Help avoiding any complications with important job??

[Jacob Watkinson]

Hey everyone, I am digitising a very large commercial order of 2000ft optical sound 16mm reels which will involve putting them through both my scanner and then my ELF projector to capture the sound.

I really want to minimise any damage, especially from the projector. Do you have any good recommendations to keep everything running smoothly? I've had FilmGuard recommended though have also heard it not recommended so am still unsure - if not FilmGuard are there any other film lubricators you'd recommend, and what I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW IS:

HOW WOULD YOU APPROACH THIS TASK? (workflow etc.)

Thank you very much for the ongoing help

[Brian Fretwell]

Well I would completely clean the film path through the projector and (if available) project another film first to check it hasn't caused any damage.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

If both the projector and the film print itself are already in good running order, you have nothing much to worry about.
The only thing to concern is that your Elf projector wouldn't handle bad splices/torn perf very well. Its auto loop former doesn't help much - I also own Eiki (Elf) projector, and I can verify that. Therefore you may need to thoroughly inspect the film and make the needed repair beforehand.

I assume that it is 2 separate part process - one for frame by frame image capture (without audio) and another pass for audio capture using your projector. If your projector still have decent speed regulation (which it should) it would be just a matter of syncing the sound and pic at the head end, then doing any necessary stretch/squeeze to the audio track to sync the tail end during the editing.

The main concern is to stretch/squeeze the audio to the image track - NOT the other way round.

If all goes well the sound should stay in sync throughout. ny drift from the projector's speed variation in-between should be quite insignificant. For narrative audio maybe that wouldn't even matter, at all.

[Jacob Watkinson]

Thank you both very much for your responses, it's definitely made me a little more confident!