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This created a number of problems for the film laboratories. The placement of the sound track
inside the perforations, meant the image had to be reduced in size and then re-centred to avoid
cropping any picture area on the left side of the image.

A comparison of some early releases of originally silent films, now with added sound track or
sound on disc films re-released as sound on film shows that this was not always done, often the
image was just cropped and screened with some of the picture area at the left of the screen
missing. This is a particular problem with many of the early Chaplin films, where the intertitles
are badly cropped at the left, often with parts of words missing.

The illustrations below show the results.

Left: A full frame silent release Right: A formerly full frame film with added sound track -
Note: there has been no attempt to centralise the image.
Below: Title frames from the DVD release of Men O’War. The image at the right has been
centralised, but at the expense of further cropping of both sides and the top.

March 2020 REEL DEALS 11