Not audio, but definitely analogue

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jpmorris

jpmorris

Tape Wolf
A 2-inch Quad video machine being used in the 80s. There aren't very many clips of these that I can find.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sVJwSOzWt00

Two things which strike me as rather interesting are the fact that he appears to be using the talking clock to sync the broadcast, and that the opening sequence is stored on Quad at all, since it was supposedly only good for about thirty playbacks.
 
...Thanks for the clip; always fascinating to see stuff like that from our recent tech past (of course, to some I am sure this is the stone ages :rolleyes:).

I got into the game later, when 1-inch was king and the Sony 2000s and 2500eds had gotten as good as they ever would just before the reel-to-reel video format died. Awesome, awesome machines, the Studers of video.
You loaded a complex but easily learnt path around the heads and rollers and hit standby. The fans would whoosh on and the tape tighten up.

The rewind and fast forward were frightening. You'd swear the machine was about to lift itself out of the rack, and yet it would hit an autolocate point right down to one video field (that's 1/2 of 1/30th of a second) and come to an elegant stop.
The 2500 could do frame-by-frame animation. It would be pre-programmed to wait a certain interval with the heads off, and when a graphic had been rendered, it would come to life, run off a sec or two, backtrack to that one frame, and go back to sleep until the next graph was ready.

Much like with reel-to-reel audio tape, the sheer brutal elegance of the equipment was (and is) something to treasure.

Thanks for the memories and for giving me a chance to ramble a bit...;):D

Best,
C.
 
Cosmic said:
...Thanks for the clip; always fascinating to see stuff like that from our recent tech past (of course, to some I am sure this is the stone ages :rolleyes:).
Click to expand...

Yeah. I have a wonderful 1981 book called 'Videotape Recording' by J F Robinson which describes the technologies involved. It goes into an enormous amount of detail about Quad which I found quite fascinating.
I also have a C-format video of Duran Duran, but no way to play it :(

Here's an unfortunately short video of a C-machine locking up:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gS4zFsEKBcs

I'd be interested to know what the internal scope is showing, both on this and the Quad machine. It's evidently some representation of the video signal, presumably for calibration.
 
jp,

The scope in the clip is showing the two fields of the 1/30th/sec. video frame (side by side) representing the video values in IRE units, from 'video black' (7.5 IRE, US Standard) to 'white clip' (100 IRE) that make up the image the machine locks up on.

The bad flickering is from the the mis-sync between the scope and the video camera that shot this scene.

If you could see it clearly, it would be twin images (one video field each, making up one video frame being 1/30th of a sec) showing a ghostly green representation of the image on the screen. Think of it as an exposure meter for video.

You roll color bars (recorded on the tape from a broadcast standard color bar generator in the camera at the time of the original taping) at the beginning, to set the tape bars up on the scope to stay within 7.5 IRE and 100 IRE.
You then know the tape and the scope are now both "standard" and that the scope will now represent any images on the tape from that perspective.
That then is the broadcast standard everywhere, like tones on a reel-to-reel music recording. Most facilites will set to that. If your images drop lower or exceed, you'll know by the scope.

Best,

C
 
Cosmic said:
jp,
The scope in the clip is showing the two fields of the 1/30th/sec. video frame (side by side) representing the video values in IRE units, from 'video black' (7.5 IRE, US Standard) to 'white clip' (100 IRE) that make up the image the machine locks up on.
Click to expand...

Aha. That would make sense - although it would be 1/25 since both videos are from PAL countries.

Thanks... once again I feel like I've come late to the party, after everything interesting has already finished :rolleyes:
 
I keep saying I was born about 10 to 20 years too late.:( I missed the peak of all the great automobiles, music, and audio/video equipment.:mad:
 
Cosmic said:
...Much like with reel-to-reel audio tape, the sheer brutal elegance of the equipment was (and is) something to treasure.
Click to expand...

Well said! :)

There's a lot of great examples of that "brutal elegance" in other fields of interest too. For me, the space program held a lot of that charm; from those shots of mission control with the banks of computer and communications gear to the rockets themselves. I think a lot of other other fields of study were influenced and inspired by all that gleaming gear and the wonderful tricks it could perform. Now, with all of that bulk reduced down fitting on a chip or two, we've sort of lost that awe felt reverence for giant sized gear doing giant sized tasks.

Cheers! :)
 
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