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I ran The Doors on 35 mm at the Coronet in Los Angeles for a week. It was great. Then we ran T2 in 70 mm at the Continental in Denver. The soundtrack failed after a couple of weeks and I never heared about CDS Digital again.

They had to have two kinds of prints, CDS and analogue. The industry hates duel inventory. Afew years later I was opening Downtown Plaza in Sacramento. We had 7 old movies we were running for the public for free. One of them was T2. I built them up in a hurry because we had no time. I hit the screen and the sound was Shuuu..... The first reel was CDS.

Bobby Pinkston was the fellow who ran the CDS program at ORC. He is now with Dolby.

Cinema Digital Sound (CDS) was the first commercial system to print a multi-channel digital soundtrack (bits) directly on the film. It was a joint project between Kodak and Optical Radiation Corporation (ORC). To a large extent, it led the way in convincing film makers, distributors and exhibitors that digital sound was viable in theatres. CDS was used for both 35mm and 70mm prints. The first major release was "Dick Tracy" in June 1990.

For 35mm prints, the CDS track was printed in the "protected" area used for analog sound, to wisely avoid projector abrasion and wear of the digital data. But by eliminating the analog soundtrack, "dual inventories" of prints were required, and there was no analog backup if the digital sound system failed. Some early (fixable) hardware problems gave CDS a "black eye" when the system failed without having analog backup. By 1992, Dolby and DTS came out with their systems, and CDS became history. It's "failure" was really a success story for film, as CDS paved the way for today's digital sound systems.

Perry Sun's "Movie Sound Page" has a good description of CDS written by Bobby Henderson. Here is the link:
http://www/moviesoundpage.com/msp_cds.htm

Another private web page has the original CDS brochure, specifications, and photos:
http://members.aol.com/cds3570/

I mistyped the CDS link on Perry Sun's Movie Sound Page:
http://www.moviesoundpage.com/msp_cds.htm

Projector wear and abrasion can be a problem with digital tracks printed along the edges or between the perforations of the film. Sooner or later, enough damage will occur to cause data error rates to increase. A proven way of reducing projector abrasion is proper print lubrication, per Kodak's processing specifications (H-24.02, H-24.09) and SMPTE Recommended Practice RP-151. Unfortunately, edge-waxing is rarely done anymore because of environmental restrictions on the solvents used to apply the wax.

The design, materials, and finish of the projector gate and sprocket shoe greatly affect projector wear. Proper cleaning and maintenance (alignment, tensions) of the film path is also very important to reducing projector abrasion, and the dusting/flaking of prints.

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