Stitching Film Scans with Different Tracks

Overview

Ideally, all film that we scan is uniform, in that it is one film stock with none or one type of audio track. For example, educational classroom films are often a color print with optical audio. However, sometimes film has been compiled in a way in which there are different types of film stock or soundtracks on a single reel. Most of the time, we want to maintain the integrity of the object as one object, so we must do more than one scan or pass over the film to accurately capture the different tracks present. For example, our film scanner will not capture both optical and magnetic audio simultaneously, so these must be captured in two scans. Before you try to resolve this situation, it is important to first assess the situation based on the chart below:

Stitching Situations

• Uniform Picture (all positive or all negative), but Different Soundtracks
  • Two scans are necessary, one all the way through with primary soundtrack, and one with secondary soundtrack beginning at first frame of secondary soundtrack
• Different Picture, Uniform Soundtrack
  • Black and white with color can be on one reel together, but negative and positive together is best to separate. Coordinate with the film archivist to separate the negative section from the original film and assign a new unique ID and metadata to the negative section. Continue with a scan for each new film object.

Completing the Scans

There are