Where is super 8 sound film?

[#Pedro]

possibilities for direct sound film shooting nowadays:
1. magnetic striped film.
the raw stock is available at Bavaria Film Munich, on 200 ft reels. It has a mono stripe, not 2 painted sound tracks like the original K40S. To use the film, a Beaulieu sound camera is required which is adapted to the 200 ft superdrive. The superdrive is available at Bavaria where it actually could be produced if there was any demand. Wittner is only selling what he got at ebay or second hand. It?s not the primary source!
It?s not possible to load the sound striped raw film into 50 ft Kahl cartriges, because these Russian carts are only available in silent version. There are definitively no sound carts on the market that could be loaded. And if so, who would develop the Kodachrome film afterwards, if it is in special customer?s carts, the lab is not used to? The only Kodachrome Lab is in Lausanne/Switzerland, and they have their optimised developing processes with the well-known carts (and 200 ft reels in cans).
No, the only realistic way is to use the standard equipment with the original Beaulieu Superdrive. But everybody may feel free to have his dreams!

2. Virtual K40S shooting
If you don?t want to sell your car in order to get a Beaulieu 200 ft equipment and pay the very special price for the pre-striped film, you can go the electronic way.
Shoot your film a record your sound on cassette tape or MD or anything else that is stereo.
One stereo chanel records the audio (again in mono quality), the other records what the flash contact of your camera is outputting. A tiny electronic interface which is producing a 1000 Hz beep out of each flash contact switching is enough. The beeps are going to be recorded along with the audio on the other track and document exactly
(A) when the camera had been shooting
(B) (B) how the camera had been running, at what absolute framerate.

To get that live sound back to the film in the end, the most simple way is to sound stripe the developed footage. (sticking to the idea to do a virtual K40S)
Then there are several options.
Again, the most simple option to record the sound from your MD or tape LIP SYNC to the sound stripe, is to use an ELMO GS1200 projector. This heavy beast has an inbuilt synchonizer, that slaves the projector motor to an external sync pulse input.
So you only connect the sync chanel of your MD or tape to a interface, that produces one low active digital TTL pulse (active = 5 V, low = 0 V) out of each 1000 Hz beep of your audio. Again it is a tiny and simple interface.
Of course, you must connect the audio chanel output to the audio input of the Elmo.
Now you load your sound stiped silent film and foreward it to the first frame of the first sound scene. Add 4 more frames to compensate internal delays.
Now start your tape or MD. The projector is switched to PLAY/REC and ESS positions, but keep waiting until the sound scene starts, it will not run! The first incoming 1000 Hz beep on your audio will make the Elmo to start and record your audio at the same time, adapting it?s speed automatically to the rhythm of the beeps (= original camera speed). After the end of the sound scene, the Elmo will stop automatically!
Now you can backward it a little, to find the second start position, 4 frames after the start of the second sound scene. Let your tape keep on playing, the projector will join in automatically when the scene really starts.

3. When no Elmo GS1200 is available, it will work with a Braun Visacustic, too, without any modifications. What is required additionally, is the Visacustic control box.
Another projector would be the Bauer T502, or T525, T610. This projectors can be modificated and connected to an external synchronizer.

Pedro

[rollemfilm]

who said it had to be Kodachrome? a negative stock would be great! and, if Super8Sound is selling "new" Beaulieu sound cameras that do take 50ft carts as well as 200ft loads, it would make sense for them to collect as many sound carts as they can and produce some sound film. making sound carts is also a option. it's very humorous that the only super 8 camera in production today is a "sound" camera and you can't buy sound film.

[Bjorn Andersson]

Beaulieu factory in France has?t produced a 7008S in the last 3 years, only the Pro modell. What Super8Sound/PRO8 is playing with is another story. They maybee freshing up some old sound cameras, but this will never be "NEW" cameras out of that!!!!!!!!! It?s the same with more or less all cameras that they sell, it?s old repainted, in many colours, camera bodys and they are now calling them, PROII or Classic.

[blackangus1]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor=""><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by rollemfilm:
isn't the "pro" a sound camera?</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

No, it's usually crystal-sync but has no sound-recording hardware in it. It can, however, accomodate sound cartridges (because the 200-foot cartridges were sound film, so the only way to accomodate 200' cartridges was to have the chamber capable of accepting sound film carts).

[rollemfilm]

isn't the "pro" a sound camera?