Author
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Topic: 8mm sound-the Early years
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Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted January 28, 2005 09:37 PM
Anybody remember the early technical struggles to get sound on to 8mm films? I vaguely recall the late 1950's when all kinds of attachments suddenly appeared on the market to convert existing silent 8mm projectors into magnetic sound machines. Such attachments as the Cirse-Vox, and the Peterson Magnetic were only marginally successful, but people were so anxious to get sound-on-film that these things actually sold. At that time there was little standardization of picture-to-sound separation, some heads were above the gate and some were below, but eventually the 56 frames sound advance for standard 8mm emerged. Then super 8 came along with the standard 18 frames separation (I think 24 frames would have been better- more room to smooth out the intermittent motion of the film), and then came stereo. Anyone recall the Worlds first ever super 8 stereo projector? We must tip our hat to our friends in France- it was a Heurtier!
-------------------- The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection, Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade Eumig S938 Stereo f1.0 Ektar Panasonic PT-AE4000U digital pj
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Tim Christian
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 219
From: Norfolk, UK
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted January 29, 2005 06:27 AM
The 56 frame separation was due to the long film path inevitable with add-on units. The first of these, the Peterson Recorder, developed in The Netherlands, appeared in 1955. There was also the Pathe Avatar for 9.5 and 16mm that appeared at about the same time.
As a point of interest, Nick Maltezos, who runs EvT Magnetics, developed the electronics for the Peterson Recorder.
Standard 8mm striped sound was by no means marginally successful. By the early 1960s, many commercial films were available in this format - from Castle and Walton, for example.
-------------------- Tim
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Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted January 29, 2005 08:31 AM
Anybody remember the various sync devices used to run tape recorders in sync with 8mm projectors before stripe sound was perfected? The only one I tried was the Eumig Phonomatic attachment, which bolted onto the Eumig P8 projector (later versions of the P8 had the phonomat integrated into the projector design). This seemed to work very well for adding music and commentary, but was not accurate enough to get lip-sync. As well as this worked, I found the whole buisness of maintaining separate film and taped sound tracks tiresome, and of course you could not use these attachments for showing any commercial striped sound films. At the time, the main advantage was the better sound quality that you got from the tape, but today I don't think anyone could complain about the superb sound quality of super 8 stripe sound.
-------------------- The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection, Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade Eumig S938 Stereo f1.0 Ektar Panasonic PT-AE4000U digital pj
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