What are some regional trends in booth design, and is there any reason for them?

For example, I've noticed that changeover booths in New England commonly use a single pushbutton to activate picture and sound; footpedals are uncommon. By contrast, separate footpedals (for picture) and pushbuttons (for sound) seemed to be quite common when I was living in Virginia.

As another example, I've been told that rewind benches on the west coast commonly have footpedal speed controls, while I've never seen this anywhere on the east coast.

There's also the equipment factor--Strong platters being common in one area and Christies in others, etc.

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I don't see how you could manage otherwise! One hand on the brake for the supply reel, one hand to check the film, how would you be able to
control the speed of the film without a third hand?

As for single-pushbotton versus footpedal+pushbutton for changeover, umm, why would you ever want to design a system that let you changeover sound and picture independantly? That seems like asking for trouble!

--jhawk

Or course if you didn't get prints, sometimes, five minutes after the show was supposed to start, you could check the cue marks and you wouldn't have this problem.

Then again you could do what the owner of the D/I, that I run at one night a summer, does. Thread up on the picture, hit the motor 7 seconds after the motor que and immediately do the changeover. Boy do I hate that. He claims that you see the countdown if you thread up on the numbers.

Our custom automation system has a single button that normally changes over sound and picture, but if it is pressed a second time, it closes the Zipper and turns off the sound. So if there's a changeover error (due to incorrect cues or operator error or whatever), pressing the changeover button a second time gets you happy nothingness, and then pressing it a third time changes back over. (Our system has auxilliary controls to override this, but they're rarely used...)

--jhawk

John,
As for how you manage without a footpedal speed control? Not easily. It certainly sucks but manufacturers don't seem to pay attention to real-world conditions.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: here

quote:

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Why would you ever want to design a system that let you changeover sound and picture independantly? That seems like asking for trouble!

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Point #2 The other thing I have noticed is that if a given dealer/service company is comfortable with a certain set of equipment, they will put it in every time and for those customers that are not convinced, they will do their damndest to convince them. This makes things easier on their techs because they generally only have to deal with one kind of setup and it gets them better profit margins as they give all of their business to one manufacturer of cinema equipment. Plus, certain brands of equipment (like Strong inparticular) in their pre-wire status makes installation a joke. The installation tech has almost nothing to do, so they can get in and out of there and still collect lots of money. So in this form, if there is a company X that covers most of Maine and they love Strong equipment, you will find Strong equipment all throughout Maine, whether it is the best equipment for the particular job or not.

To the other John, you are still using a rewind with a brake? Get yourself a Kelmar RTV series rewind bench and do it right. Improper braking can damage film.

I think we have more Johns on this forum than Scotts.

1. Tube amplifier, paddle at each projector is connected by a long steel rod that runs through the amp and through a single three position switch. The switch switches between (a) right proj solar cell, (b) shorted to mute amp, (c) left proj solar cell. This is probably my most favorite changeover setup (can't beat the tube amp).

2. Using a digital processor and the same switch setup as above with rod, etc. removed from old tube amp. This time the switch is wired (changeover latched, not pulsed) (a) right proj circuit closed, (b) mute circuit closed or unused depending on processor, (c) left proj circuit closed.

3. Using a digital processor or tube amp or anything else. Three positon switch (or two pos. with no muteing - either right or left) wired to a bunch of relays or transistors that either pulse or latch the processor or switch the solar cell outputs.

With the third setup the switch is always being thrown in the opposite direction as last time, whereas the first 2 the switch is always up/right, middle/mute, down/left.

If there's an error, you simply don't open the hand douser until you know you're going to have a picture to show. This way you don't have to switch over before you can close the c/o shutter and mute the sound.

Also most c/o shutter buttons I've used around here are mounted in the pedastal, with the sound c/o to your right on the wall or amp. Motor switches seem to vary from pedestal mounted to wall mounted. I've only seen one c/o shutter foot switch at a drive-in (Elmvale, Ont. I think - which has nice comfy chairs to sit in and do the c/o).

As for equipment, from the Cineplex Odeon multiplexes (in Canada) that I've seen, they like (liked) to use Strong A3 platters and Cinemeccanica V5's. For sound they usually have a mix of DTS, SDDS and Dolby.

Having the same equipment throughout a chain might also indicate to head office a theatre that has more problems than they should, possibly due to inexperienced operators, etc., rather than 'I guess they got the bad brand of equipment'.

Around here, footpedals were the preferred method of picture changeover by a long shot. Nowadays, I tend to use toggle switches (on)-off-(on) to allow switching to ether projector from either projector for those systems that use the traditional zipper/kelmar style of changeover.

Steve

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It looks like you have to drag the film at an odd angle to splice (or holder the splicer over air). And I can't imagine how you'd run the film through a frame counter.

Or does the table extend out in the middle?

--jhawk