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Author Topic: Variable Density Klang - Rashomon (1950) Jane Matthews Film Handler Posts: 8 From: Berkhamsted Hertfordshire England Registered: Oct 2015 posted 01-04-2016 10:31 AM                    Hi All, I'm restoring a copy of Rashomon at the moment which has an unusual sound track. The soundtrack is Variable Density Klang type (or sometimes spelt Clang). What seems odd to me is that I'm only aware of Klang lasting until the mid 1930s (when Tobis-Klangfilm was bought out) in Europe and America so it seems very strange to me that it is in a Japanese film from 1950. The stock is Fuji with the edge code 68 OD (which I think is October-December 1968), unfortunately I can't see any print through of the original code. The print is B&W combined, Japanese language with English subtitles. The only thing I can think of is that Klang was used because it was cheaper or that Japan was just a little further behind with new sound technology. Is anyone else aware of Klang being used so late? Is there another format which looks very similar? Any thoughts or information would be gratefully accepted. Thanks, Jane  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 01-04-2016 12:07 PM                        How do you know that the track you're looking at was mastered using a Tobis sound camera? AFAIK there is no visible way to tell the difference between the tracks created by different types of VD camera (assuming common width and film transport speed), just as there is no visible way to distinguish between different types of SVA (e.g. Dolby A-type, SR, Ultra Stereo and DTS SVA). That having been said, Nazi Germany and Japan were close trading partners throughout the Nazi regime's existence, and one of Goebbels's objectives for the film industry was to break the American-controlled network on international patents that standardized much of the core technology (which for sound meant the carve-up of territories between RCA and Western Electric agreed at the 1931 ERPI conference). So German sound cameras finding their way to Japan and remaining in use after the war fits the known facts. Tobis tracks tend to be very noisy - when I come across them that have been reprinted but not re-recorded, playing them in format 02 usually helps. I suspect that, like a lot of the knock-off systems that used cheap tubes and other amplification circuitry (e.g. Visatone-Marconi in the UK), it suffered from more serious signal loss in post-production dubbing than the major Hollywood-developed systems.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-04-2016 02:28 PM                     Leo did you ever try using a DNR noise reduction on those tracks to quiet them down?  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-04-2016 02:32 PM                     Klangfilm did not quite disappear that early on, they made sound equipment up into at least the late 60's. They made the magnetic penthouses for all the Bauer projectors too.It appears they were absorbed by Siemens if you look through these Epay listings... http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=Klangfilm&_sacat=0 Mark  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 01-04-2016 03:02 PM                        Klangfilm was formed in 1928 as a consortium of Siemens and AEG, to produce technology to rival that of the pre-existing Tri-Ergon system (effectively, a recording system developed from the remnants of Lee de Forest's work in Berlin in the early '20s). Just as in the US, RKO was essentially RCA moving into the movie business to create a market for its audio products, so was Tobis (Tonbild-Syndikat) in Germany. Just as in the US, avoiding stepping on the toes of others' patents was a big part of what went on, especially in the immediate aftermath of the ERPI territorial divvy-up. The Klangfilm side of the business diversified into broadcast technologies and non-film recording technologies, including some consumer audio products. Klangfilm became fully controlled by Siemens in 1941, as part of the Nazi government's drive to centralize control of communications technology production, and persisted as a brand/badge name well into the 1960s, as Mark points out. However, and I'd have to go back to notes and reference material to confirm this definitively, their R & D on optical film sound recorders was effectively over by the late 1930s, and so as far as variable density optical mastering is concerned, Klangfilm is effectively a 1930s technology. The conversion to sound in Japan's film industry happened significantly later than in most of the rest of the world, partly because the tradition of live performance (including mime and speech - not just music) alongside the projection of silent films became established, popular and persisted well into the 1930s. By the time Japanese theaters and studios were equipping for sound seriously, Japan's only well established trade links with a country that made and exported this technology were with Germany, hence my speculation that this is why Jane has a 1950 Japanese film with a Klangfilm track. About 4-5 years ago, in Leeds, before moving to the US, I showed a print of a 1950s Japanese movie. I remember it for two reasons. 1 - it had absolutely the thinnest, noisiest and nastiest of any VD track I've ever played. It was a 35mm reversal print from another release print, which didn't help it, but the source track must have been very bad to start with. Even a fluent Japanese speaker in the audience told me that she wouldn't have been able to understand the dialog if it weren't for the English subtitles. 2 - until Son of Saul came out last year, it would have won my nomination for the most depressing movie ever made. It was called The Eternal Breasts, and its plot can be summarized in a single sentence: woman takes six reels to die in agony of breast cancer. I wonder if that track was mastered with 1930s Klangfilm sound cameras, too. BTW, we're showing Rashomon later this month, on 35mm according to the info I have, along with several other Kurosawas. I'll be interested to see what the tracks are like on them.  |  IP: Logged Bill Brandenstein Master Film Handler Posts: 413 From: Santa Clarita, CA Registered: Jul 2013 posted 01-04-2016 07:05 PM                     For the amateurs (like me) and otherwise uninitiated in this crowd, what differentiates a Klangfilm variable density track from any other - other than being narrow, awful, and noisy? Or are they so narrow that you can immediately tell? Also, is this a type of recording we're likely ever to see in 16mm?  |  IP: Logged Jane Matthews Film Handler Posts: 8 From: Berkhamsted Hertfordshire England Registered: Oct 2015 posted 01-05-2016 04:17 AM                    Thanks all so much for your info. It's all very interesting. I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly if it is from a Tobis camera, I'm going on word from a colleague, so perhaps they're mistaken. I've been restoring a lot of Kurosawa films recently for an independent cinema in London who are showing a season of his films. I've also worked on Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Sanjuro and none of these had sound like the one on Rashomon (granted they were later). And if anyone can expand on Bill's questions that would be very much appreciated, I'm quite new to film history/restoration too. Bill, I work at an archive and according to our records we do have a 16mm version of Rashomon with a Variable Density sound track, but I wondering if this is maybe a shrunk down version for the 35mm if that's possible? I've come across 16mm blown up to 35mm but not the other way round... I've also upload a still of the sound track here: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/45/4b/6d/454b6de7144dab892a7c9a79fd89dea0.jpg  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 01-05-2016 11:53 AM                        Thanks for the pic - interesting. Note the perforation edge images on the outboard edge of the track, between the perforations of the actual print stock. I'd guess that the track neg had already shrunk a bit by time this reprint was done 18 years after the movie was made, hence they didn't align with the perforations in the print stock entirely. It may be necessary to adjust the alignment of the photocell of the projectors playing this print, to avoid a "brrrrr" noise from being picked up. quote: Bill Brandenstein For the amateurs (like me) and otherwise uninitiated in this crowd, what differentiates a Klangfilm variable density track from any other... Visually in terms of the modulation itself, nothing. Just as you can't see the difference between A-type and SR, the output of different VD sound cameras does not create a visual signature in the modulation. If you want to know which sound camera exposed the track neg from which your print was made, you need to look for other evidence, e.g. edge marking on the track neg stock (some stocks were made specifically for use in certain types of sound camera, e.g. the Kodak ultra-violet stock for RCA equipment), or writing on the leader that could tell you. quote: Bill Brandenstein Also, is this a type of recording we're likely ever to see in 16mm? Unless you like collecting 16mm prints of Nazi entertainment films, unlikely but possible. In the days when 16mm prints of feature films were made in significant numbers (for TV broadcast, airline use, schools, universities, film societies, that sort of audience), a 16mm pic and track internegative was usually made first, and then the print(s) from that. Occasionally, for one-off prints of minority interest titles, a 16mm release print was optically printed on reversal stock straight from a 35mm release print, but you took a huge quality hit by doing that, especially in the loss of midrange and gamma. This was a very cheap, very low quality option. For the optical audio, the 16mm track interneg was made either by optically printing a 35mm track neg onto 16mm stock, or by exposing a new 16mm track neg in a 16mm sound camera, from a magnetic tape of the film's mono final mix. 16mm VD sound cameras certainly did exist, but as with 35mm, declined in use from the late '50s onwards, when patents for VA technology started to expire and its use widened. Re-recording a 16mm track neg gave you better sound, but was more expensive. The problem with variable density is not that it was an inherently "worse" way of recording optical sound: it was that it needed much more critical quality control and was much less tolerant of minor slips than VA. In particular, sensitometry and densitometry in the lab had to be just right, because a slightly overexposed or underexposed (overly dense or overly light) track would affect the gain far more with VD than with VA. Loss of signal quality through successive generations of duping also tended to be worse with VD than with VA, which was obviously a major issue before the days of magnetic recording, when studio recording and post-production dubbing had to be done optically, too. A VD track can sound great, but throughout the recording, duplication and playback chain there are more factors that are likely to degrade it than with VA, as a general rule, which is essentially why the industry gradually abandoned it after the major patents on VA technology expired. Jane - we're doing a major Kurosawa season at the end of this month, all on 35mm. The print of Seven Samurai is already in the booth, but I haven't looked at it yet because we have a limited number of house reels and it would be difficult for this print to occupy 10 of them for the next fortnight. I'll let everyone know what I find on the audio when the time comes, though.  |  IP: Logged Bill Brandenstein Master Film Handler Posts: 413 From: Santa Clarita, CA Registered: Jul 2013 posted 01-05-2016 01:00 PM                     Thanks for the fantastic picture & explanations, friends. Jane, however you shot that photo is just wonderful. Look at the photo at full size, and yes, you see the placement and hole shadows as Leo noted, but something else I've never seen on a VA track: there are roughly 20 "lines" where the sound information is uneven across the width of the track - a rather inefficient way of "spreading" the modulated light seems to have been used. Seems like that would also lend itself to more distortion and noise... go figure. Here's a pertinent anecdote to Leo's technical explanation above. I was kindly given some VS prints in 16mm a few years ago to play with, and one was a studio original of "Thanks a Million" from 1935 (printed on 1960 Kodak B&W). To look at the VA track is to see nothing unusual; in fact, it's not even particularly dark. However, to play it is to hear something special from that era: a frequency range (high and low) plus dynamic range that defies its age, and gives clear evidence of why the film won an Oscar for sound. Some mag-originated tracks don't sound as good as what Fox put out on this one.  |  IP: Logged Jack Theakston Master Film Handler Posts: 411 From: New York, USA Registered: Sep 2007 posted 01-05-2016 01:56 PM                     Well-processed new prints with tracks from the original negative often sound particularly good, even better compared to their year-of-release counterparts, I've often found. Universal often uses original track negs on their repertory prints, and the fidelity is, with few exceptions, very good. The soundtracks I've found to be the weakest, contrarily, are the re-recorded tracks.  |  IP: Logged Bill Brandenstein Master Film Handler Posts: 413 From: Santa Clarita, CA Registered: Jul 2013 posted 01-05-2016 08:51 PM                     This is what I'm talking about with uneven lines of exposure on the soundtrack (Jane's picture, cropped):  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 01-06-2016 11:07 AM                        I'd guess uneven film transport speed through the continuous contact printer, dirt on the slit, or another defect of that sort. This is a 1968 print of a rep/rerelease title. The thing to remember about film printing in those days is that it was very variable in quality. Pretty much any film print made now will have received TLC from the lab and been made with the utmost care on scrupulously maintained equipment, just as any vinyl LP pressed now will be a 180 or 200-gram pressing on high grade PVC with no more than 25 minutes on a side. Both are almost obsolete media, and the only customers for them remaining are only interested in the highest quality those media can deliver. That wasn't the case in the days of film as a mainstream release medium. There were showprints made at elite labs, which were amazing, and one-light dupes made at small, under-resourced labs where the printer film paths weren't kept properly clean, outdated stock bought cheaply was used, the chemistry wasn't replenished to spec, etc. etc.; just as in the 1970s you could buy a Sheffield Lab audiophile pressing, or (for about a fifth of the price) a Dynaflex record with 40 minutes on each side, on wafer-thin PVC with bits of recycled paper embedded in it, and so on. quote: Jack Theakston Well-processed new prints with tracks from the original negative often sound particularly good, even better compared to their year-of-release counterparts, I've often found. Universal often uses original track negs on their repertory prints, and the fidelity is, with few exceptions, very good. For a typical feature film, contact printing the track neg shot in the studio straight onto the release print is not an option, because it won't incorporate mixes, dissolves, fades, EQ-ing and all the other processing that took place in post. If a final mix track interneg dating from the original release exists and has not decomposed or shrunk beyond the point of usability, then it would be preferable to an analog remastering, if, in the case of VD, it's possible to maintain the highest possible QC in the duplication process. I played around a dozen Universal 35mm re-release prints at Cinecon last year, mainly prints of '30s and '40s shows made between the '80s and early '00s. The audio quality was extremely variable, ranging from lovely to barely acceptable. Most were twin bilateral VA re-recordings, but there were one or two VDs. Can't remember much about the VDs specifically, so am guessing that they were basically unremarkable.  |  IP: Logged Jane Matthews Film Handler Posts: 8 From: Berkhamsted Hertfordshire England Registered: Oct 2015 posted 01-07-2016 07:41 AM                    Thank you so much for your help everyone, this is really fascinating stuff. It's all really useful for future work too, hopefully I'll have a better understanding of things next time they come up. I'm going to share the information with my colleagues too so if they come up with anymore information I'll add another post. Thanks again.  |  IP: Logged Simon Wyss Film Handler Posts: 80 From: Basel, BS, Switzerland Registered: Apr 2011 posted 01-07-2016 01:34 PM                     Hello, Jane Sven Berglund invented the multi-track variable-area recording, over the nomimal .999" space between the hole rows. It was him who performed the world’s first public presentation of synchronous sound with pictures on February 17th, 1921 in Stockholm. The system provided for twenty-two tracks. That number was later reduced to fourteen. Often less sharp MTVA recordings are mistaken as variable density tracks but upon close examination the difference can be seen. True VD tracks have homogenous lines. The Triergon patents date from 1919. 20 years were the run time of a Reichspatent. The latest patent on VD recording elapsed in 1943. Leo Enticknap is certainly right with the presumption that German equipment can have found its way to Japan although I tend to upkeep some scepticism here. We do not know better at this time. Of the TOBIS-Klangfilm union TOBIS took over the manufacture of sound cameras and the Klangfilm trust engaged in fabricating projector equipment plus their sale. The contract was closed on March 13, 1929. UFA joined at that point, too. The out-of-alignment printed perforation holes from the sound negative as you are showing us can derive from a non-slip printer. These came into use in the second half of the 1930s. TOBIS-Ag. built one and the Bell & Howell Co. built one. On a non-slip sound printer the strict relation between primary film and raw stock no longer exists, that is why the perforations are unlocked. Since I know some about lab techniques I have invented a duplicating process for photographic sound tracks on heavily shrunk film, named Orthopos, by which the shrinkage can be set aside without any mechanical or optical or electrical interference. It is pure reprography.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-07-2016 04:41 PM                     A large amount of motion picture technology in Japan was from Germany during the war The Ernaman projector was the basis of the early Fuji Central projectors  |  IP: Logged

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