James Stubbs

I'd hardly call an MD uncompressed. ATRAC compression on MD's is what started the entire compressed music format craze. MP3 etc. I agree that MP3's are total poop. WMA is a much better sounding CODEC. ATRAC is also an excellent CODEC as it tends to compress out things you don't want to hear anyway. eg: tape hiss. If you have one of the newer MD's they record uncompressed .WAV files to a newer disc format allowing hight quality recording times equal to a CD. I'm not sure of the prices of newer MD's but as far as the technical specs and abilites I would use one now. The older versions are why I own a DAT. Hummm.... Time for an equipment upgrade? Anyone ever hear of crystal sync for MD? Or Cable sync?

I use a Denon DTR 80P DAT. Very rare and hard to come by, but can be had for that price or less. If you can get one w/ the battery pack it will eat thought 6AA's in 4-8 hours depending on start/stop and battery type. Otherwise the beauty of these is you can use virtuallly any type of battery near 9V and plug it into the side. MD's are also excellent and will run a lot longer than a DAT on batteries. Both work extreamly well as they run at rock steady speeds. They have to or they wont work. Best part of course is using a sync tone circuit as above to caputure flash pulses for absolutley perfect sync in post. Another way super wild way to caputre sound is to simply use a Mini DV cam. If you're NLE dump them side by side and use the vid/sound from the DV to sync to your film. I haven't tried it, yet, but I will. I've been told that this method also works excellently. A good DV cam w/ a remote mic input that records sound in 16bits can easily be had for that price. Cheers, James

Kevin, Unless it's been well above room tempurature for extended periods of time your Kodachrome will come out just fine. As to the cost I'm not sure where you're sending it at $15 a whack, but the only Kodachrome processor in the world, Dwaynes, charges $10 per cartridge. That's only $30 plus $5 for priority mail. The best/cheapest way to get your K-chrome processed is to take it to Wal-Mart which costs only $4.88 and it will come back to your local Wal-Mart. Oh yeah guess where it ends up? Dwaynes via Fuji. Don't bother asking the photo clerk if they do it, they likely will say no or don't know. They do. Just put "Super 8 Film" on the envolope and it should find it's way to the nearest Fuji Lab and then to Dwaynes and back again. Should take 1-3 weeks. Cheers, James