DUEL MEDIUMS
When we first began to hear about the coming "marriage" of hi-fi and television a good many years back, most of us thought of it simply as a sort of merger of two businesses, if at the time they were rather thoroughly incompatible in their philosophies. Television, better known now in the larger sense as video, was in every way removed from our smaller audio biz, and notably our hi-fi end. We had two industries, or rather groups of industries, which were utterly out of sync both in technology and viewpoint, and they were to be married! Desirable, of course--but how? Somebody was going to have to adjust, i.e., compromise. And we were all too certain it would be us, the junior partner in the marriage contract. And so it was, predictably, for a while.
No longer. As suggested in my first articles on the mini-mogul Jac Holzman, founder of the Elektra and Nonesuch labels and now chief technologist for the Warner Communications/Time Inc. group and top man in Cinema Products, the centers of argument have drastically changed. Hi-fi sound and moving pictures, both in the consumer areas and in the huge commercial markets, are already far into each other, and very rapidly moving into further integrations. It is inside this vigorous volcano, the biggest in the entertainment world, that the fierce arguments now occur, in the press--alas--and in the circles of technology. Of course confusion reigns, and indeed, it pours.
In making the point that Jac Holzman has significantly landed not in video, but in film, after his notable days as part of audio, I did not mean to suggest that it is "either/or" with him--either the new HDTV video or the established but still highly dynamic film medium, photography via chemical agents. Far from it. Lately, HDTV has been in the limelight of big publicity--largely ill-informed. Somebody, as I've already noted, has to take the side of the older medium, to restore an objective balance for the good of the whole combined industry. Too few of us are aware of film's immense advantages in certain areas of production. The hoopla about HDTV misleads us all; film has had most of what HDTV offers for many years, and has many more advantages in its special areas, notably "HD" itself-high definition--but also immense superiority in picture sensitivity and in the vital parameters of hi-fi color rendition, as noted last month. Most of all, to recapitulate, film offers a dependable long-time standard of interchangeability, past and present; further, film has the immense advantage (not true of audio) of a fixed and simple mechanism that is never out of date, plus concentrated R & D on the film itself, where virtually all the important updating occurs.
The heart of the matter lies, however, in the use of both kinds of photography--let's call them chemical photography (light-writing) and magnetic photography--each of which has special qualities. We should have sense enough to see this. But we don't. It's the marvelous integration of two incredibly refined areas of technique which is in the works and will count in the end-with audio subservient but, nevertheless, right at the center of the integration. Holzman is so excited at this true prospect that he waxes almost poetic, if his poetry is a bit solemn: "There are clear advantages to each medium, but the choice whether to originate in film or video should be based upon the ultimate intention of the production. Video has a kind of plastic immediacy; film has subtleness and romance. Video brings you up close; film has a softer objectivity." "Hear, hear," is all I can say! But the man is also entirely aware of the technical details on each side. Having run his own record companies for most of a generation, he goes right on from poetic generalities to specifics: "A production is not just about capturing images, whether it be on video or film; it is equally about post-production, the editing, manipulation and sometimes digital creation of images to form a synthesized whole. It is here that film, computers, and video can serve each other seamlessly and well." How's that, you, audio professionals? He sounds almost like an audio man--though we must always note that in visual motion-picture entertainment, the old audio artistic motto, hi-fi reproduction of the original, does not exist and never has existed because, of course, there is no film original. One of these days, I'm hoping, we will understand that except in the technical sense of quality, our audio recording is exactly the same--and always has been.
And so Holzman goes right on: "Routinely, most dramatic television ... is shot on film, with the use of video assist for instant replay, and then edited either on film or transferred to video and edited within a video environment." Integration where it matters, you see. Film, for its basic quality; video, at this preliminary stage, only for instant playback, which not even Polaroid can do in the film medium. But if the editing is on video, Holzman warns that, for total integration, "The film negative should be conformed to the video -determined edit decision list so that transfers to formats such as PAL, which have nearly 20% more scanning lines than NTSC, can be achieved without loss of quality." Also HDTV? Those in the audio profession, particularly the digital end, can see how familiar the film/video integration is going to be, when pictures are "married" to audio. Here's more of the same, a revelation that should be accomplished fact in the photo industry by now. "Kodak," writes Holzman, "recognizing that film would benefit from an easier and virtually automatic method to conform negative to video edit decision list, will introduce in August 1989 a latent image barcode, positioned so that it will relate to the man -readable edge numbers the film editors have used for years. The introduction of Keycode at no additional cost on all EXR film stocks makes it possible to 'print' takes to be routinely transferred to video containing the Keycode numbers within the user bit structure of the SMPTE time code. No record needs to be kept of film takes after that. Once video post-production is complete, the film negative cutters' edit decision list is automatically produced and the original negative is then easily conformed to the video 'answer print.' " Admittedly, for the casual reader of this magazine, the Holzman account is rather technical. My own head spins a bit at this point, since I am not that close to the film studio! But I know that the audio man who works on his own type of up-to-date editing of sound will instantly see how the techniques are converging toward similar ways of thought and, very soon now, into total integration between film and video--plus the audio that is in both or either, depending on the stage of production.
Holzman does not mention audio at this point, but obviously it is there, not only coded into the picture timing but necessarily part and parcel of the picture sequence-if mostly after the editing is complete at the dramatic end.
I can't help thinking, on our audio side, of the remarkable advance introduced by the MIDI type of digital integration, whereby, in a similar way, the ins and outs of a variety of instruments, synthesizers, and such are made compatible with each other for easy transfer of audio information; also of machinery such as Colossus, a mighty name for what is, essentially--if I am right--a very ingenious "inter-medium" for transferring digital info all over the place, from one format and/or type of equipment to another. This is the crux, of course, in every aspect of the Great Integration, in pictures and sound.
I promised a mention, last month, of one specifically audio bit of information in the material Holzman sent me. It was not in his magazine article but in a reprint of a technical piece by Ed Di Giulio, founder of Holzman's Cinema Products, and was published in International Photographer. It's about the rise, fall, and present re-rise of large size, 70-mm moving-picture film since the 1920s. Obviously, the large size- far more expensive to produce and to equip than the normal 35 mm-was intended for fancier quality in very large-screen projection. The Todd AO process, which many will remember, was introduced with fanfare in the mid-'50s, but its cameras, it seems, actually were wide-screen machines from the late 1920s used by Fox Studios. (Holzman makes the point that film cameras do not go out of date in their basic film transport and lens systems.) Oddly, those 1920s cameras were 65 mm, not 70. Todd AO added the extra millimeters to the production print for-guess what? Two magnetic soundtracks on each side outside the film perforations, plus two more inside. That's no less than six soundtracks, all magnetic, back in the 1950s.
The Depression, at near bottom in 1930, finished off the original Fox 65-mm film, but the late-20s cameras were put safely away. The "AO" in Todd AO, when they were resurrected, was for American Optical Company.
Their performance update increased the frame speed to 30 fps, but the films also had to be released in 24 fps, which was much too costly. Later on, there were Panavision and Super Panavision and Ultra Panavision, with further gimmicks on the same basic system, including various lens-produced squeezes (exactly parallel to our compression/expansion circuitry) for the wide screen. Then, alas, cost being cost, there were cheaper blow-ups from 35 mm to the 65 -/ 70-mm size. All of these, I assume, still included the six soundtracks that gave us the 1950s' "surround" effects, or at least a wide- stage sound, which followed after the famous Fantasia presentation.
That took the original 65-mm film, become 70-mm for multiple-track sound, right up into the '70s. But with failing success. Familiarity, as usual, breeds a certain amount of contempt, if not indifference. Then--aha! Guess what, again? You have to know: Of course--Dolby. Tailor-made for Mr D., and isn't he always in there when Opportunity knocks? Dolby and Holzman are remarkably alike in their respective areas. If Holzman got in fast on the new market possibilities for the stereo LP of the 1960s, Dolby saw the light (and the sound) right in time to transfer his attentions from home-type Dolby B NR and C NR to those ailing movie theaters desperately needing some sort of big-space innovation to counter small-space home video. Why not the Big Sound-Dolby Stereo? And the catch that matched was the old large-screen, large-film format, with its handy six magnetic tracks right out of the 1950s! So large-screen film is now resurrected, and largely thanks to audio. As the DiGiulio article says, more and more first -run theaters are now equipped to show 70-mm presentations in Dolby, first of all, and in dbx NR and Lucas, with more to come.
"The six magnetic soundtracks on a 70-mm release print were ideally suited to provide multi-channel high-fidelity sound in the theater," writes DiGiulio--and this from a cinema professional in a photo magazine. Audio is getting in there, swinging its real weight.
All the pioneer Dolby system lacked, of course, was the most radical aspect of current audio, also lacking in most video and in professional film releases-digital sound. If I may say so, this is not because Ray Dolby is an ignoramus. It is the industry which consumes analog audio, and Dolby goes along, optimally as usual. There is Dolby for 35 mm too, things being as they are. And for the home VCR. But the optimum format comes with the ultimate in film size and a system now almost 40 years old.
When digital sound finally overcomes analog in the video/film unity we are now working out, you audio professionals will have your biggest chance.
All you need is a bit more technical refinement, to mesh with all those other refinements. Holzman, from the film side, is right and so is DiGiulio--and Dolby. We in audio are coming of age in the biggest entertainment of all.
(by: EDWARD TATNALL CANBY; adapted from Audio magazine, Jan. 1990)
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