DCC Archive Some Interesting Stuff

Found this thought a few of you may be interested in this.A company that's done sound restoration and 5:1 mixes.These are from their newsletters,short articles on what was done and how they did it,a sample

Nov 1999
North By Northwest - A Monumental Restoration

It’s a case of mistaken identity for Cary Grant, also known as Roger Thornhill, in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 comic-thriller North By Northwest. The Academy Award-nominated film’s exciting pace and witty humorous edge finds Grant relentlessly pursued across America by enemy assassins, who mistake him for a spy. There is, however, no mistaking the audio identity of a new 5.1 multi-channel stereo version of the film, restored this summer at Chace, to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the release and the 100th birthday of Alfred Hitchcock.

Restoring and re-mastering the audio identity of Hitchcock’s film was a meticulous process that began with locating a suitable master soundtrack. Warner Bros. provided numerous source elements of North By Northwest, including seven 35mm, three-track stereo LCR (left, center, right) music source reels containing Bernard Herrmann’s original, unedited score, a 35mm music and effects mag, a 17.5mm dialogue stem and an edited 35mm dialogue, music and effects stem made in 1984 for an airline version of the film. While missing 30 minutes of original material, the airline version became the foundation for the entire project. To restore the missing material, sections were selected from the remaining sources.

Two of the seven 35mm stereo LCR music source reels proved especially problematic. These reels had deteriorated to the point where the film was literally stuck together and could not be loaded, much less played. Enter Optical Manager Thom Piper, who literally had the solution to playing the damaged reels. With the aid of a chemical mixture, affectionately dubbed "Piper’s Secret Vapors," the brittle and damaged film reels were relaxed, and their audio identities recovered.

The stereo music then went on to the drives of the Sonic Solutions workstations where Herrmann’s original score was edited, using the mono music and effects tracks as a guide. Cleanup of the dialogue and effects for numerous pops, ticks and other sound anomalies, as well as filtering and EQ adjustment were accomplished by NoNoise® Engineer Ivan Galan. Two inch, 24-track preservation copies of the raw and unprocessed, unedited music score, 17.5mm dialogue stem and 35mm airline mag were also made to provide complete backup of the source elements.

The final step saw the new track re-mastered into 5.1 multi-channel stereo. John Blum, Chace Digital Stereo™ programmer had a literal ‘field’ day in the famous crop-dusting sequence. Doppler effects and hard pans, cutting on the action, gave true directionality to the well-known sequence. The final mix, performed at the Rick Chace Theatre by James B. Young, and supervised by Ned Price, Vice President Mastering Technical Operations, Warner Bros., accentuated the potential of the Herrmann score. The main titles and "chace" sequence on Mount Rushmore are particularly effective in demonstrating the power of Herrmann’s work. Re-mastered for a contemporary, multi-channel stereo presentation there is never any question as to the authentic identity of this track.

or this from Nov'96

How the West Was Run

"The more things change, the more they stay the same," is a well-worn phrase that proved to be true in the Chace transfer/mastering department. While today's audiences are enjoying the "new" technology of 6 to 8 channel discrete stereo soundtracks, the fact is that movie-going audiences more than a generation ago experienced 6 to 8 channel discrete stereo at the theater. This fact was made evident when Turner Classic Movies Music / Rhino Movie Music sent the 35mm 7 track Cinerama music score mags of How the West Was Won to Chace for transfer.

Released in 1962, How the West Was Wonrepresented the final form of Cinerama that debuted in 1952 with So This is Cinerama. The Cinerama process, featured a 165º curved screen that was 75 feet long and 26 feet high, not unlike large format specialty theaters today.

Three projectors, each projecting a separate left, center, or right panel were needed to fill the huge screen. In order to create a tall enough image, the 35mm Cinerama frame was 6 sprocket holes high instead of the standard 4 perfs. To reduce distracting strobing during camera movements, like pans, the film traveled at 26 frames per second. The result was a non-standard film speed of 146.25 fpm (feet per minute). In later years when Cinerama films evolved from novelty films to narrative features like, The Wonderful World of The Brothers Grimm (1962) or How the West Was Won, the frame rate was reduced from 26 to 24 frames per second. The frame rate reduction made the film speed 135 fpm instead of 146.25 fpm. This permitted producers to mount reels of up to 13,000 feet in length to accommodate the longer feature films.

Because three projectors were required for a Cinerama presentation, making change-overs with conventional length reels would have necessitated 6 projectors in the booth. Too expensive a proposition for theater owners. So Cinerama films were shown in 2 parts with an intermission to allow the five man Cinerama projection and sound crew to change reels.

To complement the all-encompassing visual image, the Cinerama sound system used a separate 35mm 7 track fullcoat mag that ran on a separate playback unit in sync with the projectors. This 7 track mag could be formatted as 6 track stereo with mono surround or as 7 or even 8 track stereo with stereo surrounds. In some films the surround format would change within the feature. The Cinerama crew member responsible for sound would follow cue sheets indicating when patches and levels had to be changed during the program. There is no question that the expenses involved in producing and exhibiting in Cinerama prevented the format from gaining widespread acceptance.

In order to accurately transfer the music score for the 2-CD set of How the West Was Won, Chace engineers made the necessary changes to recreate the Cinerama sound format. The modifications included tracking down a 7 channel cinerama magnetic sound head and altering the speed of a mag machine for 135 fpm playback. With the modifications in place, transfer/mastering engineers Jeff Miller and Mark Curry transferred the scoring takes discrete to DA-88 digital cassettes. Because all of the material was music score, the tracks were formatted in a conventional 6 track format as left, left-center, center, right-center, right and surround. Though the mags were made well before the introduction of modern noise reduction systems, the faster film speed 135 fpm vs. 90 fpm, resulted in a much improved noise floor as well.

Multi-channel discrete stereo and improved noise reduction are the features expected of modern digital theater sound systems. The question is, are they really modern?

the site is here http://www.chace.com/chacerstoc.htm

**WARNING**
ANYONE SENSITIVE TO THE EXCESSIVE USE OF TERMS LIKE "NONOISE" & "SONIC SOLUTIONS"
LOOK ELSEWHERE !!!
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED !!!