Film editing is a different thing. You have to keep the sprockets distance right. There have been
editing jigs for film since the earliest days of film. With optical-sound film, you will hear pops
and ticks on edits because it's entirely possible to mate up different parts of a wave-form and it's
also very easy to scratch the emulsion, particularly with edge-only opto-sound. Really good sound
editors used to be able to go by the visible soundtrack on the film. As you probably know, the first
binaural-stereo recordings were done by Bell Labs on optical sound-film and re-released on LP in the
1970s. Stokowski and the Philly and they put some then-current many-mic/many-track records to shame
sound-wise.
By the way, editing mag-film has the same limitations as optical in that sprocket distance must be
maintained. There isn't much time between sprockets but there sometimes is enough to make an edit
difficult.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Lennick" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 10:59 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Quarter-inch splicing tabs
> "Richard L. Hess" wrote:
>
>> In some respects, I think we can credit Jack Mullin as the earliest
>> craft editor, working with scissors to edit Bing Crosby and Burl Ives
>> shows in 1947 on his Magnetophon transports with his own electronics.
>>
>> And yes, you can hear some of them.
>
> Even before then, MGM was editing on film to put together its soundtrack albums and
> cut production numbers down to three minutes..some of those edits sound as if they
> were done with an axe.
>
>> Were the Columbia pitch changes due to start-of-reel/end-of-reel
>> speed changes or what?
>
> That must have been the reason. Some glaring ones: Dinu Lipatti's Chopin Waltzes,
> very last track (side 1 I think), major pitch change right on the last note. EMI
> finally corrected that on the CD issue but we had to put up with that pitch change
> for over 30 years before that happened.
>
>> The worst edit I ever did was when we had the organ blower on for the
>> main take and then we did a pickup at the end and someone had turned
>> the organ blower off....
>
> The worst editing on a best-selling LP is on Vladimir Horowitz's so-called "live"
> recording of the Rachmaninoff 3rd Concerto on RCA. Parts are from the rehearsal,
> and the piano moves.
>
> dl
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