sandall Posted December 22, 2016 Share Posted December 22, 2016 I had to do it in anger once. There was a time when programmes made for the OU were put out after closedown for students to record & watch later. 3 or 4 programmes were compiled onto a by-then obsolete 2" tape, & after checking the tape the machine was powered-down, to be powered-up up & run on a time-switch at IIRC about 1 a.m. The night someone managed to break the tape I was the only one left in the building who could remember how to do a cut-edit. By a miracle it played cleanly, & I don't think anyone ever noticed. Cut-editing was quite fiddly, involving petrol, iron-filings, a microscope & a razor-blade. You cut just at the start of the frame-blanking period, to give the TV receiver time to sort itself out before the next field started. Being American the system was designed for 525 lines, & there was a little "edit-pulse" to show where to cut, but on 625 lines you needed to cut 8 video-tracks away from the edit-pulse, which meant sliding each tape end under the microscope & VERY carefully counting video tracks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jivemaster Posted December 22, 2016 Share Posted December 22, 2016 The days when a "portable" recorder had a handle but weighed 50 kilos and had Ferrograph on the front. I've still got a portable beta SP somewhere - portable is a bit of a joke. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 These still appear on ebay - and apart from perished pinch rollers, still fetch £250-500! for a series 7, a bit less for 6! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indyld Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Found this interesting, having looked it up following the above posts. https://www.videomaker.com/article/c3/1221-edit-points-a-history-of-videotape-editing As someone who was trained at the tail end of audio cut and splice on 1/4 tape, but with luxury of editing video on U-Matic using linear techniques with electronic time code based drop ins, I can appreciate the difficulty in splicing VT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandall Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 The days when a "portable" recorder had a handle but weighed 50 kilos and had Ferrograph on the front. Funnily enough it seems impossible to even give Revox A77s away. I've still got a portable beta SP somewhere - portable is a bit of a joke. I bought a BVW-20 in the Bush House auction in 2012 to transfer some old programme tapes (I might get around to it some day), but in the TV Centre auctions last autumn I counted at least 100 Beta SP recorders, mostly BVW-75 editing decks, few if any of which got a single bid. Found this interesting, having looked it up following the above posts.<br abp="386"><br abp="387">https://www.videomak...deotape-editing Sadly a long way from reality - Editech soon became frame-accurate, at least on the recorder side (accuracy of the incoming shot depended on the parking & run-up of the play-in machine) & was the mainstay of videotape editing for over a decade. You had to mark the out-point on-the-fly, but you dialled-in your reaction time (nominally about 8 frames, but often 10 before the first coffee, down to 6, or even 4, by lunchtime & back to 10 or more after a couple of pints). Sound edits usually needed "smoothing", so a normal edit involved laying off the outgoing sound onto a 1/4" deck, recording this back onto the edit tape during the 10" run-up (after manually synching it by slowing or speeding the 1/4" to match the 2") & then mixing through to the incoming sound. A "simple" edit with sound was reckoned to involve about 70 discrete operations. You could even do insert-edits on the sound track (very useful for adding or changing voice-overs without having to copy the whole programme onto another tape), - the "out" edit involved sliding a piece of card between the tape & the erase head as you hit Stop (known as "carding-out"). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boatman Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 When I started my first job with the BBC in the late 1960s we had a plethora of Ampex VR1000s to maintain. Apart from the transport there were two 19" racks full of valve equipment. The power supplies at the top of the racks frequently blew up paper cased electrolytic capacitors creating "snow" all over the room! It was a never ending task. http://www.pharis-video.com/am7921~1.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roderick Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 The days when a "portable" recorder had a handle but weighed 50 kilos and had Ferrograph on the front. I've still got a portable beta SP somewhere - portable is a bit of a joke. I have a 'B'format 1" portable recorder.Under current WHS regulations it would be a 2 man lift now. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted December 24, 2016 Share Posted December 24, 2016 I have a 'B'format 1" portable recorder. And spools of 'inside-out' tape? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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