When did dual inventory (Mono/Dolby A Stereo) prints cease to be a thing.

[Martin Brooks]

I wonder if Sam Chavez knows what movies actually were released in Dolby Mono. The era of the 364/E2 combination predate my cinema time.

I'm (obviously) not Sam, but this is from my notes, much of which comes from a history that Dolby used to publish and other items are probably sourced from Larry Blake's and other articles back in the day:

December 1971: Clockwork Orange 1st to use Dolby NR on all premixes & masters

February 1972: Model 364 Mono Cinema Processor
February 1972: A Quiet Revolution Dolby demo film
1972: Speed Merchants (racing documentary)

September 1973 : E2 Cinema EQ Processor

May 1974: Callan 1st Film w/ Dolby mono shown at Cannes
November 1974: Stardust (one-reel demo) Dolby mono + Demo Dolby Stereo at SMPTE, Toronto
November 1974: Little Prince (3 Tk Mag Dolby at Radio City?) Blake: 4tk mag

Other 1975: (Dolby list says '74) Flame, Alfie Darling, Rocky Horror (8/14/75 UK) (these were probably mono)
Feb1975: CP100 Dolby Stereo & Mag Installed for London presentation of Tommy
6/11/1975: Nashville 4tk mag Dolby
10/10/1975: Lisztomania First commercial Dolby Stereo film for general release.

Corrections welcomed.

[Sam Chavez]

Looks familiar. Can't find anything to correct..

[Marcel Birgelen]

I believe Vistasonic and Parasound were the same. They experimented at Regency 2 and Northpoint in SF. There are 8 ribbons on the Westrex camera and it's possible to do 8 channels but can't recall number of actual elements on the solar cell. Could swear it was 8 wires coming out of the cell but could be wrong. Dolby was their competitor so they didn't let us see much even though even though we were present at the installation to put things back to normal when they got done. I recall Popeye but not Raiders. Anyway, gone in a flash and left lots of great speakers and amps behind, including a cube of nine subs. AB Systems amps.

Raiders never got a Vistasonic release, it was abandoned last-minute, because Paramount abandoned the format, apparently after quite rampant reliability issues with the equipment during the run of Popeye.

AFAIK, the prints that were released only featured four optical channels on the print, maybe they envisioned a later upgrade to 8 tracks? But apparently the noise level was already high and it's somehow hard to imagine 8 discrete optical channels fitting in the space of the existing optical audio tracks. Maybe they used two readers per track with some analog delay circuitry to compensate for the noise caused by read-errors?

Also, there were apparently stereo surrounds, but they were matrix-encoded into the left and right front channel.

The next thing I've heard about is very sketchy and I can't really find anything about it on-line, but apparently, the center channel could be panned around the three front-channels using some kind of control commands, probably audio cues on one or more channels outside of the audible spectrum. This would've allowed to pan the dialog around, but would've essentially limited the dialog to one person speaking at any time when the effect was used.

[Sam Chavez]

I'll have to reach out to a friend who worked on this project and a little later came to Dolby Labs for a couple of years. I'm thinking there was some sort of companding and this is where DBX might have come in. As to the recording camera, Westrex 1231 had 8 ribbons that could be modulated individually. The Dolby illumination uniformity test film, Cat. No. 566? was shot this way on octave centers and when read by an RTA produced pillars that started LF on the left side and ended up at 2Khz on the right side. These pillars were to be within 1 dB, one to the other. Usually, the ribbons were modulated in pairs to produce 4 bi-lateral, variable area soundtracks.l

[Steve Guttag]

CAT566 was awesome! I used it a LOT with reverse scan readers to set LED position (Component Engineering allowed great flexibility in getting things dialed in).

[Michael Coate]

Raiders never got a Vistasonic release, it was abandoned last-minute, because Paramount abandoned the format, apparently after quite rampant reliability issues with the equipment during the run of Popeye.

Paramount abandoned Vistasonic after using it on “Dragonslayer,” which was released two weeks after “Raiders.”

https://www.in70mm.com/library/engag...ayer/index.htm

DRAGONSLAYER: THE 70MM-DOLBY AND 35MM-VISTASONIC PRESENTATIONS

Compiled by Michael Coate

The following is a list of the 70mm first-run engagements of “Dragonslayer” in North America. These were full-frame (2.20:1) blow-ups sourced from anamorphic 35mm photography. The audio was Six-Track Dolby Stereo (“A” encoded, split-surround). The Disney/Paramount co-production was released on June 26th, 1981.

CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles — GCC’s Avco Center
Los Angeles — Mann’s Hollywood

NEW YORK
New York — Walter Reade’s Bay

--------------------

The following is a list of the 35mm VistaSonic Sound presentations of “Dragonslayer” in North America. This was one of two films released in the short-lived VistaSonic process (“Popeye” was the other). The audio was discrete optical (as opposed to matrixed optical which is what the standard Dolby Stereo process of the era entailed).

CALIFORNIA
San Diego — Pacific’s Cinerama
San Francisco — Blumenfeld’s Regency II

MASSACHUSETTS
Boston — Sack’s Cheri Triplex

NEW YORK
New York — Walter Reade’s Baronet

PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia — SamEric’s Mark I

This information has been principally referenced from film industry trade publications and regional newspaper promotion. Any move-over, subsequent-run, re-release, and international engagements have not been accounted for in this article.

7DB4E083-708D-4F3A-AF27-6BC414902B90.jpeg

[Gordon McLeod]

In that era there was the proposal by the national film board of canada to use a ccd camera to read multiple optical tracks that just the outer edge of the modulation was recorded with a UV dye superimpossed over a regular VA track. Also at that time they with RCA was propossing the dual language print

[Sam Chavez]

Thanks Mike,

I recall that the film in question at Regency 11 was in fact Dragonslayer. Last gasp of this format I believe.

[Steve Guttag]

That film sound correct.

[Gordon McLeod]

I vaguely also remember Kintek being involved in a system called Colortek

[Marcel Birgelen]

Paramount abandoned Vistasonic after using it on “Dragonslayer,” which was released two weeks after “Raiders.”

https://www.in70mm.com/library/engag...ayer/index.htm

Yes, there were just two releases in Vistasonic: Popeye as the debut of the format and it was also used for a 35mm release of Dragonslayer. But it was apparently envisioned to be used for Raiders too:

"Raiders sound was mixed to be played in the VistaSonic Sound system that Paramount had previously used on Popeye and Dragonslayer. Unlike Dolby Stereo that used a matrix to encode 4 channels to 2 optical tracks, VistaSonic used 4 discrete optical tracks in the place of the normal 2. Since they were much smaller tracks, they were noisier, so a noise reduction system was used to improve fidelity. Stereo surrounds could also be employed by use of the SQ Quadraphonic matrix system - the stereo surrounds were encoded onto the Left and Right front channels with SQ - the discrete mono surround track then wasn't used. The playback head used a CCD based reader instead of a photodetector to keep the tracks and their phase response aligned better. The system was invented by Terry Beard who is also the inventor of the theatrical DTS system - while he owned NuOptix, a company that built much of the equipment used to record optical soundtracks, he also worked for Paramount's sound department as a technician in charge of research. There were many problems with VistaSonic during the Popeye and Dragonslayer showings (it had to be turned off during Popeye's premiere at the Chineese theater), so Raiders was switched to Dolby Stereo at the last minute - some minor remixing had to be done to accommodate the limitations of the Dolby logic decoding. The 70mm prints used the 4-track discrete VistaSonic mix unaltered except for the addition of Baby Boom subs. The DVD's 5.1 mix is the original VistaSonic mix so it's slightly different than the Dolby Stereo mix used on LaserDisc. The VistaSonic system was never used again - it had a nice logo though."

This is a quote from this forum. Unfortunately, the link to the original forum post doesn't point to the actual, original post and I've been too lazy to look it up, so it's unclear who came up with this information, but despite the unverifyability, he/she seems to be informed.

The information above also indicates that a rather aggressive noise reduction system has been used, which could've been dbx, which was far more "aggressive" than Dolby A.

I'm wondering however, how you could possibly turn it off mid show? Maybe if you're running changeovers, you could switch-over to a version with normal optical soundtracks or do you just switch over to analog sound, pretend it's mono and hope for the best? Especially with the aggressive noise cancelling being used, that must have sounded beyond awful.

[Marcel Birgelen]

In that era there was the proposal by the national film board of canada to use a ccd camera to read multiple optical tracks that just the outer edge of the modulation was recorded with a UV dye superimpossed over a regular VA track. Also at that time they with RCA was propossing the dual language print

So, the idea was to superimpose or maybe even modulate a "different language" version on top of the original bi-lateral variable area track, but color it in dye that would only be transparent for UV light? I wonder how you would construct such a film with the recording technology available at that moment.

[Gordon McLeod]

two different patents one ws a bilateral track with noise reduction one being french the other english the second system had a camera and a laser to scan the track

[Marcel Birgelen]

two different patents one ws a bilateral track with noise reduction one being french the other english the second system had a camera and a laser to scan the track

Both somehow feel horrible... but not horrible enough...

Imagine the following concoction that just came to mind after you mentioned lasers:
With a really tightly focused laser, you could, maybe, read a very narrow VD track, embedded in the core of the VA track, this being the "alternative version", then you could even compensate the VA track in relation to the VD track. Recording such a mess to film would be quite the challenge too.

[Sam Chavez]

There was no shortage of ideas. One was to put fluorescent dyes on the base side of the film. Back to the mundane for a moment. Here is what Cat. No. 566 looks like. I count 6 tracks out of 8 possible.