FilmGuard has minimized the jitter.

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'Three to Tango', on the other hand, had the vertical jitters towards the end of two of the spools (opening day for this film too). The theatre I ran it at ended up with the exact same print that I ran at a preview theatrette just two days ago! (and yes, the vertical movement was present there also).

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All of the major laboratories try to do the best job possible, within the time constraints and competitive pressures they have to face on a daily basis. Many times, the final cut negative arrives only days before prints have to be in theatres, so there is not time to do pin-registration printing of the intermediate films, or to use slower release printing speeds. Lab splices are an "economic necessity" in release prints, since few reel lengths are exact multiples of the 4000-foot or 6000-foot raw stock lengths supplied by the film manufacturers.

In an ideal world, the labs would be given the time and money to make the intermediates on their much slower pin-registered printers, eliminating the slippage that occurs on continuous contact printers, improving steadiness and sharpness. In an ideal world, three 1700-foot reels would be printed onto a 6000-foot roll of raw stock, and the 900 feet of "short end" waste (worth about $80.00) would be discarded, rather than using lab splices (the film manufacturers would LOVE this to happen ) In an ideal world, each print would be made on a slow wet-gate printer. In an ideal world, every one of the 3235 prints of "Toy Story 2" would be inspected by projecting it and listening to all four soundtracks.

But this is the REAL world. A release print is not as sharp or steady as a direct wet-gate print from the original negative. Lab splices are a pain. A reel with a steadiness or soundtrack problem does sometimes get missed by lab inspection. But the quality of today's release prints is remarkably good, considering that the labs are forced to turn out thousands of prints in a matter of days at competitive prices.

Digital cinema may not have these problems, but it will have a bunch of new ones, driven by the same time and cost pressures.

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John Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Professional Motion Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Eastman Kodak Company
Rochester, NY 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243

I did not mean that as a direct quote, but you have said that lab splices exist for that very reason. Although they did not exist in the past as much as they exist today. So therefore the labs have indeed stepped down quality due to "economic necessity"

Also, if they care about quality, why do they print the films so darned fast, resulting in a completely unsteady image no matter what you do to your projector? The majority of 6th Sense prints had this problem. Personally, I think it is an economic necessity that the labs get every print as close to 100% perfect as possible. There is absolutely no excuse for anything less in this industry. None. Each week I must replace at least 1 reel, and depending on how many movies open, maybe more soley because the lab did not print them correctly. This can be scratches throughout the reel, giant black blobs all over the place, dyes shifting colors (which always happens after a lab splice passes, also kicking out the Dolby Digital... lab splices are unacceptable), to a jittery image. This was not the case years ago. Even when polyester first came out this was not quite the problem it is now. The labs simply cannot meet the quality standards we need, nor can they keep up with the demand required by more movies/more theatres, thus printing the film way too fast. The labs suck for the most part, with very few exceptions.

Sure, let's get the labs to take even more time than they do now, and we will just see when TES gets you your print!

The labs are in the unfortunate position of having to meet the deadlines that the studios give them. Maybe the people that you need to blame for this are the studios,for the deadlines that they have, and the theatre chains for putting up so many big mega-plexes so that the labs have to make so many prints!

I've been in the labs, and seen them printing, it's pretty impressive! I'm surprised that there are not more problems. The labs do R&D to improve what they do. For the most part they are operated 24/7, so longer working hours won't let them slow down the printing time. I give them credit for being able to get they job done on time with all of the bs that they get from the studios.

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The labs have to get these things out to the depots as fast as possible.

I wish the local projectionists here in Western NC cared as much as you people do.

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