8mm Forum: Two Optical Track's???

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Topic: Two Optical Track's???

Tom A. Pennock
Master Film Handler

Posts: 250
From: Battle Creek, MI. USA
Registered: Apr 2004

posted August 06, 2008 04:09 PM

I was looking at one of my Super Eight optical sound 007 airline prints. It appear's to have two optical soundtracks. One is the main track and there is another one that run's near the sprockets. I have never seen a S8 print with two optical sound tracks. I have seen magnetic prints with a main track and a balance stripe track.

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Jean-Marc Toussaint
Film God

Posts: 2392
From: France
Registered: Oct 2004

posted August 06, 2008 04:43 PM

Tom, it wasn't uncommon on some airline prints to have a secondary language track. This matter has been discussed a long time ago on the forum (use the search function).
I met someone at our annual film fair last year who supposedly had modified a GS1200 to read this secondary track as most of the french films released for airline companies were in English. I believe this can be done (the person in question was an expert watch repairman) but I haven't seen this person in a while, I'd love to see how he made this modification.

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The Grindcave Cinema Website

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Kevin Faulkner
Film God

Posts: 4071
From: Essex UK
Registered: Jun 2003

posted August 06, 2008 05:02 PM

Yes so would I [Wink]

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GS1200 Xenon with Elmo 1.0...great combo along with a 16-CL Xenon for that super bright white light.

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Osi Osgood
Film God

Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005

posted August 06, 2008 07:06 PM

If I remember correctly, there was a picture in that series of posts that was from a Japanese print of Star Trek 4, with the two different optical tracks.

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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

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Tom A. Pennock
Master Film Handler

Posts: 250
From: Battle Creek, MI. USA
Registered: Apr 2004

posted August 06, 2008 10:40 PM

When I feel better I will do a search. I had a print of "Day Of The Dolphin" that had a portugese magnetic track on the balance stripe and on the main track english sound. It was for international flight's possibly on the Concorde. Also my 16mm print of The Golden Seal has an optical track and a magnetic track with different language's. But I was not aware of two optical track's on ANY Super Eight airline print's. I assumed the technology had not been perfected enough for optical sound that worked reliably in Super Eight format to have two optical soundtrack's. I could understand the soundtrack reliability of extra magnetic track's. It did surprise me!!!

Best, Tom

[ August 07, 2008, 12:28 AM: Message edited by: Tom A. Pennock ]

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 525
From: Dallas, TX, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted August 07, 2008 02:19 AM

There is enough room by the sprockets for an optical track??? Someone please upload a picture of this. Wow.

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Martin Jones
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1269
From: Thetford , Norfolk,England
Registered: May 2008

posted August 07, 2008 02:47 AM

The post is: "Optical sound, the definitive post"
Contibutor: Kevin
Date: June 24th 2006

An excellent picture.

Martin

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Retired TV Service Engineer
Ongoing interest in Telecine....

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Jean-Marc Toussaint
Film God

Posts: 2392
From: France
Registered: Oct 2004

posted August 07, 2008 05:08 AM

Pic is on this page

quote:
Yes so would I [Wink]

Kev, I knew you'd say that.

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The Grindcave Cinema Website

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Kevin Faulkner
Film God

Posts: 4071
From: Essex UK
Registered: Jun 2003

posted August 07, 2008 05:27 AM

If you meet up with this guy JM it would be good to see some pics.

I cant think for the life of me how anyone could built a second optical system into the GS.

K.

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GS1200 Xenon with Elmo 1.0...great combo along with a 16-CL Xenon for that super bright white light.

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Jean-Marc Toussaint
Film God

Posts: 2392
From: France
Registered: Oct 2004

posted August 07, 2008 08:06 AM

Kev, he didn't build a second system, he rearranged the original reader to pick-up the secondary track. He told me he had several GS1200s, I remember at least 4 (original model, modified optical reader, Xenon and P-com).
I used to bump into him at every single film show held in France. We even had side by side dealer tables at one. He wanted me to teach him how to use a computer and the pulse-sync system in order to retrack some of his foreign language films. But, as I said, I haven't seen him in quite a while. I hope he's OK.

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The Grindcave Cinema Website

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Osi Osgood
Film God

Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005

posted August 07, 2008 09:05 AM

It was good to see that picture there! Brings back memories, as that was just about when I first started to "re-collect" optical prints.

The sound of that secondary optical track must have been rather low. I'm sure there couldn't have been too many, as people no doubt would have been complaining about "sound sound!" through thier headphones.

The regular soundtrack can be hard enough to hear sometimes, let alone an even smaller soundtrack!

Thisa brings up an interesting question ... has anybody ever found or bought one of those airline optical sound projectors?
I've seen one picture of one, but that's it!! It's a safe bet that most of them were simply trashed when airlines moved down to the VHS cassette projection. (sigh)

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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

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James E. Stubbs
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 104
From: Portland, OR
Registered: Apr 2007

posted August 07, 2008 07:39 PM

What kind of projector did they use was the first question that came to my mind when I saw this post. I'd love to find out, and get my hands on one of course. Based on Airline dual optical track prints a super 8 dual optical track sound camera was designed and patented. It was discussed in an issue of Smallformat. Man wouldn't you love to have that camera! Stereo optical sync sound!
Cheers,

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James E. Stubbs
Consultant, Vagabond, Traveler.

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