[Early Film]

I wrote:
Please note that almost all projection sound heads today are not
optimized for B&W VD tracks.

Steve Kraus asks:

Are you talking about very currently (specifically reverse scan & red LED)
or just soundheads in general in recent times? If the latter in what way
were they lacking?


Most new installations that were optimized for color non-applicated or
non-silver tracks, will distort slightly when a B&W VA track is played
and will distort rather badly when a B&W VD track is played. This is a
problem for theaters sometimes showing archive prints. Usually a
compromise can be reached where both can be played, but neither is at
optimum quality.

My experience has been with complains on the archive prints. I'd rather
some one who has more experience projecting non-applicated prints or
maintaining projectors comment on that part of the problem. We frankly
are not hearing about this problem as much now as we did a few years ago
and I assume that the Archive theaters have reached a compromise setting.

One other not very good solution has been to make the B&W VD tracks
slightly thiner (lighter), but this adds to the noise level. This was
done in testing, but I'm not aware of it being done in practice.

Earl