IML: Can Anybody Digitize Sound From 33-1/3 Records?

[Tony Lindsey <papatony@xxxxxxx>]

Oddly, despite the unusual Subject line, this message is ALL about 
Imperials and education for generations to come.  There's a team 
building up right now to complete an absolutely awesome project, and 
they are looking for folks to help out:

Joe Machado and I are co-owners of a huge collection of Chrysler 
Corporation educational filmstrips, records and other such great stuff. 
These were the prerequisite study-materials for your Imperial's 
shop-manual. If your shop-manual seems a bit, ummmm, OBSCURE sometimes, 
it's because it was written with the assumption that you (an aspiring 
Master Technician) had already watched these films, read the booklets, 
and had been signed off on them by your shop supervisor.

To get a superb taste of what is out there, check out what the team has 
already accomplished online. There is NOTHING like this anywhere else 
on the planet, it's free, and it's bleepin' awesome:

<http://www.imperialclub.org/Repair/Lit/Master/index.htm>

If you watched the films for these booklets forty or fifty years ago, 
you would have sat near a roaring filmstrip projector. The projector's 
fan had to blast a lot of air to cool down the projector's light-bulb, 
or else the films would instantly fry. The record-player would play the 
soundtrack, and every once in a while, a loud "DING!" would signal the 
audio-visual guy to press the button that moved the filmstrip one more 
frame. There's not a lot of motion, just one frame for a few seconds, 
and then another. The films were meant to be interesting and 
educational for ANY level at all.

Moving forward to the next millennium:

We now have the chance to convert these films once and for all, 
forever. The magic of digitization allows us to re-create these 
educational films in a manner that doesn't require finding obscure 
light-bulbs or hard-to-find parts for a filmstrip projector.  No need 
to track down needles for the record-player.  Just double-click on a 
movie file and enjoy the ride.

Here's a proof-of-concept example (it's 55 megabytes):

<http://homepage.mac.com/papatony/MTSCdemo.mp4>

If you don't have Quicktime Player, you can get it for free at 
http://www.quicktime.com

The soundtrack for the demo film is NOT the proper one, because we 
haven't digitized the sound of any of the records yet.  You might get a 
giggle from it, though.  It's a couple of routines from John Pinette, 
who is my favorite comedian.

Try to imagine this film with an appropriate soundtrack. Now, imagine a 
DVD full of these films.  Then, imagine having HUNDREDS of these films 
available for future generations to treasure and learn from, without 
having to go through finding the old film-canisters and records, buying 
them, matching the records to the films, tracking down filmstrip 
equipment that is still functional, and all of the rest of the crapola.

The team now has a high-quality film-scanner to bring the films into 
digital format. They now need somebody to play the records and digitize 
the soundtracks into MP3 format.  Ideally, good-quality software should 
be used for the digitizing process, so that cracks, pops and other 
distractions are automatically minimized.  If you're using a Mac, CD 
Spin Doctor works really well.

So, who wants to help?  Many hands make light work, folks.  This is a 
project that will have huge, huge benefits for future generations.  
Leave a legacy!



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