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Topic: Most common digital format(s) question

Rick Long
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 759
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 12-20-1999 01:42 AM

This question is asked of projectionists who are running first-run prints on an almost daily basis.

What percentage of the prints you receive have:

(a) D.T.S., S.R.D., AND S.D.D.S. tracks all on one print?

(b) D.T.S. and S.R.D. on one print?

(d) S.R.D. and S.D.D.S. on one print?

(e) Optical SVA or SR only?

(I am assuming that mono is very rare, nowadays.)

I appreciate the information. Thank you

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 12-20-1999 04:02 AM

Most everything I get has SRD. It is very rare if there there isn't any Dolby Digital on there. But most prints are quad format (all 3 digital formats plus SR optical). DTS seems to be on a lot of prints as well, more than SDDS.

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Ken Layton
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1452
From: Olympia, Wash. USA
Registered: Sep 1999

posted 12-20-1999 09:39 AM

I remember Men In Black had the first reel with all formats, but every reel afterwards had the Dolby Digital track blacked out!

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 12-20-1999 05:09 PM

The best movie ever made in the history of mankind, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, had reels 2 and 3 in Dolby Digital and SDDS and the rest in SDDS and SR. We just played the entire thing in SR.

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Aaron Mehocic
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 804
From: New Castle, PA, USA
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-20-1999 05:13 PM

Almost everything we get has the quad format that Joe spoke of. Last September or October we did get a film with a missing SRD track. It sucked so much, I don't even remember its name.

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Stephen Jones
Master Film Handler

Posts: 314
From: Geelong Victoria Australia
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-20-1999 07:20 PM

Most of the prints of late that I come across have all formats somtimes you get one that has only one format or another but thats getting rare these days.As for S.D.D.S there only a very small amount of cinemas here in Australia that use it (THANKFULLY)as the rest use Dolby Digital or D.T.S or both.

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John Walsh
Film God

Posts: 2490
From: Connecticut, USA, Earth, Milky Way
Registered: Oct 1999

posted 12-20-1999 08:16 PM

Most of the films we get are the "the quad format" type; a term I still can't get used to. I keep thing of 4 channel.

On "Air Force One," only the first 2 reels were in SR-D. I would have been nice if there was a note in the can saying that.

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Wallace Logan
Film Handler

Posts: 26
From: Ottawa Ontario Canada
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 12-20-1999 10:03 PM

I now know why everybody does not have a kind word for SDDS because more often than not
when making prints they miss a few reels
thats frustrating.
Most are all formats I have 3 prints that are
only SRD right now.

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Bruce McGee
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1776
From: Asheville, NC USA... Nowhere in Particular.
Registered: Aug 1999

posted 12-20-1999 11:48 PM

Does anybody know off hand what a print from around 1992 with THX in the credits uses for its digital system?

Now, I am going to find a FG thread and talk there.

If you need more info, I can run the last reel again and see if there is anything else on the credits.

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Christopher Seo
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 530
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-20-1999 11:54 PM

I think most of our movies are "quad-track", but some more low-budget fare may dispense with a couple (or in a few cases, all) the digital formats. I noticed MGM seems to be releasing their lower-budget movies with SR and DTS only ("Stigmata", "Flawless").

BTW, what's the difference between SVA and SR? Are there any stereo optical tracks made today which do *not* use some Dolby (or Dolby-clone) process?

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Scott Ribbens
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 118
From: Los Angeles
Registered: Oct 1999

posted 12-21-1999 02:18 AM

Chris, if I may call you that, I think that Rick may have been reffering to Dolby "A" type noise reduction as some of the older DTS movies had a DTS digital track with a Dolby "A" optical track.

SVA or Stereo Variable Area is the type of sound track that you see on all of the movies that are put out today. Before that there was the Variable Density soundtrack that was mono. Instead of having an area of the soundtrack that is clear, a variable density track was shades of grey over the entire soundtrack area. I'm sure that someone else can do a better job of describing this than I am doing in the sleep state that I am in at the moment.

Most, 99.99% I would think, stereo films that are produced today use some kind of noise reduction. I'm sure if you looked REALLY HARD, you MIGHT find a film out there with a stereo track that has no noise reduction of any kind on it. I saw one once about 4 years ago. Even Woody Allen is using SR, just with no surround. Formats 02, and 03 are the only Dolby formats that use noise reduction, but no surround decoding.

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Scott

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Christopher Seo
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 530
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-22-1999 01:47 AM

Sure, Chris is fine.

Thanks for the information, it clears some issues up. I've just been confused as of late, since I've been working with ancient Kintek processors (I'm used to the CP500...). The Kintek model KT-1005, for example, has sound format options of mono, SVA, and Spec Rec. I know what mono is, and I'm assuming that Spec Rec means that the Kintek can process Dolby SR, but I don't quite know where to place SVA in the scheme of things. Is this feature simply equivalent to Dolby format 02 or 03? Or Dolby A? The Kintek manuals assume that I know what all of these abbreviations mean.

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Scott Ribbens
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 118
From: Los Angeles
Registered: Oct 1999

posted 12-22-1999 03:26 AM

Chris, not being familiar with that Kintek processor of yours, I looked in the manual downloads section, (very handy, thanks for the work Brad!) and since your model was not in there I looked at the 800 Series manual, in that one they are using SVA to refer to Dolby "A" noise reduction/with surrounds (Format 04). Spec. Rec. Was refering to Spectral Recording (Format 05).

Kintek and some others used to refer to format 04 as SVA, as opposed to mono (01). This is a holdover from before the time of Dolby SR. They could not call it Dolby Stereo because it is not Dolby equipment. I think it was easier to use the "SVA" in the manuals, than to say: "Stereo / A-type noise reduction". On the Strong CPA-10 they had a sound format that was labled SVA. I hope that kind of clears things up.

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Scott

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-22-1999 08:39 AM

If we wanted to be pedantic about such things, SVA would refer to any stereo-variable-area track (which could have no NR [rare], A-type NR, or SR-type NR). Dolby A and Dolby SR are just noise reduction processes in and of themselves; they are used for some audio-only recording-studio work. "Dolby Stereo SR" is, of course, SVA with SR noise reduction. "Dolby Stereo" usually refers to any type of SVA track with Dolby NR (either A or SR). There's no clear way that I can think of to identify what would be a Dolby Stereo print with type A NR (I've never heard the term "Dolby Stereo A").

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Bill Purdy
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 139
From: Seattle, WA
Registered: Oct 1999

posted 12-22-1999 10:55 AM

Back in 1978-79 there was quite a battle going on between Dolby and mostly Eprad. Eprad has since changed hands and so my comments apply only to the old regime. Eprad maintained that if the film was recorded in "Dolby Stereo" it made no difference whose equipment was used to play it back, and therefore, a theatre could advertise it as being "Dolby Stereo". During that period I was doing a lot of road work for Dolby, but because I was a free-lancer Eprad kept calling me to get me to say that there was no difference, which I, of course would not do. It even got the the point that I was recording those phone calls in order to protect my backside. At any rate, the whole thing went to court and Dolby won and it stands today that you cannot advertise a film as being in "Dolby XXXXX" unless you are reproducing it through genuine Dolby equipment. (This is one of the reasons for some folks buying the CP-45s.)

So, "Stereo Variable Area" (SVA) emerged as the generic term. This became more important when Ultra Stereo developed their own encoder and some low-budget SVA tracks were produced without any involvement from Dolby. As you know, this effort never went very far.

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