COW - Computer Originated World

[ppppenguin]

Why not film a small painted  World rotating globe ?  Cheap, simple.

Do you really mean film? The stuff you can hold up to the light? If so that would mean tying up a telecine machine and a loop of film that would soon wear out. If you mean point a TV camera at the globe then you have moving parts, a camera and lights all of which are far more prone to failure and need much more attention than a box of electronics. If you mean making a videotape of the sequence that would mean tying up an expensive VTR which isn't really good at doing short looping sequences.

Of course it's trivial with modern technology but go back to the 1980s. That was a world when recording any video at high quality was still expensive. Professional video disc machines (expensive) did exist for things like sports slow motion replays. Professional videotape meant C-format 1" tape.

The Chyron and Aston character generators were revolutionary. It was letraset on card before them. The Quantel Paintbox was revolutionary too. It's easy to forget what big leaps these were. One of the things that the Broadcast Engineering Museum will need to do is explain, in simple terms, just how hard it was to do many things which are now trivially easy. Our limited research in this field suggest that people in their 20s have little or no concept of film, videotape or even of recording a moving image. Capturing and storing images, whether stills or movies, is now so trivial that it's not even thought about.

[PerdioPal]

" is explain, in simple terms, just how hard it was to do many things which are now trivially easy" I get that the other way at work when a hugely over specified thing is offered. Given the right mindset a much simpler thing can do the job.

[Mike Watterson]

The Chyron and Aston character generators were revolutionary. It was letraset on card before them. The Quantel Paintbox was revolutionary too. It's easy to forget what big leaps these were. One of the things that the Broadcast Engineering Museum will need to do is explain, in simple terms, just how hard it was to do many things which are now trivially easy. Our limited research in this field suggest that people in their 20s have little or no concept of film, videotape or even of recording a moving image. Capturing and storing images, whether stills or movies, is now so trivial that it's not even thought about.

I remember the Letraset based captions. Huge amount of time and skill.
I used Letraset for equipment panels too till 1980, then computer artwork, UV and screen printing.
I'm glad I'll never use it ever again.

Also lacing up a telecine looked like a dark art and big professional VTRs were only laced up by a trained professional. Both were huge and had dedicated room and staff.
No cassettes till U-Matic, which originally wasn't broadcast quality, though far better than the Philips N1500 or early Panasonic EIAJ cartridge (the tape had to rewound entirely from the internal spool to the cartridge to eject!).
Background music and pre-recorded sound effects from a cued record deck. It had the pickup resting on the disc and "play" lowered the disc onto the heavy already spinning platter.

TV studios were hot using much incandescent lighting.

The colour test card was a big glass transparency photo that fitted on a light box pointed at by a camera.

The cameras had mono CRT viewfinders and fat awkward cable. The electronics in a rack in a another room near the dimly lit gallery and the studio. Most of the gallery CRTs were mono and maybe two colour screens. Every screen underscanned except there might be an additional domestic colour TV for preview. Massive hinge out convergence panels for the colour monitors, though domestic Colour TV had substantial panels before inline CRTs, Trinitron and slot mask CRTs

Sound studios had all the chokes of the fluorescent lamps out in the corridor. Double glazed windows to mixer / recording booth. Really heavy air-lock style dual doors for access.

Mercury wetted relays on the telex system and receive only TTYs with horrible impact paper (not ribbon or thermal). Wet toner photocopiers giving greyish blurred copies. No email, but messages by phone, telex, telegraph and post. No wordprocessors. Many had no electric typewriters, but big mechanical beasts.

Microwave links for video with retrofitted multiple FM subcarriers (some only any use for instructions, not program), but repeaters entirely valve based. Huge amounts of nitrogen filled waveguides from dish to indoor gear. No ODUs and LNBFs like today with coax (and now even fibre).

Massive rack mounted boxes for Sound in Sync and teletext decoding using TTL ICs

Huge video patch panels using MUSA links and cables.

Huge wall of audio patch using three pole PO jacks (smaller ring and smaller again tip, bare brass). Stereo needed two patch cords.
Custom designed analogue equalisers for land-lines, designed after manual measurement, with an engineer (graduate or HND) at each end.

A phantom talk back circuit by using centre taps of two balanced circuits. The reader can figure out ghosts and spirits (I can't remember which is which) using a pair of phantom circuits.

Mono PPM meter wasn't like a VU. Black with white needle and text and serious discrete electronics for very fast attack and slow decay to measure peaks. Stereo used a horribly expensive PPM meter movement with red (Left I think? Domestic is red = right) and green needles in-line. What about people that are colour blind? They tested for that on interviews. Though oddly the BBC Woodnorton Colour systems lecturer was colour-blind.

Lots of stuff using separate R G and B feeds, rather than PAL. Monitors often had external PAL decoders.

Giant speaker(s) in monitoring areas hanging from ceilings.

Transmitter Engineers only driving clapped out real Land Rovers.

Managers with with their own toilets (yale key).

An OB would start maybe a week before with a test of P.O. provided phone lines for audio with loading coils bypassed and some sort equalisation done.

A TV OB would need sight of a TV mast for a microwave link if live. No satellites on OB, only via groundstations fed by microwave link. Setup the day before.

Any rapid news was 16mm film and rapid rushed processing within same afternoon.

Only Schools TV or testcards most of the day. TV close down often before midnight with the National Anthem.

[Mike Watterson]

" is explain, in simple terms, just how hard it was to do many things which are now trivially easy"  I get that the other way at work when a hugely over specified thing is offered.  Given the right mindset a much simpler thing can do the job.

Often in the 1970s there was no simpler way at all at any quality, or simpler didn't have the quality.

[Mike Watterson]

No DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations).
People were editing Analogue video using time codes and a 2nd machine for final sequence when others were still editing mono full width 1/4" tape (1 track) with spicing bloc, single edged razor blade and tape!

NLE video editing much later.

[ppppenguin]

They invented the word processor and the word became malleable.
As computer power became more affordable, still pictures became malleable.
Then sound became malleable.
Finally moving pictures became malleable.

If you've ever done any kind of video editing on tape based systems you will know the blessing of a computer based editor. In the good old, bad old, days when broadcast grade VTR time was very expensive you did your editing offline, using Umatic or other sub-broadcast formats. This generated an edit decision list. This was taken to the big VTRs and the actual edit was said to be conformed to the EDL, using minimum machine time.

Yes, we do have a Smith Microscope at the Broadcast Engineering Museum. For use with Edivue fluid to reveal the tracks and control pulses on 2" quadruplex tape prior to splicing it like you would with 0.25" audio tape.

When I was at Imperial College (1975-78) we had a TV studio and a student TV club in which I was very active (surprise!). We were given some kind of video disc unit which ostensibly could record and replay simultaneously to give a delay. Also slow motion and other stunts. I don't know where it came from or even if it was intended for broadcast style TV at all. It worked after a fashion if you spoke to it politely. We never used it in any production.

BBC Archives have loaned various items to the Broadcast Engineering Museum. These include a disc, about 18" diameter, from an Ampex HS100: http://www.vtoldboys.com/editingmuseum/hs100.htm It's mounted in a nice wooden display case.

[Mike Watterson]

I seem to remember someone did use a magnetic disk or drum based system for freeze frame or instant replay on broadcast. Possibly even in the BBC for a while. How else would you do it before sufficient RAM and digital conversion? Though the BBC Research was looking at digital video at least as early as 1970, because I presented a project idea based on that and laser based carriage of the signals. I think long distance fibre was demoed in 1972.

In the 1970s even the clocks were old. An electrically energized pendulum clock in CTA drove all the dumb clocks in the building.

However with Umatic and time codes by 1970s no-one considered splicing video tape to edit. I think about 1975 I saw a pair of 1/4″ stereo audio tape machines on a time code editor as a demo. The issue with audio editing by cut and splice was that you could make a mistake or lose the original, though with audio tape at broadcast quality the degradation on a copy wasn't so bad as with video. Earlier systems used mono on full width of tape and 15 ips for almost all work at Broadcasting House. Later at 15 ips for music and 7½ ips for speech. Even mono 2 track (flippable tapes) at 3¼ ips in mid 1960s (Uher, Nagra, Magnetophon Reporter) was exceptional quality on professional portable machines compared to domestic tape or most 1970s cassette decks, for wow, flutter, S/N and frequency response. I have a 1965 Magnetophon Reporter with original mic and it's pretty amazing. It was the poor reporter/local radio choice instead of a Uher or Nagra for off-site interviews, so has a VU meter and volume control on the mic! Optional rechargeable pack.

The first quality tape machines used by the BBC were "liberated" Magnetophons from Germany in 1945 or 1946 and replaced by EMI models from maybe 1950. I think the 1956 approx EMI "portable" (needs two people and mains) I sent to Jeffery may have been the second or third in that series and used full tape width in only one direction, with oxide on the outside! It's original, so needs re-capped at least to go. I did open it and resisted pinching all the lovely valves!

[Richard_FM]

Shibaden VTRs were commonly used for off-line editing at the BBC, so much that this method became known as "Shibadening".

I've heard of the BBC using a disc system for instant replays, which occasionally was employed for special effects sequences.

[ppppenguin]

Mike has mentioned the problems of analogue recording. This was always one of the weakest and most difficult points in the chain of broadcasting, whether sound or vision. Even when the basic performance was adequate, multiple generations were always difficult. Digital recording solved this completely. BBC Engineering Research built an experimental digital video recorder in about 1974. I saw it working. Based on an instrumentation recorder using 1" tape and running at a speed that looked like fast forward. I think it gave about 15 minutes on a spool of tape. But it gave exactly repeatable sequences for research work.

The first practical digital video recorder was the Sony D1 format in 1986: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-1_(Sony) It was very expensive but it worked brilliantly. The component video format didn't fit well into the existing composite PAL or NTSC infrastructure. Repeated encoding and decoding caused quality loss.

[Nick]

Five days before I was born...

https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anni...-recorder/