The Pros and Cons of Super 8 Magnetic Sound?

[tfunch24]

Recently, one of my telecine transfer clients recommended someone to me. It turned out that the potential client had sound home movies shot at 24 fps so I could not do anything for him, Cinemate-wise. He no longer had a projector and had not seen the home movies in years, so I did a free DIY transfer for him; he did not care about the flicker--he just wanted the film on video tape.

The clarity of the sound, aside from an occasional humming that never overwhelmed the soundtrack, was pretty good. Why do some people come down so hard on S8 mag sound? This was the first S8 film with a soundtrack that I've seen and heard, and it did not sound horrible at all. Does the sound quality worsen as time passes?

On another note, the film featured some great looking nighttime shots of suburban streets, lit only by ambient light. The PC did not know what type of film had been used, but judging from the grain, it looked like Ektachrome 160.

Tom

[Matt Pacini]

I haven't heard any arguments against the quality of S8 mag sound, just the fact that it's never, ever going to be made again, so it's silly to keep wishing for it.
I would love to shoot S8 sound film, it would end all the syncing nightmares.
But guess what?
There simply is no such thing anymore.
It's been totally discontinued by everyone, so it's a moot point, and even if it weren't the added expense of sound film would make it REALLY stupid to shoot Super 8 instead of 16mm.

Matt Pacini

[tfunch24]

Several years ago on one of the filmmaking newsgroups there was an argument about the quality of S8 mag sound. Some people argued that optical sound blew mag sound away, that S8 mag sound was low quality because it was aimed at people who were just shooting home movies (but wasn't sound introduced so that S8 cams could compete with the first video cameras being introduced in the mid-1970s? If you wanted to compete with a new format, wouldn't you try and pull out as many stops as you feasibly could and still be able to turn a profit?) Others argued that mag sound was better than its detractors made it out to be.

I'm well aware that S8 sound carts are not available anymore (unless you're willing to pony up $45/cart to those guys in Georgia who have the only remaining stash of sound carts in the world (or so it's said)) but I was just wondering what people thought of the quality of the sound carts when they (the sound carts) were still available.

I'm just curious about an aspect of S8 history that I missed out on.

Anyway, the sound quality of the film that watched was pretty good, save for an occasional hum.

Tom

[tfunch24]

Oh, I forgot to add in my last post--I found the old mag sound vrs. optical sound while doing some research on Deja. The thread itself was not about S8, just mag sound vrs. optical sound in general, but S8 home movies were used as an example of bad mag sound.

Tom

[pineapplefilms]

35 MM projection prints are not optical sound prints, they tend to be magnetic (mag) or nowadays digital. The quality is pretty good. Optical sound is now pretty unique to 16MM.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ October 25, 2002 10:21 AM: Message edited by: pineapplefilms ]</font>

[Matt Pacini]

<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="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by pineapplefilms:
35 MM projection prints are not optical sound prints, they tend to be magnetic (mag) or nowadays digital. The quality is pretty good. Optical sound is now pretty unique to 16MM.

&lt;font color="#a62a2a" size="1"&gt;[ October 25, 2002 10:21 AM: Message edited by: pineapplefilms ]&lt;/font&gt;</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's funny, because just tonight I spoke with a projectionist, who told me that ALL film prints in theaters have optical sound on them, with devices that switch over to it if the digital goes wacky (or whatever they're using for audio).

Matt Pacini

[TA 152]

Check:

http://biz.howstuffworks.com/movie-s...tm?printable=1

http://146.245.155.204/Cinema/wDTS.htm





I think I read at Kodak?s web that they discontinued the mag striped film production for big formats at the same time tey ended the S8 mag film production.


R