State Of The Art: Video Tape Delay
Until sometime in the mid to late 60s, this is the way you got a 6 second delay for live television events. In this photo, you would have recorded on the left machine, thread the tape over a few homemade spendels and play it back on the machine on the right for air. In case of bloopers, cut to live action before the image gets to the playback head and pray there are no more till you can get to a station break and re sync.
Just For Fun…”The Frank Sinatra Show”, ABC 1957 From October of ’57 through June of ’58, ABC broadcast this show, usually live, from the El Captain Theater in Los Angeles, which was also home to “Queen For A Day”. Notice above, I said “usually live”…actually only a few of the shows were supposed to be […]
Chicagoland Television Icons Perhaps the only major 50s personality missing in this photo is Hugh Downs who was at WBKB when this was made, but joined the NBC staff the next year. 1 is the staff of ‘Kukla, Fran and Ollie’. 2 is the staff of ‘Stud’s Place’ with Studs Terkel. 3 is the staff […]
Ultra Rare…David Brinkley’s Washington Studio Location This is the only photo I have ever seen of either Huntley’s or Brinkley’s desk sets in the studio. As the “other half” of ‘The Huntley Brinkley Report’, David Brinkley was stationed in Washington at NBC’s WRC TV studios. This is his set with one Vizmo screen in view, […]
Up Close And Personal…Vinyl Records Like We’ve Never Seen Them It still amazes me that when you put a record on the turntable and place the tone arm on it, you get sound. These are electron microscope photos at 100X and 1000X magnification. I thought you might be as fascinated by these as I was. […]
Ha! We did that in the early 80’s at WCFC with two side by side TR-22’s
At WTTW we did it for live talk shows, and I think we did it at WFLD to insert commercial breaks into hockey games (where play didn’t stop).
Had the same sort of thing with 2 TR70s. The TR3s we had were play only.
CNN did this in the early years with 2 Ampex VPR-2 machines that were bolted together with something like Uni-Strut. Jeff can probably tell us more about that.
Good one Ash, The Paul Hogan shows were edited with Ron Way in control room and Noel Brady in tapes calling in and outs on 2″ machines in late 70,s.
In Atlanta, the ground-breaking music show “The Now Explosion” used two VR-2000’s in this way to generate “video feedback” effects of dancers gyrating to the music: http://www.thenowexplosion.com/
Ketchup bottles full of freon TF anyone?
uuuuh, no thanks, Roy. 😉
Yes, it is, Bobby. I thought you knew about it. You must have remembered “The Now Explosion”, didn’t you?
Saw a similar rig at WCVB in Boston in the late 1970’s – two Ampex 2″ machines side-by-side with a hacksawed slot between them. Nutty.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this in the past or not but “Skinny Bobby Harper” was a friend of mine. I met him several times at studio tapings of Now Explosion shot at WATL Ch. 36 when the station was on Briarcliff Rd. Harper was one of the VeeJays of Now Explosion and a radio legend before that (and after). After I graduated high school, he invited me to work for him at WIIN Radio’s studio on Peachtree St. not far from the High Museum.
He used to pick me up in his VW Beetle at 4:30am for the drive to the studio for his morning show. I feel lucky to have been present for some of Atlanta radio and TV history and I will always be especially proud to have known Bobby Harper. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisdegan/557942413/
We were still using that method in the early 80s with two TR-70s at WDVM 9 in Washington DC
I totally remember doing this in MC at channel 9. We did it for the “Morning Break” show. Crazy stuff.
Ah, the good old days!
CBS News did this in the early 80s for Night Watch using 2 AVR 2000s. Later on, they rigged up 1″ BVH 1100s to do it.
I can’t imagine what would happen if both machines weren’t running at exactly the same speed.
The capstains have to be running at the same speed or the playback tape won’t play. There has to be some slack between the two decks to allow the playback machine to get up to speed and lock up. Then they should walk along just fine.
We (KTRK) accomplished the same delay with a pair of VR2000’s side by side for the “Dial M for MARVIN” call in program. Marvin Zindler, famous for shutting down the chicken ranch in LaGrange, Texas was the host. The delayed mute was activated several times.
We also did the delay (WTCG now TBS) with VR 1200’s
1970s @ WSNS, same drill, but w 1200s. Things got interesting about 10 seconds after the duct tape let go.
We did this with 2 TR70s in the early 70s. Glenn Mack: The control track ensures the machines operate at the same speed.
We used to use this method at WGTV Ch.8 Athens/Atlanta (now GPB) in the mid ’70s using the RCA TR70s and 70Cs.