VINEGAR SYNDROME - A QUERY

[earlytalkiebuffRob]

I have only recently come across mention of 'vinegar syndrome', which seems to be fatal to prints. However, I read a piece by Mike Gebert on the 2007 Cinesation regarding the showing of one such print. What puzzled me was how 'vinegar syndrome' affects the chemical composition of the print, and why does it not pass on any problems to other prints via the projector. To those knowledgeable of technical matters, this might be a silly question, but I guess its name just suggests a print becoming moist and acid-smelling! And does this only apply to 'safety' film?

[Richard P. May]

So-called "vinegar syndrome" is acetate decomposition of the film base. It gives of a gas which, being based on acetic acid, smells like vinegar.
If the affected film is kept together with other acetate based film, the gasses can be contagious, thus making the unaffected film eventually "catch" vinegar. Running affected film thru a projector shouldn't do any harm, as the gas will not lurk around the film path. It is not as if something harmful is being deposited in the projector.
Actually, getting the vinegar film out, rewinding it occasionally to air it out, can possibly be helpful.
Prints on polyester (Kodak's trade name "Estar") can not catch vinegar.

The above opinions will now start a whole string of opposing viewpoints.

[BenModel]

Here's some more on VS, from the Dr. Film blog. Many of us have had successes with the treatment discussed in the post.

Click to read "The Religion of Vinegar Syndrome"

Ben

[Ray Faiola]

The most important treatment for a film that is on its way to Vinegarville is to let it breathe. Do not enclose it. If the film is not too far along, it may survive. House it on plastic, not metal, reels.

Do the tear test - if you tear a portion of the film and it tears like cotton instead of tearing like acetate, then it may be beyond salvation.

The cause of vinegar syndrome is heat. At some point in a film's life it was subjected to very high heat for an extended period of time. That is what starts the chemical reaction. And it can take several years before symptoms show themselves. Some rejuvenation processes were responsible for the heat factor.

As stated above, estar/mylar/polyester prints do not contract vinegar syndrome.

I have lost dye transfer prints of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and THE SEARCHERS to vinegar. This is a very bad thing.

[earlytalkiebuffRob]

Thank you for these posts. To someone as non-technical as I am, it seemed confusing that one could project a film suffering from this condition. Until now, I would have guessed 'vinegar syndrome' to be a consequence of forgetting certain birthdays and anniversaries...

[Jay Schwartz]

Ray, I've never heard your theory that heat is the main culprit in vinegar syndrome. I've heard many other theories: rejuvenation processes, improper lab processing/washing, inadequate ventilation, or combinations of any of these. Plus, of course, age itself -- the Image Permanence Institute's report on VS predicts that acetate film stored at room temperature has an expected lifespan of just 50 years, if I recall correctly. So many prints are on borrowed time.

Of course, it's hard for anyone to make definite predictions, because it is very rare to know the complete processing, usage and storage history of an old film print, unless we made it and kept it ourselves.

Can you tell me why you state this so definitively?

Another collector once told me, "Well, they finally figured out what makes Eastman Color fade: bright light. Projecting film fades it." And this may well be a contributing factor, but I've had many Eastman Color prints fade on the shelf, in darkness.

[martinola]

The cause of vinegar syndrome is heat. At some point in a film's life it was subjected to very high heat for an extended period of time. That is what starts the chemical reaction. And it can take several years before symptoms show themselves. Some rejuvenation processes were responsible for the heat factor.

I'm with Ray on this. As the resident family film nerd, I was called upon to salvage/transfer about 14 hours worth of 16mm that my sister-in-law's father shot between 1929 and 1958. The films were stored in the San Marino, California family home (no air conditioning) from new until 1998. Early on he edited his reels into two catagories: Family and Vacations. Year by year the Vacation reels went into long-term storage upstairs in the attic.

Vinegar syndrome was present in the extreme in the reels that had been stored in the attic while the reels that had stayed in the living quarters had little to none. Both sets of reels spanned the entire range of 1929-1958 and had similar types of stocks (ie: Kodachrome, Kodak B&W, Agfa B&W, Agfachrome, etc.). In this case, the storage conditions were known since new. As far as I can tell, the only different factor was the extreme heat/cooling cycles in the attic.

Vinegar syndrome is a nasty beast. We lost some very cool images from the 1930s and 1940s. Even though Acetate doesn't burn, Vinegar syndrome will destroy film as certainly as Nitrate decomposition will.

- Martin

[Michael O'Regan]

I agree with all that's been said already, other than the fact that VS is contagious. I've never been convinced of this. The condition arises within a film. It doesn't start from without. Storing a non-VS print alongside a VS print may of course result in the non-VS print acquiring a vinegar smell.

[Jim Reid]

About 10 years ago I aquired the 16mm home movies shot by my great-uncle from the early 30s till the early 60s. They were all in a large suitcase with very little ventilation, but in Boston where there's not much in the way of hot weather. No sign of vinegar in any of the reels. I think the heat theory is very likely.

[momsne]

As the Dawson City treasure trove of silent films shows, cellulose nitrate film needs cold storage to last a long time. If you want to speed up a chemical reaction, heat does the trick. The decomposition of nitrate film is a chemical reaction. The excerpt below is from one of the many articles on the Dawson City find.

Film preservation in Dawson City
Posted November 8, 2010 by Bill Wren
by Robert Lovenheim
http://piddleville.com/2010/11/08/film- ... wson-city/" target="_blank

In 1978 a startling discovery elated the small world of film preservationists, restorers, and scholars. A trove of long lost original nitrate copies of silent movies was uncovered at a construction site in Dawson City, Alaska. Among them were long lost films starring Pearl White, Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, and Lon Chaney. The permafrost had preserved them for 50 years after they had been tossed into an empty, abandoned swimming pool and covered with fill dirt.
How did these cinema treasures get to Dawson City? The story says a lot about the path of film preservation. Dawson City, it turns out, is at the end of the movie theater print circuit. Prints are usually shipped from theater to theater in an unchanging pattern. A new print starts in a big city like Seattle. From there it might go to Spokane, and then to Bellingham; next on the list might be Fairbanks, then Nome and finally Dawson City. (edit)

When a print ends its run in Dawson City it’s not worth shipping back. At first, the local movie theater donated the prints to the library. But in 1929 the library decided they didn’t want a lot of highly flammable nitrate prints in their stacks. They heaved them into an abandoned swimming pool where they were used as fill trash.

The great find of 1978 happened because somebody was digging a new foundation and unearthed a movie burial ground. The permafrost layer in the fill dirt above the movies had preserved them as good as in a temperature-controlled vault. They were given to the Library of Congress and restored.

[Jay Schwartz]

I think we're all in agreement that extreme heat will not be healthy for a film print, and is likely to induce vinegar syndrome.

But I don't agree that it's an absolute pre-requisite for VS.

Since I have no way to prove that my problem prints were never subjected to extreme heat, I guess I can't prove my point.

There have been actual scientific studies of this done by the Image Permanence Institute and the Australian film archive, and some of their findings contradict many of the assertions made here by collectors.

[coolcatdaddy]

If you think about it, we'll probably never really know exactly what causes films to decompose like this.

There were billions of feet of film manufactured for several decades by different companies with variances in the chemicals used to make the base, the emulsion, and the chemicals used in processing. It could be reactions happening with particular combinations of chemicals with particular storage conditions or impurities in the any of the raw materials that cause these problems.