FIAP Standards for AV
- explained by Mike Hardcastle

The ‘Federation de L’art Photographique’ has devised certain standards when it comes to identification, numbering and initial pulsing of AV soundtracks. This is basically to ensure a smooth start to sequences when played on the varying equipment found around the European circuit.
The system, which has 3 elements mentioned above, comes into operation once all the slides have been sorted into the required order on the lightbox:
Stage 1 Slide Identification
You will have 2 rows of slides on your lightbox, decide which row contains the slide which you want to appear first on the screen- all the slides in this row should be marked with YELLOW dots and will have ODD numbers. The slides in the other row should be marked with RED dots and will have EVEN numbers.
At this stage insert 1 blank slide at the start of each row, mark all slides as follows:

Stage 2 Slide Numbering
The numbering of the slides is also specified by the FlAP convention, which states that the first slide in each tray is a blank. The first slide in the yellow (odd numbered) tray is numbered minus one (-1) and is the blank. The second slide in this tray is the first slide you wish to see on the screen (ie the first slide in your sequence) and numbered one (1).
The first slide in the red (even numbered) tray is blank and is numbered zero (0), the second slide in this tray is the second slide in your sequence and is numbered two (2). When loaded up the slide trays will look as follows;

Stage 3 Pulsing
How you pulse your sequence depends on the way you have sorted your slides and the effect you want to create on the screen so the FlAP convention only covers the very start. This can be standard for ALL your sequences and causes some confusion. For the purpose of this illustration it is assumed that you are using a hand controlled slider. You start by inserting the blank slides in the gates of both projectors and then ensure that the slider of your hand control is at the end which will illuminate the projector containing the RED slides. You then start your tape and the first movement of the slider is to push it against the micro switch (click) to activate a slide change in the unlit (yellow slide) projector. This will exchange the blank slide (-1) in the unlit projector for the first slide in your sequence (1). You then move the slider along the hand control to light this projector and project the first slide of your sequence, The slider is then moved in the normal way according to your script to pulse your sequence. The slider and slide in gate positions are shown as follows:-

This is the start of your sequence and it continues like this for as long as you have straight dissolves from red to yellow to red to yellow etc etc., but of course you will want half advance and returns; this only effects the way you number your slides.
Half Advance and returns are illustrated as follows.

Instead of going 1 Yellow, 2 Red, 3 Yellow, 4 Red etc the slide you return to always
takes the next number, so if you get to say yellow slide 7and you have red slides 8, 10 and 12 advancing over in turn, your slide 7 will appear on screen a total of four times so it will carry four numbers - 7,9,11,and 13. Only on slide 14 (Red) will your original slide 7 be removed from the gate, so the next yellow slide will in fact be numbered 15.