phd journal
A couple of frame grabs from the HD scan of Sea City Super 8 footage.
The lower image shows Kodak’s 7268 product code for Kodachrome 40 in the edge markings. The scanner was set to include the edge markings for a few feet of film. The upper image shows the framing for the actual transfer.
A number of films in my collection have accompanying audio on formats which changed over the years: audio cassette, a few reels of 1/4″ tape, DAT and solid state recording devices.
When searching for the original audio for the Sea City project recorded on DAT (Digital Audio Tape) I discovered my DAT recorder had expired – it turned on but would not play the tape. I contacted various friends and local organisations to borrow a player but all the machines had problems of one sort or another, seven machines in total!
A Panasonic SV-3800 DAT machine bought on eBay chewed up a tape
so was returned for a refund. It played a few tapes OK and these were captured via S/PDIF to the laptop.
Eventually I found a repairer in Ireland who fixed my Tascam DA-P1 – expensive!
Having been re-editing Sea Front with the newly-digitised HD footage my mind has moved to audio and whether to revamp the soundtrack. The audio for the larger project Sea City was recorded on DAT and MiniDisc (MD) which are both digital formats but require the recording to be played back in real-time.
As I write this, audio from around 2009 is being ingested over an optical digital cable in to the laptop and I’m hearing the sound of swifts, blackbirds – so a summer recording – and a distant police siren from an MD labelled ‘Garden ambience 28 May 09’. The disc holds 80 minutes of audio and by no means all of it matches the label.