Flatbed editor

[1] Picture and sound rolls are placed onto separate motorized disks, called "plates," and then threaded through picture and sound transports, each of which has sprocket rollers that transport the film or magnetic stock forwards or backwards at variable or fixed speeds while maintaining their precise positions.

The transports can be "locked" together, either mechanically (KEM, Steenbeck, Showchron) or electronically (Moviola), so that they move in harmony and maintain synchronization between picture and sound.

When the editor finds a point to edit the picture and/or sound, they mark the frame with a grease pencil, make a cut, and add, remove, or rearrange shots or sections and then rejoin them with splice tape.

There are also the Italian Prévost and Intercine, the Dutch Oude Delft or Oldelft, the French Atlas as well as Moritone flatbeds.

All these machines employ a rotating prism rather than the Geneva drive intermittent mechanism first used by the American upright Moviola.

It also makes high-speed operation feasible, and some machines can move the film at up to ten times standard speed.