How to tell if your Super 8 film has sound.

Cine film with sound is easy to spot, Super 8 sound film has 2 light brown ferric tape strips along the edge of the film as seen in the picture. To check just gently unroll the film from the white leader. 

This gives 2 tracks of audio, mostly there is 1 recorded track from the microphone on the camera so the sound matches the pictures. The second sound track was called the balancing track, this was sometimes dubbed with voice over or music and you could mix the 2 tracks on a standard projector using the sound controls.

So how do we go from this to a high definition digital file with sound and pictures in perfect sync?

Firstly we clean and then scan the film cells, this will give us a high quality image from every frame of film, this is scanned allow speed to give super sharp images. Next we run the film at a locked 18 or 24 frames per second to give us an audio recording.

Perfect Sync.

Using a non linear editor we match up the film and audio file. This will keep perfect sync through the duration of the film from 3 minutes to over 30 minutes. This also gives us the opportunity to improve the sound by reducing tape hiss, adding EQ to improve the sound and even reduce wind noise.

If you have Super 8 Sound films and would like them transferred to digital then there is no better time than to do it. More info on our scanning service is here.