From: Robert Schaller (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Feb 21 2009 - 19:59:45 PST
On 2/21/09 6:56 PM, "Rob Danielson" <email suppressed> wrote:
> One can drive a Pageant projector with an external motor by extending
> the threading knob shaft with a coupler and use Boston pulleys and a
> belt.
I've used a system built by Magnasync/Moviola that does exactly this:
piggy-backs a second motor onto the back of a Pageant, and then these motors
are wired together so that they only run at the same speed. Works great,
and I've gotten a lot of use out of the system. It seems a little primitive
and imprecise, though; it requires a bit of attention while running make
sure that the loop doesn't lose a frame, but that's probably inevitable with
film projectors. It also requires a massive "regenerator" to handle the
start-up surge to stay in-sync if you are syncing more than three
projectors. It seems to me that a more modern and elegant solution would be
to replace the projector motors with stepper motors (or use them like the
piggy-back motors?), and coordinate them with TCP/IP or MIDI. Has anyone
out there done something like this? George Coates had a two-projector
system in his San Francisco theater that had a sync controller by Thingm,
running Bell and Howell projectors that had had their motors replaced with
steppers, but I never got any information on how it worked or saw it in
action...
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.