I've heard on more than one occasion recently collectors saying that it is simply too time consuming to ever be bothered when it comes to remastering a sound track.

This is both when films are already in a foreign language as well as when they may need improvement for one reason or another.

I've heard this said now on both forums in recent times, but then I saw that Hugh went to painstaking lengths to re master a double digest back into English in the past, by just using the wild sync approach. All credit to Hugh here, this is a real tricky thing to achieve!

So I ask the question simply as a consensus here,

Would you be prepared to take the time out to do this act if you thought you would achieve all what you want by doing so?

Are our films worth this level of effort from us in your opinions?

It will be interesting to see how many , let's say, would enjoying doing a few shorts ,but perhaps wouldn't be interested in doing a lengthy feature, for example?

I wish I could master the art if re-recording. I have some I'd love to get English sound on. But if you miss by microseconds it will feel wrong.

I need to start trying. I have some Tom & Jerry films and think cartoons might be easier

Definitely worth the effort Vidar. I think the cartoons would be a good place to start because very few have anything missing from them, unlike the feature's. Thing is you have the
GS 1200 with the pulse sync already built in, which should make it easier to do, if you got all the connecting bits of course. Why don't you have a go, youtube for the sound and match this to your film sound track. I have quite a few features I need to do and some 400ft, some of the features don't even have a sound stripe on them, balance or otherwise, so that will be tackled first, but I have a plan for those. Which tom and jerry are you trying to change over Vidar, I may have these in English, perhaps I could record them for you and you could have a go at matching them up. If Hugh can get some success with his on the fly transfer from tape to film, full marks to him for sticking with it, bloody hard work but a great sense of satisfaction when you know its all your own work.

The Tom and Jerry is Posse Cat and I have four of them, two with sound faults. Also Jerry and the Goldfish. Dumbo I need to do also along with the 200' Star Wars

Mountain of the Cannibal God is the one I would like to get English sound on. If you have the 3x400' with English, I'd love to get that. Saves the editing work

Hope to get some energy to start testing

Its a very subjective outlook as to whether any film is worth the time
and effort to re-record the soundtrack .
So its up to the individual to decide in the end.
As for me the answer is no. I cant be bothered and don't have the time
or patience involved in this day and age.
However I would quite happily let someone else do it for me.

I think it would be worth it, but at the moment I simply don't have the time with work and everything else. Also like Vidar I couldn't bear it if it was out of sync for just a short while as you would always notice it. However just adding a music soundtrack is ok.

Graham S

Some great answers so far everyone, and already a very split verdict. It will be interesting to see others replies to see where the majority of collectors stand on this, even theoretically.

What I will say to those who maybe haven't even ventured into this aspect of collecting is,
It can be extremely time consuming, on average, it usually takes me at least around 4hrs before I'm entirely satisfied I have a 600ft run of film exactly right.

I've been lucky on some days and done this amount in an hour once all the preparation is done, but some reels just differ ever so slightly from the digital master for various reasons, and so you find yourself cutting in and out of scenes to patch over where the differences occur.

So a couple of days, in a quiet room doing a typical shift length you would do for your employer. To record an average feature. With practice and a decent permanent set up, only perhaps 30 minutes for a 10 minute cartoon.

Gauge your views from this if you like, and theoretically, I look forward to your answers for those who have never ventured down this route and of course, equally, for those who have put in the hours to have a go at this.

Thought about trying to do one I have with German sound 1x400ft. What would be fantastic is to get the 5.1 sound and be able to sync up every time.

Good topic and thanks for those kind words Andrew. I'd say, if you think you can do it, have a go, Vidar has the right approach,
a cartoon, although there is lots of sync with bangs, explosions and the like. When I first launched into re recording the soundtracks on
various films, it was a bit tougher than now, you had to be familiar with the soundtrack in order to transfer in a rough cut the parts used
in your film. Back then, being as there were no video tapes, I purchased a lot of soundtrack tapes from Mr Robert Blenheim in Pennsylvania, he used to advertise in FXRH with 4 track 3 3/4 inch tape soundtracks. Of course there was TV, but patience had to be employed in the wait for your film being screened. The films I did were the 2x200 KING KONG, WAR OF THE WORLDS, WHEN DINOSAURS
RULED THE EARTH, the Americom FRANKENSTEIN & DRACULA 200's, these had to be sent off for stripe application, then FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE & MY NAME IS NOBODY, Marketing films. I patiently worked my way through the Italian FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, only to find that the massacre of the Baxters in the film was
drastically cut by the BBC, I worked my way through it, but decided to put it back into Italian, luckily, the chap I'd bought it off, had kept a cassette of the soundtrack, unfortunately his projector ran a tad slow. I tried using a light dimmer switch to try to adjust speed, but to no avail, so Chris
Taylor of "Movie Maker" advised a wind of sellotape around one of the wheels in the cassette recorder, result: success, That was then a relatively easy re tape. The projector I used was the ELMO ST1200,a recent purchase at the time, but the facility for recording was a boon, very simple and it allowed me to make soundtracks with no clicks and pops on sound, simply by overlapping the sound, by this I mean after the sync has drifted, let it run a few feet, take it back to your last point of sync, on tape as well, start them up, then just
slip it into record and you have another bit if soundtrack recorded with no clicks! When I was asked by my supplier of these films, could
I send the Marketing KING KONG 4x400 to Bill Davison of "Movie Maker" for review in his pages, I enclosed FEW DOLLARS, which he was
suitably impressed by. So even with the basics, it is possible to redub foreign tracks, it should be even easier now with the advent of
video & DVD, just using patience, as the cut downs use short sequences, so holding sync should only be for short periods. Anyway, try
some dry runs without actually re recording, just as a test, it kept me out of the pub for a while back then, but it was very rewarding
to show these films with a soundtrack that can understood by your audience. Vidar, I'll say again, I have the 3x400 of "Cannibal God"
that you can use to transfer back into German your print. In answer to the question, are they worth it, well if it adds to a pleasurable
experience and makes you happy, of course they are.

Hi Andy & all, re-recording is something i would like to be able to do, unfortunately for me it is simply time. Our own home movies years ago were the ones i tinkered with using cassette players etc. I know today's equipment is better and easier but i have never really ,(fortunately) had a need to do so with one exception. As mentioned before my first 4 x 400 foot feature was the Texas Chainsaw. I returned part 4 as it was out of sync by around 4/8 frames, its only noticeable on around 2 or 3 scenes as most of the reel is just "noise". Unfortunately Iver films returned it telling me i cut off too much leader for them to be able to do which utterly pissed me off as i never removed anything other than a nip at the end to feed it through, personally i think they pulled the wool over my eyes. It's never bothered us too much but as Andrew correctly said before, if you need to re-record one part it's best do the whole film so as to have matching volumes and quality, i do whole heartedly agree also, that re-recorded films are generally much higher quality than the standard as supplied. We have a full length Grease scope feature which was supplied on 2 1200 foot spools and also re-recorded into stereo by the previous owner and it is superb.
Being the owner of the Elmo 1200HD range it is as you know not the ideal machine for recording for obvious reasons, watching films they are fine but i would not use them for recording.
But yes we would like to record very much but it is simply a time factor for me. If i got hold of the 3 x 400 of cross of iron i would certainly have a go as our home movies we did with music etc were easy and very good quality. I think Hugh has done his the way we would with patience and perseverance & i bet it looks and sounds Great.
I agree it's definatly worth it if it improved the film and you have ideal equipment to do it.

Vidar, they are two I don't have, coor blimey mate, I have some quite rare one's too on film. I may have them on vhs though I will check for you.

I do have the DVD of Cannibal, but the job seems intimidating. I might try it some day, as I have two of these 3x400' one almost soundless and the other German dubbed. I can't stand Miss Undress (eh, Andress) screaming Hilfe, hilfe :-) Difficult to enjoy it properly

The sound can be recorded onto audacity ( free download) , and with this you can put the sound on one channel and a blip track on the other using audacity. You can output them as a stereo track to the gs, blip track to the pulse side and sound track to the other side. This square wave (blip track) will lock the gs to the incoming pulses, all you need to do then is to start the elmo at a set point to get sound and picture together. if you do a test run with the pulse meter to get it to stay in the centre, all you need to do is get the start right, the projector should stay in snyc for at least a cartoon length if not longer. You will need to do some trial and error stuff to get this good, but its not impossible. The elmo use's similar technology as the beaulieu. The guy on the other forum did some excellent work to simplify checking this with a digital meter which allow you to monitor the frequency so that you can adjust the speed to 24 pulses per second which means the projector can be checked when your doing any film sound transfers. This I believe could be used to adapt the goko editor to do the same thing because it has the speed adjustment. You would need to retro fit a reed switch to the goko and a socket to get the meter to check the speed, but you could get it quite accurate with this, probably good enough to do your films with a some point.

Great reply there Tom thanks and Paul's Audacity (or similar audio software) is great advice for the pulse sync GS owners among us!

Get the beginning spot on, the rest is done for you! Such an easy method, it almost feels like cheating to Hugh and I ha ha ha.

It is encouraging to people like myself to see that there is a desire for many to try to and improve or record in other languages etc, if a method can be found for each of our machines that makes this plausible and not too time consuming....interesting!

Food for thought indeed.

well, if i do get my hands on that 3 400 croos of iron i will be having a go at that and will be on here for much advise as possible

I'm in the process of having a go at re recording, taking it one step at a time using the GS1200, had some great advice just need to put it to use, will report my results

I've done features and they are not too time consuming provided the cuts are the same. I had to ADD sound to a 3 x 400 Warriors digest New in the box! R2 had no sound. It was never recorded! So I imported the movie file into Quicktime and then made the edits to match the R2 digest. Then it was a matter of starting it at the correct point and all good to go.
However I tried to do "Way of the Dragon" UFA 3 x 400. I was told that what UFA did was take the first 20 minutes of the master and the digest was the first 20 minutes of the feature with no cuts. R2 was the first 20 minutes of the next reel and so on. Wrong. The digest had so many cuts it was a headache and I gave up. Literally a few seconds were taken out of almost every minute of film. Crazy.
I found the same problem with the "Godzilla vs. the Thing" UFA 3 parter. So now I watch both in the German language. Good thing is Godzilla's roar is universal as is Bruce Lee's shout! :)
But if you have good stripe...the re-recorded sound is much better than the standard sound that usually was recorded on the stripes. I am assuming that the film companies most likely added sound at 2x speed to save time?
There are a handful of films I got from the company that released it that I would say sounded great. And "Gremlins" was one of them. Great sound with nice stereo separation.
Forgot to add that before Pedro of the Syncbox fame disappeared he was making me a sync unit for the Goko 8008. He said I would send him the unit, he would add the reed switch and we would be good as gold! Than he disappeared. Sigh.

Alan, he did you a favour mate so far as the Goko's are concerned! If he'd have made you a sync pulse unit for the T610 with the necessary motor drive electronics, well that would have been something to mourn over had it not come off!

With the Goko, he saved you a whole load of wasted money, time , and effort!!


Be thankful you never ever thought to say " Bauer T610 first, please,every day of the week!."

Now then you'd have had a tool worthy of any recording task!

The Goko loses sync due to the lack of any driven sprockets to maintain accurate feed rate.

The actual drive is highly accurate and infinitely variable to begin with, it's just the issue with frictional losses from the capstan rollers on these that's the issue.
You get away with it at small reel sizes, but by the time that same motor is winding 600ft of film onto the take up reel, it becomes a very different story due to the total reliance of friction between the driven steel capstan roller and the non driven rubber capstan roller. Especially with the use of filmguard on any of your films.
It just becomes a warbling mess the longer the reel lasts.

Hi Alan, I sympathise, those German editors are terrible on some digests, actually the "Dragon" is 4x400 from UFA, which is 70 mins
or so, I prefer the foreign dialogue on Bruce's Chinese escapades, as the English dub is terrible dialogue. All these computer downloads
as far as I can make out, are fine for a continuous recording, but pretty poor on tight edits, indeed the old synchronisers like the Carol,
or Cirse would be just as good using 3 3/4'' tape.

Oh yes. My mistake it is the 4 x 400. I did have a Bauer t610 which had the sync module. But I never got to use it because the claw went on the machine! I didn't have the good sense to remove the board at the time ( the little sync board attached to the main board) so I sold the machine later on.

Arghhh!!

Even a photo of it would have been priceless now!😁