema in Miniature” which Perry’s released for me. It does come up second hand from time to time, and we also did a limited number of stereo prints which were the only stereo releases Perry’s ever did.

I’m looking forward to buying some new prints from Derann at Blackpool this week and hope the stripe is cured which I am sure it will be.

Posted by Chip Gelmini (Member # 44) on November 12, 2007, 10:57 AM:

Per my earlier post....

Last night I checked my print of Pinocchio. Taking the advice from another post, I pulled out my motorized sound Goko editor and used it's own speaker to check for issues.

What I was expecting was one of the worst droputs in super 8 sound history. You want to know what it was?

NOTHING. Not one little glitch in audio playback. I was completely overjoyed. Now it's just a sloppy picture glitch spread over 4 frames. Now I believe I can live with that. Couldn't really tell though, because the viewer, one of those Ebay bargains, only plays sound. There is an electrical problem so there's no lamp light.

Pinocchio arrived Thursday, haven't had time to really run it down yet. But wow, what a relief this has turned out to be. Of course the true test still has to be done...running it through Pro Logic on the big screen! But I'm not as worried now as I was before.

[Smile]

[ November 12, 2007, 12:48 PM: Message edited by: Chip Gelmini ]

Posted by Maurizio Di Cintio (Member # 144) on November 15, 2007, 09:39 AM:

Thank you all for feedback, folks!
Unfortunately you guys sort of confirmed my fears.
Plus the fact that Lance had to re-adjust the head position is even more worring. I suspect this was necessary because sometimes the balance stripe tends to be (believe it or not) a little too narrow, and drifts on the heads resulting in unstable high-end frequency output. This is really annoying, especially because I talked about this with Derann before starting this new thread and they seem really at a loss to solve it; in fact in their reply there is no hint at a case of poor quality batch of lilquid stripe. I'm so frustrated. But I think it is possible to "clean" the spots of paste when it overlaps the image by using a Q-tip with 2-3 drops of film-cement and applying it locally at every faulty spot, but be very careful: once the stripe is gone, it's gone for good.

Posted by Lee Mannering (Member # 728) on November 15, 2007, 10:46 AM:

Maurizio
Just re-recorded another new film and the stripe was perfect from Derann. I have this feeling that running new prints a number of times prior to re-recording may help to wear down the odd high spot also on Paste stripe.
We will have to see how it goes but the audio from this new film part recorded on GS1200, GS800, Sankyo 800 and Eumig 940 was perfecto. I did this multi spot recording on lots of projectors to see which did the best job and suited the stripe most. In the end and listening through my studio mons the GS800 gave great results (for my ears) with perhaps the Sankyo 800 coming 2nd. But as the Snkyo is more or less new and only had a few thousand foot of film through it hardly surprising.

This is a good technical subject I think as I am mad about perfect sound.

Posted by Michael O'Regan (Member # 938) on November 15, 2007, 05:03 PM:

I'm going to be a total ignoramus here - forgive me!
All this talk about re-recording...stripes..etc.?
As a 16mm collector, I have no idea what you guys are talking about (maybe I should know!!!) - but, I'm interested in learning about it.

Enlighten me please.

-Mike

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on November 15, 2007, 05:37 PM:

Hi Michael,
In a nutshell:

16mm film has a single optical mono sound track along one edge of the film. This is a 'read-only'(R) track.

Super 8mm film has two magnetic sound tracks, one on each edge of the film. This permits both mono and stereo sound to be recorded and played back. So super 8 magnetic sound is both a read and write (RW)track. What a lot of us S8 film collectors like to do is to re-record super 8 film prints from DVD stereo sound tracks. This gives superb quality stereo sound on super 8 - much better than anything you can get on 16mm.
Super 8mm can also have a single mono optical track like 16mm, but 95% of super 8 prints are magnetic sound.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on November 15, 2007, 06:53 PM:

I find this a curious subject. This new stripe is greyish, eh?
I wonder if the new stripe is "chromium dioxcide" or basically a chrome tape, instead of regular magnetic.

If Chrome or "metal", then that means it will give much sharper recordings than the regular magnetic. When i used to record on cassette tape, I became quite a artist at it, and found that I could get as near to CD oustanding quality from a chrome tape, with the full Dolby B and C noise reduction, so that it had incredible high's and lows with little or NO noise on the recordings.

Actually, I would love to get ahold of one of these grey stripe films, as I would love to experiment with the recording of it.

Posted by Michael O'Regan (Member # 938) on November 16, 2007, 07:12 AM:

Thanks for the info Paul.

-Mike.

Posted by Kevin Faulkner (Member # 6) on November 16, 2007, 10:09 AM:

Paul, Super 8 can have 2 optical tracks one down both edges of the film. I have a print like this. It has 2 different language tracks.

Kev.

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