Film - A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression - page 54

16 mm

16 mm format

Imaging area
9.65 mm x 7.21 mm

Figure 4-8 16mm film dimensions.

mechanism to smooth out the motion so that the film can be passed over the sound pickup
at a constant speed. The audio bandwidth is limited by the speed of the film and the grain
size of the emulsion.
The image size for standard 16mm film is 9.65mm 7.21mm, and using the reference

point of 115 pixels per mm as the highest resolvable scanning quality, a maximum image
size of 1110

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829 is possible. This is coincidentally similar to emerging HDTV standards,
making the 16mm material suitable for transfer to HDTV. The perceived viewing quality
will be slightly less than video that is shot at HDTV resolution due to the grain size.

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4.8 Home Movie Formats

There were mainly three movie film formats used by amateur photographers before the
introduction of portable VHS equipment in the 1970s:

Pathé baby 9.5mm, used until around 1950

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Standard 8mm, popular during the 1950s and 60s

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Super 8mm, popular during the 1970s until video replaced it in the 1980s

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4.8.1 Pathé Baby 9.5mm

During the early to middle part of the 20th century, the 9.5mm format was widely used.
The archives are likely to contain quite a lot of interesting material shot by enthusiastic
amateurs in this format. The 9.5mm format was unusual in that it had a single center-
located sprocket, where all the other formats either have sprocket holes at both sides of the
film for professional use or down one side only for amateur/semi-professional use. This
is shown clearly in Figure 4-9.