Balancing stereo super 8

[Paul Adsett]

One thing I have found is that super 8 stereo film projection requires ' on the fly' stereo balance adjustment. This is because magnetic stripe quality and location on the film base can vary from film to film, reel to reel, and sometimes within a reel itself. That is not to say that a perfect stereo stripe recording for a whole feature cannot be attained. I think my stereo re-record of Derann's feature length scope print of Grease is about as perfect as it gets. no balance adjustment required here. But this is not the case on many of my stereo re-recorded films. High Society varies quite a bit in stereo balance, due to variations in Derann's striping. Same situation on several other prints.
So you really need to be able to make balance adjustments on the fly during the presentation of some stereo films.
I have found that modern stereo amps are useless for this purpose. On my YAMAHA RX-V381 AV Receiver the only way you can adjust stereo balance is by going into the menu and adjusting loudness level on the individual speakers until it sounds OK. A lengthy and useless proposition in the middle of film projection. Which is why I am so thankful that I kept this decades old little Radio Shack Realistic 3w amplifier which has a rotary balance control as well as a mono/stereo switch and tone control. I use this as a pre-amp along with the Yamaha EQ-70 10-band equalizer, before going into the Yamaha 5.1 AV receiver. Just a twist of the knob - is'nt analog great!

[Graham Ritchie]

Hi Paul

PS I haven't forgotten about recording Pieces Of Silver for you. The problem has been how to do it, I have been thinking about how to go about it for a while now, but my thoughts are still in limbo at the moment, so will see what I can hopefully come up with

[Ed Gordon]

Re-recording would be a pain, especially if the magnetic strip is bad. Riding the Balance would be more work than it's worth for me. I just switch my amp to Mono for inconsistent stereo balance problems.

[Paul Adsett]

Graham. one way I have done it in the past is to record the sound (along with the picture) by using a video camera with the line level or headphone sound output from the projector connected to the input of the camcorder. Then export the video to the computer and upload to youtube. Just capturing the film off the screen is good enough for synching purposes. I can then playback the youtube video with sound going directly to the audio inputs of my projector.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi! One thing that I am always forgetting: when switching to a film with stereo sound, I have to disable the duoplay functionality. Otherwise the projector will reduce the volume on one track when there’s sound on the other track (which is always the case for stereo films).

[Graham Ritchie]

Hi Paul

The camera I use is a Panasonic HC-V180 it can only record sound from the inbuilt mike, plenty of features regarding recording an image, but nothing extra regarding sound, however I will see what else I can come up with, "put my thinking cap on" so all is not lost.