Movies for TV - Early Television Foundation

128
FUNDAMENTALS
It will be found that four film frames have accounted for five tele-
vision frames, this is a ratio of 4 : 5 or 24 : 30. Of course, in the proc-
ess, something had to be removed and so it is that part
of each frame
is lost; however, owing to the overlap, this is not noticed by the
viewers provided due precautions are taken.
In some of the poorer film recordings, viewers will have noticed
a narrow light or dark bar which moves up or down on the screen.
This is known as a shutter bar or banding. It is caused by lack of
synchronization between the sync generator in the studio and the
in each
recording camera. Since this is effectively joining the point
frame where the old and new picture contents begin and end, it
is generally known as a splice. This should not be confused with a
film splice in which a physical joining between two pieces of film
stock is made.
It is one of the features of the system that a splice appears un-
avoidably in each frame. Therefore, since it cannot be removed,
the only thing to do is to minimize it in the best way possible. This
means, quite clearly, that the kinescope picture which is being
photographed must be perfectly steady with extremely accurate
registration; otherwise there will be a change in brightness or
content at the splice. This in itself will be sufficient to draw the
attention of the viewers to it.
From the foregoing, it will be seen that kinescoping is not as
But the reader of
simple as it might have appeared at first sight.
this book will not normally be expected to have much to do with
the technical side. However, the sound question has not yet been
cleared up, so further discussion is indicated.
In the chapter on sound equipment and recording the single
system was mentioned as tending to suffer from poorer quality
sound as well as difficulty in editing. The latter objection is of no
importance since editing is not needed (or should not be) in a
recording off the air. The former is of great importance. It was
shown that single system's sound troubles arose from the fact that
it was necessary to use fast emulsion for picture-taking and slow,
fine-grain emulsion for sound recording. Since the two were not
completely compatible one had to suffer, and it was sound. Even