How did they record sound to film camera before magnetic tape?

[rhb]

Magnetic tape didn't come out until the 60's for wide spread use, so how did they get sound in the 40's and 50's when they would record things like interviews of people for the news and other broadcasts where they didn't have a studio, had to be portable and had to make it to broadcast the same day?

I know with projectors the sound was made from blowing air through holes on the side of the film, but you can't record like that. If you recorded by a light onto a film track you could only measure amplitude since they didn't have lights that could pulse at 15k hz. All the home movies I have such as my grandparents wedding after WWII had no sound. Even if you could pulse light that fast how would you record more then just a single tone since the light can't make two separate pulses at once? I also imagine that even when having a separate sound recording syncing up the sound to the picture was hard. Is that why they have that black and white thing they snap down when they start a scene they start the sound when they hear the snap line up with the frame that the top part snaps down? What is that thing called? I think they use an ipad for it now a days. When did they stop using actual film in the 90's? I liked the way film looked, you could see this best on dr who where dr who had the afro, the indoor shots were on video tape and the motion looked sharp. Then outdoor shots were more smooth with a soft focus and bright lights not over exposed leaving trails.

Why are you still here?  You failed to make even the most cursory research before posting this thread.  This is not a forum for random trivia queries from people too lazy to do basic investigations.  Had you made *any* attempt to use google or any other search engine you would have found the answers to *all* your questions. Sound from blowing air through holes in the film?  Who manufactured such a system and when?  Pretty hard for it not to sutter as the film has to stop for the shutter to open and close 30 times a second.

In short, this is pure attention seeking  bullshit! 

BTW Women are *not* testosterone free.  Look it up!

[vk6zgo]

Your unnecessarily rude tone aside (which is why I won’t bother to indulge you with an extensive reply), your comments do not agree with my experience or research, so I respectfully submit that you’re... not entirely right — or that you completely missed the context of my comments.

But the main one is: EVERY source I’ve ever seen says that vidicon-type telecines were displaced by flying-spot telecines fairly quickly, and later by linear CCD models. (Indeed, in modern terminology, “telecine” tends to refer to the line-scan type of device, whereas “film scanner” is used to indicate the frame-scan type.)

I was a bit bemused by your allegation of rudeness, & having a vague memory of you taking others to task in the same way, I looked back at your older postings.
You seem to have "form" for this, in that, whilst happy to post forthright comments of your own, you become offended if others do the same.

In the process, I looked at your profile, & from your age, it would seem that in the period of TV history in question, you went from an age of minus 5 to around 18.
In another posting, you say you've "spent all your working life on computers", so I fail to see that you have any "experience" in TV equipment to speak of, so we are left with your "research".

I don't know what "sources" you used, but, if it was on the Internet, a cursory Google doesn't find much in the way of information, except for that from the very large organisations like the BBC.
Such places were well staffed & financed, & could afford to play with devices like Flying Spot Scanners, but for mainstream TV studios in cities throughout the world, vidicon Telecines, with all their limitations, were the "best they could get" over the, for most BW era.

Colour TV was a bit nightmarish for the USA as "early adopters", as 3 tube Studio cameras using IO cameras were huge & unwieldy, so they went for 2 vidicons plus one IO.(the later to obtain the required resolution for the luma component).
Ultimately, Plumbicons became (just) good enough for Studio use, & everybody sighed with relief!
This is about when Australia went to PAL colour in 1975.

Plumbicons also meant an improvement in Telecine chains, which of course, were now more complex, with 3 tubes .
The next iteration of Telecines were the CCD line scan/line store type in late 1970s/early '80s?

Between '65 & '88, I was working with Transmitters, both Broadcast & TV, so my knowledge of Studio practice during that time was pretty much second hand, but there was enough chatter between different companies to keep a fair idea on what was happening, quite apart from articles in industry magazines.

When I returned to Studio work in '88, there was a solitary Rank Cintel CCD Telecine chain, which looked a few years old, & was hardly ever used, so I think my dating is pretty close.

As for FFS.
This was not a more modern device which could supplant vidicon Telecines, but one of the oldest ones, dating back to the very beginnings of Television.
It had much potential------ the slide scanner versions  were capable of resolution out to the limits of the TV system, but the problems inherent with the full Telecine versions were profound, & to the best of my knowledge, they never played a part in the Australian TV industry, & I would doubt, anywhere else, except the BBC & their equivalents in Europe & the USA.

[tooki]

Again, 1) you didn’t grasp the context of the comments (i.e. responding to the op’s query), and 2) saying “in your dreams” flippantly took it from a teachable moment to me just being “meh don’t care what you have to say”.

P.S. Though unquestionably far less than you, I actually do have some experience with broadcast TV gear.

[JohnPen]

BBC TV news first colour telecine machine went live in Jan 1968.  It was a prototype machine and was pretty reliable once warmed up and lined up correctly.  A lot of time was  needed superimposing the 3 colours though.  Grey scales were less of a problem.  One problem that did arise was that the equipment modules were not too happy with plug and play shortly after powering down and could blow transistors in the input video chain.  This particular video input had a chain of some 4/5 emitter followers all in series and you never knew which transistor had failed. The transistor types used were also hard to get hold of.   The problem was caused by a long discharge cycle of a particular capacitor and if one waited for ~30sec after power down all was OK.  To be fair it was the manufacturers only prototype. 

[In Vacuo Veritas]

2) saying “in your dreams” flippantly took it from a teachable moment to me just being “meh don’t care what you have to say”.

You'll need thicker skin than that to survive on the Internet, buttercup. How fragile are you, exactly? A hothouse flower??

[Richard Crowley]

For production, major studios used to generate and distribute special 3-phase power throughout the facility. This power was used to operate the camera motors, and the mag recorder motors to keep them in perfect sync.  Sound was recorded on "full-coat" which was the same film stock as used in the camera, but coated with magnetic particles exactly like audio tape.  Studios had great banks of these sound recording/playback machines.  It took dozens of them (all synced together perfectly) when mixing-down the sound track for a feature film.  Of course now, pimply-face kids do multi-track recording and mixing in the basement with "Garage Band" on their Macbook. But there is 60 years of technical progress for you.



For distribution, analog optical SOF (sound on film) for theatrical exhibition was implemented as either variable density or variable area. Each had its proponents and advantages and disadvantages. Both could be read with the same projector mechanism a light source projected through a slit and picked up by a photomultiplier tube. 




The old photomultiplier firebottle was replaced by solid-state devices of various types in later parts of its life-cycle. 

The sound was printed 20 frames ahead of the picture as that was the standardized location in the threading path of the film through the projector.  The "sound head" was located below the film gate and it took some amount of separation to take the stuttering action of the film through the gate and smooth it back out nice and even for sound playback.  Many of us still remember the buzzing-stuttering sound if something went wrong in the projector (or telecine chain) when the flywheel/capstan smoothing effect failed.

In this photo, you can see the "lamp-house" for the sound head as the gray box under the gold-anodized projection lens.


I found it particularly amusing that in the last days of film distribution, they started taking advantage of the space to the outside of the sprocket holes, and even the space between the sprocket holes to print digital multi-track audio data.  Ray Dolby (who was on the original team at Ampex who developed the most popular early video tape recorder) developed the scheme that used the otherwise wasted space between the sprocket holes.  You can see his "double-D" trademark in the center of each frame.



The outside margin (to the left) shows the SDDS digital track, and then the Dolby digital frames between the sprocket holes. And then the variable-area analog stereo tracks (often Dolby-matrixed to 4 channel). And then the timecode which was used to sync to separate CDs which were sometimes used for the audio tracks.

[Richard Crowley]

We still use slate and clap-sticks today in modern digital production.  But they have progressed to include display of timecode and even back-lit for shooting those dark scenes in your film-noir.



There is no substitute for "slating" each take, both visibly using the slate with the scene and take number (and other info) written in grease-pencil by the "clapper-loader" kid.  And spoken audibly by the A1 sound recordist onto the audio track(s).  And the snap of the clapper is used as the starting sync point for sound and picture line-up in editing post production. Only higher-end big-budget productions can use timecode and genlock (the modern version of the old 3-phase production power) to synchronize the speed of the camera and sound recorders.  It is nice to have proper timecode on picture and sound files to allow automated sync of the elements in the non-linear editing software.  But for those of us who can't afford it, there are low-paid interns who spend their days conforming picture and sound together.  Although with better, more stable TXCO (and even GPS) -synchronized gear, even that job is being phased out.

[David Hess]

Ray Dolby (who was on the original team at Ampex who developed the most popular early video tape recorder) developed the scheme that used the otherwise wasted space between the sprocket holes.  You can see his "double-D" trademark in the center of each frame.

I attended a SMPTE presentation on these technologies when they were introduced.  They and DTS all became available at about the same time and there was a rush to be first and establish a new standard.

Dolby deliberately choose to use the area between the sprocket holes because their research showed that oddly enough, that area of the film was the least likely to be damaged during routine use.

[dmills]

Perforation damage was a thing, usually when some muppet had laced up with an undersized loop, but it tended to wreck the print.

Other then that the perforation area will usually be in contact with metal moving at the same speed it is, and will be well away from the edges of the openings in the aperture plates so should be less prone to scratching damage.

Dolby beat DTS mostly because expecting the shipping company to get the right reels to the cinema on time was sometimes a big ask, expecting them to also reliably get the right set of audio disks there as well was at least widely seen in the UK as being a bridge too far. I well remember having to phone round the local cinemas to see if anyone had a case of film they were not expecting and to ask them to put it in a taxi (on one occasion while I had the first half of the film being shown)...

That is a nice picture of the business end of an FP30, notice the three lens turret with two lenses installed (probably for 1.85:1 and a 2.35:1 animorphic for cinemascope). We used to run 1.375, 1.66, 1.85 & 2.39:1 with custom cut plates for each ratio and each machine, tended to make life interesting as the rank ads would not work well on much except 1.66 or 1.85:1 so you could easily end up with 6 plates and 6 primes plus the animorph in play if you had a 'scope print in one presentation and something old in the other, surprisingly easy to stuff up (Who, me, "apocalypse now" in ~1.2:1 having forgotten to put the animorth in line on number 2? Never happen!).

Regards, Dan.

[Richard Crowley]

Perhaps my interest in media and electronics started back in middle-school.  I was quite good at setting up and operating those old Bell and Howell 16mm projectors we used in school in the 1950s and 1960s.  I knew how to provide the proper loop at the top and bottom of the gate and how to thread the film around the capstan/flywheel in the sound head.



 I became the go-to guy for all the elementary-grade teachers whenever they wanted to show a film.  I got out of many math classes that way and perhaps that is why I had to take remedial bone-head calculus.

One of my few encounters with 35mm projection was a pair of old DeVry projectors and getting the rhythm of switching between projectors every 20 minutes (there were no pancake platters back then).  Especially hairy was when one of them lost torque on the take up reel and I had to hand-crank the reel for 10-15 minutes.  And then jump up and perform the reel change while the film spilled out on the floor.

[dmills]

At one point I had a very interesting 16mm machine that actually had a proper Maltese cross intermittent drive rather then the claw that was so common on most of the 16mm gear.

It needed  it because the other unique feature of that machine was a three bladed shutter, 72Hz flicker frequency, but MUCH harder on the print due to the increased acceleration forces, the intermittent drove a sprocket about an inch and a half in diameter to get enough perforations to avoid shredding the print (16mm suffers from only having a single perforation per frame where 35mm has . I think the thing must have been someones prototype because I have never seen that on any other 16mm rig (There were some three bladed 35mm rigs out there, again harder on the film then a two bladed or drum shutter design.

One interesting snippet is that at the onset of WW2 one thing that became in very short supply was replacement Maltese cross components for the newsreel theatres, seems the Germans had the trick of the required metallurgy for these rather highly stressed parts and it took a while for the English to figure it out.

Regards, Dan.

[Richard Crowley]

At one point I had a very interesting 16mm machine that actually had a proper Maltese cross intermittent drive rather then the claw that was so common on most of the 16mm gear.

Ah, yes.  The "Geneva Wheel" or "Maltese Cross" mechanical movement.  One of the brilliant inventions of mechanics.  Sometimes I miss those old-school mechanical solutions.



OTOH, this animated GIF is rather like a modern equivalent of the old mechanical intermittent-motion solutions.   

[David Hess]

Perforation damage was a thing, usually when some muppet had laced up with an undersized loop, but it tended to wreck the print.

The only time I saw this happen was with the leader or trailer with results better imagined than witnessed. 

Those Mylar leaders and trailers which can be reused more times are strong.  Once the theater manager thought he didn't need the protectionist to start a double auditorium feature with one film running through two projectors.  He did not engage the interlock so when the first projector stopped because it was at the end, the second projector kept going until all of the slack between the projectors was taken up.  Since the trailer was Mylar, it did not rip and instead the second projector tore the guide rollers off of the wall and then pulled the first projector over and off its mount tipping it over onto its side on the floor.  Then the Mylar trailer finally ripped.

Other then that the perforation area will usually be in contact with metal moving at the same speed it is, and will be well away from the edges of the openings in the aperture plates so should be less prone to scratching damage.

It seemed weird to me but that was Dolby's justification.

Dolby beat DTS mostly because expecting the shipping company to get the right reels to the cinema on time was sometimes a big ask, expecting them to also reliably get the right set of audio disks there as well was at least widely seen in the UK as being a bridge too far.

If that was a problem, they could just use the optical soundtrack.  I suspect this varied with region because in Southern California, DTS seemed to be much more popular than Dolby even with projectors which supported both.

[amyk]

Chapter 7 of this makes for a good introductory read: https://archive.org/details/principlesofcinema00whee

[VK3DRB]

... The board you are referring to is a 'Clapper Board' and provides both a sound reference time and the details of what this reel of film is, important when you have dozens of the things to pull together when editing.
Regards, Dan.

Trivia:

The clapper board was invented by an Australian named Frank Thring.
Defined by length, the world's first dramatic feature film was the Australian 70-minute film The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). You can see it on Youtube.

Aussies invented many things, including WiFi.

[Brumby]

Perforation damage was a thing, usually when some muppet had laced up with an undersized loop, but it tended to wreck the print.

The only time I saw this happen was with the leader or trailer with results better imagined than witnessed. 

Oh, you just brought back a painful memory.

A venue I used to frequent had a 16mm projector - a Bell and Howell Filmosound (I forget which model) - and I was the unofficial projectionist - having been the student who ran the same (or similar) machine at school.  I turned up late to a session once and another person had threaded the machine.  I arrived just as it was turned on and heard an unnerving chatter.  By the time I had got to the machine, it had passed the leader and had begun on the introduction sequence.  I turned it off and saw the loop was, in fact, almost non-existent.  I cringed, rethreaded it properly and the screening continued.

After the rewind, I checked the start of the film and felt a cold shudder having seen sprocket holes about 50% longer than they should be.  I had to write up the condition report and winced doing so.  The film was returned and a couple of days later I got a rather "animated" phone call.  The owner of the print was not happy - and I couldn't blame him.  His only consolation was that the damage was limited to a section of the film that did not have any essential/important content.  If I'd had arrived a minute or two later, there would have been a big bill for the venue.

I still grimace whenever I am reminded of that episode.

[Brumby]

Another time I had set up this projector and there were about 300 people in the audience.  During set up, I found the drive belt for the take up spool had failed.  I had just a couple of minutes to work out something.

Solution - I just stuck my finger in one of the four holes near the hub and maintained enough pressure for the take-up spool to keep the film winding on properly.  That was a fun 40 minutes.

[tooki]

2) saying “in your dreams” flippantly took it from a teachable moment to me just being “meh don’t care what you have to say”.

You'll need thicker skin than that to survive on the Internet, buttercup. How fragile are you, exactly? A hothouse flower??

I’ve survived a few decades online just fine so far (including many years as an admin of a forum with 65K registered members at one point), so I think I’m doing fine. My point was that such things just make me tune out the author — isn’t that exactly what people say to do?

As for “buttercup” — that choice of wording tells me all I need to know about you.

(As for being a hothouse flower, I actually describe myself as a “tropical fruit” since I’m gay, and was born in the tropics, and prefer hot weather to cold! )

[dmills]

Since the trailer was Mylar, it did not rip and instead the second projector tore the guide rollers off of the wall and then pulled the first projector over and off its mount tipping it over onto its side on the floor.  Then the Mylar trailer finally ripped.

Yep, that was a fairly popular game, you could get a tension activated film cutting knife that installed somewhere on the path to make that particular cockup less damaging. That bit of kit also made a cake stand suffering a 'brain wrap' with Mylar a whole lot less exciting (I have seen a fully loaded three level cake stand pulled far enough over to bend the (fully loaded) bottom platter against the floor). 

Regards, Dan.

[james_s]

Makes me wonder why the mechanism was powerful enough to do all that damage. Is there a reason it needed to be? Why not have a clutch that would disengage and also kill power to the lamphouse if the tension on the film became excessive?

[dmills]

You need a butch enough motor to get the whole chain up to speed between the motor dot and the changeover dot (~8 seconds or so), and especially with a 6,000ft spool (The 12,000 ft towers have their own drive motors), there is quite a lot of mass to accelerate.

It is also nice if the motor has enough grunt to turn the thing over with the intermittent drive in the striking position (Westrex 7000's looking at YOU), annoying to hit the motor button and have the thing just sit there buzzing at you.

The issue only started to matter late in the history of film when the mylar stock became a thing for distribution prints, as before then you would just snap the film, and any projectionist knows how to sort that out.

Usually there was a centrifugally operated set of safety shutters in the drum shutter or similar that would prevent print damage in the event of a motor or drive belt failure, but they themselves tended not to do well with a big lamphouse and if you did not get the dowser closed reasonably fast then you may well have to work on the (now stuck) safety shutters. In the UK there were IIRC a residual requirement of the Cinematograph act dating from the nitrate film stock era.

Regards, Dan.

[Richard Crowley]

...In the UK there were IIRC a residual requirement of the Cinematograph act dating from the nitrate film stock era.

The infamous film gate fire sequence from Cinema Paradiso.  It was rumored that it frightened some projectionists so much they didn't want to show it.

[dmills]

Yea, not a scene to make any operator happy, cuts just a little too close to the bone.

Notice that the projection port fire shutter is closed (This existed mainly to avoid the audience realising that the projection room was on fire so as to avoid panic). I am assuming the top magazine door being open is artistic license (Being as the reel exploding and blinding the operator was something of a key plot event), everyone back then in the business was WELL aware of the nature of the film stock.

Regards, Dan.

[David Hess]

Makes me wonder why the mechanism was powerful enough to do all that damage. Is there a reason it needed to be? Why not have a clutch that would disengage and also kill power to the lamphouse if the tension on the film became excessive?

It was never a problem before Mylar was used.  If this had happened during the film itself, the film (acetate?) would have just torn but it happened when the trailing lead which the projectionist adds was going through the projectors and the theater was using Mylar leaders and trailers which last much longer and are much stronger.

That was not the only failure at this particular theater.  Another time they had someone else start a film and they did not check the take up platter.  They had somehow managed to hang the film on the sensor which detects film presence but not tension the arm on the platter so it never started.  The result was dumping the entire film onto the floor without anybody noticing.  There was so much of it that it filled the hall and reached the ceiling.

Then there was the time right after the theater opened when it was new and either the roof or air conditioning leaked.  The projectionist had to remove ceiling tiles around the projectors and hang garbage bags to direct the dripping water away from the projectors and platters after a couple films were damaged.  With all of the narrow and dead end corridors with ceiling tiles missing and dark green/black garbage bags hanging down, it looked like a set from one of the Alien movies.

[dmills]

They actually printed films on a stuff, it was not just used in leaders (but I can see the attraction for that use), and yea, cake stand fuckups tended be quite spectacularly messy that way.

I also have an aircon condensate leak in the projection room story, right into the 415V switchgear it was (It also got into the biscuits, disaster!), I also deployed a trash bag.

Regards, Dan.