The fine art of editing videotape

[Richard_FM]

Not just wear and tear. Time on 2" machines, even on the later 1" C-Format machines, was expensive and machines were in short supply. Off-line editing on Shibaden 0.5" machines, later on U-matic 0.75" cassettes, was routine. Then the result was "conformed" on to the 2" or 1" machines using the edit decision lists generated offline.  None of this was possible without timecode.

By the time broadcasters had moved to Betacam and Beta-SP I think off-line editing was dying out. Not sure when non-linear editing (computer workstation) became the norm.

Thanks for filling me in, I got my information about the use of Shibadens from one of the books on the making Dr Who in the mid 1970s.

It was written in the mid 1990s, and mentioned editing had become more computerised over the years.