Tweet Why would a 1931 film now be cropped on left hand side?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought if an early sound film appeared cropped on the left hand side it was because the film was originally sound on disk and when the soundtrack was later added to the film then the soundtrack would claim some of the image.

But what would explain cropping happening to 1931 films? Sound on disk was done with by that time I thought. The films I'm explicitly thinking of here are Everything's Rosie and Too Many Cooks which were recently on TCM.

Sound on disk was produced through 1937. Even though the standard was sound on film by then, there were still some theaters which had not made the switch by then. Depending on circumstances, a surviving print might be a Vitaphone print and if that's all there is...

Bob

It shouldn't be the case with any studio film after 1929. In November of that year, all of the studios that were part of AMPAS at that time agreed that they would alter their viewfinders to an optical soundtrack center, and shoot for a standard of .800" by .600", which was of course later refined in 1932 to .825" by .600" (aka the "Academy Ratio"). The only exception were the Fox studios, who continued to shoot in a slightly narrower image.

My guess is that the video masters that were prepared for these titles were done sloppily, without having had been calibrated with a test loop first, and that any cropping to the left portion of the image was coincidental.