8mm Forum: Eumig Imperial P8m

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Posted by Vern Weed (Member # 4090) on December 30, 2013, 09:32 PM:

Just bought one of these on ebay and wondered what all the spools and things were for that are on the back of it.
I will be trying to put some old family films into digital form and this seems to be a popular unit to do that. Hopefully when it gets here, there will not be too many problems, but this seems to be a friendly site and I may be asking for some advice.

Posted by Pasquale DAlessio (Member # 2052) on December 30, 2013, 10:06 PM:

Vern

WELCOME TO THE FORUM!!!!

Ask away .

happy New year!

PatD

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on December 30, 2013, 11:06 PM:

Vern,
all those rollers on the backside of the Eumig p8 Imperial, are for use to sync the picture with a sound track recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. The magnetic tape was fed around the rollers on the back of the Eumig. The movable roller is actually a sliding resistor, or potentiometer, which is wired into the projectors motor cicruit. The speed of the projector is thus automatically regulated by the sped of the tape recorder.
This was the state of the art back in the 1950's, before the advent of magnetic sound stripe applied directly to the film.
I had a P8 Imperial myself, and it synced very well with music and commentary recorded on tape, but was never considered accurate enough for lip sync.
Bolex had a similar sync device for their Bolex M8 projector, and Noris had a really neat projector which had a cassette tape player/recorder built right in.
All these double system sound systems went away when magnetic stripe sound took hold.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on December 31, 2013, 02:42 AM:

When the tape recorder was in pause mode the sliding arm cut out the projector's motor.
The film was laced to a sync mark, as was the tape.
Upon releasing the tape recorder's pause control both film and tape started in sync.
It was quite something in the early 60s!

Posted by Vern Weed (Member # 4090) on December 31, 2013, 07:37 PM:

Very interesting, but must have taken a lot of room to put both machines together. Thanks for the info.
Can hardly wait for this machine to show up.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on January 01, 2014, 04:12 AM:

Vern
When I had my Eumig I used an ironing board as a projector stand. The Grundig sat on the left of the projector. These were arranged so that access to both units was easy.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on January 01, 2014, 08:30 AM:

I used a Philips tape recorder with my Eumig Imperial (actually my projector was the original P8 with the Phonomat attachment, which Eumig later integrated into the P8 Imperial). It kept very good sync for music, commentary, and sound effects. With my set up accuracy, as I recall, was about 2-3 secs after a 10 minute reel. For what it was intended it worked great, and who knows, now that striped camera film has gone away, maybe these double sound systems need a second look.
Incidentally, can you still buy reel-to-reel tape recorders and tape?

Posted by Vern Weed (Member # 4090) on January 18, 2014, 02:38 PM:

Well, I got the projector a while back and it is a lesson learned. I have learned that on ebay the term "untested" means that "I tried it and it is broken so I will call it untested".
There are some wires broken out of the end of a cardboard and wax capacitor??? looking thing and the projector is just dead.
But since I have 4 other projectors now, I'll mess with it later.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on January 18, 2014, 02:58 PM:

It is possible that the capacitor is used to "kick start" the motor. This is probably why your projector appears to be dead.

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