I worked in Broadcasting in the 80s and 90s. There was nothing better than hearing those VTRs hiss in the background when they were running a program on the air. The NBC and CBS affiliate stations I worked at had those Cart machines which were somewhat problematic. When they got jammed, it was bad because they wouldn't just co m e out and run the next spot in the correct time. When we were transmitting from network (large old analog dish), it was very quiet in tje Master Control Room and a good time to eat or get a coffee.
It's not. The stuff we use now are just upgraded forms of this stuff. They all still work,and are programed the same way. The methods to get the correct sound is still the same. The ways to get the right lighting is still the same. The techniques to getting the right camera angles are the same. Writing scripts is the same way whether it's on a typewriter, or a computer.
At 2.53 and 3.40 are Ampex 2000B quadruplex machines which we had several and were very reliable. We cleaned the tape transport , including the heads , every time we put a different tape on. At 3.52 is an Ampex ACR25.The cassettes load using a vacuum. Initially, the cassettes were very unreliable and we had to do modifications to get all cassettes in a break to work without one failing to load. We did succeed and they worked well. Both the 2000B and ACR25 machines were very noisy as they needed air bearing and vacuum loading pumps. Here in the UK, the 2000B machines were changed in the 90s for 1" VPR2 machines. Our Telecine machines were Cintel flying spot machines which had continuous film motion and a 30,000 volt cathode ray tube to illuminate the film and three detectors for red , green and blue. X rays are generated at this high voltage.
At the station that I worked at over 30 years ago, we used the RCA TR70 machines. By that time, we were using recycled tape that you could physically see the oxide look like powder and clogged the heads. You could see four bands in the video and you knew it was coming. Sometimes I'd open the head guard and stick my finger nail very gently on the heads to keep them from completely clogging on screen. Those heads could take it. We also used Freon to clean the metal parts and alcohol to clean the rubber parts. When 2 inch was working properly it looked fantastic and when it wasn't, it looked awful. 1 inch was my favorite broadcast format, but I've seen U Matic, MII, Beta, DigiBeta, and DVC Pro. There's also the XDCam discs and I can't remember what the format that did HD tape in a cassette format. I believe that tape was half inch wide but the tapes were huge. I'm thinking M5, but I'm probably way off.
Replying 5years later. @ 2:53 Those quad machines are not 2000's. They are VR 1200's. The 2000's had the side monitor cart and the 1200's had the overhead monitor bridge as seen here. Basically the same tech. The 2000's had the A scope on the monitoring on the right. The 1200's did not have that feature. A scope displays for the VR 1200 were fed into the "B" input of the Tektronix waveform monitor on the monitor bridge. I used to work with 1200 quad machines at KLCS TV UHF Ch. 58 in Los Angeles from 1984 to 1992. We also had the AVR 2 quads which were also shown here at 5:34 . We also had a couple of AVR 3 quads for a short time. Those were the very last quads that Ampex manufactured. Very nice quads.
Engineering Tech, 1200s and 2000s were still in use, when I started. It was these machines that helped inspire my interest, the ultimate in open real technology. CND
3:50 The good old ACR-25 That deserves a full program of its own. When it was developed (in some relationship with NASA in the late 60s), I heard that the engineering team were given a plaque by NASA, celebrating ‘the most complex electro-mechanical device ever built’.... remember this is the same timeframe as Apollo and the Saturn V booster !!
I just downloaded this video and shot it across my home network to my room-mate's iMac from my PC in under 5 minutes - imagine what these guys would've thought of that in 1982!
I used all this gear in the late 80s and 90s 1" sony, beta and umatic.. And 16mm , 35mm and diffrtent standards conversions. All episodes of kojak and little house on the prairie to sync up and voice over.
@@wmbrown6 Ampex VR-1200s are the first Quad decks seen... with the first models of that range introduced in 1966. The other quads are Ampex AVR-2s, introduced in 1974... the most popular Quad recorders during the heyday of the 2" Transverse scan videotape format. Decks like these are still in use, transferring materials that range in age from nearly 64 years old to the 1990s.
It's incredible how highly skilled you had to be to do such simple things like advertisements, really cool to see the gear back then and also makes me pretty grateful for today's technology.
Absouletly not, everyone could do that in comparison with today, when those things can't do someone who is not such "computer talent". It was much easier to get a job to everyone.
7:17 You can see a U-matic tape being loaded. At some point this programme was recorded on the same format, using the non-ideal Composite Video connectors rather than U-matic Dub. As a result you can see "ringing", vertical lines to the left and right of some vertical features. U-matic was known for this weakness, especially when using Composite Video ports.
I am absolutely nerding out over the equipment, I ran the Ampex ACR25, that film chain & slide chain. I'm sure there are a few I missed. Took me ages to get the cadence down for programming the ACR. I actually felt like I did something every day, now everything is mouse clicks. Convenient, but far less satisfying. Hearing and seeing an Ampex ACR25 in operation was fascinating.
The good old days. I like these (old) professional TV machines, even though working with them has often been problematic ... I say this as a former TV technician.
Surprising he says 2 cameras was the norm for production. Even when I volunteered as a teenager at a cable access station, we used 3 cameras for any of the productions I can remember. That was in the early 90s.
Wow i can’t belive those equipments were mostly analogue but they still could do some stunning effects with it, now eventrough i do data back from 1982 but even for me 1982 feels sooo old school, even in the early 90’s i already considered 1982 to be old school, strange he?
I think the "bloom" animation for the station ident at the end of the video probably came from a Scanimate production house in the US. The vision mixers/switchers were only really capable of cuts, mixes, wipes and key effects. I believe compilation tapes of Scanimate backgrounds were available for stations to purchase to "jazz up" their in-house titles, or the Scanimate production houses could do custom effects and idents on contract. Recently there have been a lot of Scanimate videos uploaded to UA-cam as one machine is being preserved by one of the original engineers.
LOL. What do you mean "mostly analogue". It was analog signals everywhere. Character generators were the first "digital" video sources but their output was still analog video.
I’m 61 and I feel the same way when comparing the 70’s with the 60’s. In the 70’s, we went from using slide rules and vacuum tubes to $200 calculators (in 1970’s dollars) with integrated circuit chips to $20 calculators that could do the same thing by 1979, and the first home computers. TV was mostly B&W in the 60’s and consumer goods all had terrible fit and finish compared to the 70’s.
Reminds me that I almost had an opportunity to become a camera operator at SBS, but it was too hard for me to there as a young adult straight out of high school. So I never even applied.
Most of the equipment shown is from the 60s, 70s & 80s. All fairly state of the art for the time period when this was shot. The only thing missing was contemporary VCRs , but this could be on the cusp of ßetacam in widespread use.
10y later and it was all 1" and Beta, nil cine or 2" to be seen.... 15y after that all tape was gone and digital gear ruled.... Ahhh, new technology....
Good to see some of the gear that was used back then - now sadly, computers do a lot of the on air work. Would have loved to have been born a few years earlier!
Early videotape was expensive. It wasn't the just the BBC, may videotaped programs in America either still exist on kinescopes (telerecordings) or were lost. The footage from NBC from the day Kennedy was assassinated starts at 14 minutes because they didn't turn on the VTR right away. If you think it was bad that TV recordings were erased, some audio recordings were lost this way too. The Beatles "Love Me Do", "P.S. I Love You", "She Loves You", and "I'll Get You" studio recordings will only every be in mono as the studio recordings were erased. The master tape for Love Me Do was actually lost completely and has since been recovered from a copy that was held by a record collector.
John McFerren what i do like is that despites many color recordings were lost whereas only the B&W version of it exists, if those chroma dots are still present in it, then those original colors can be recovered with software,if not then we can halicunate many colors back with todays computer AI colorization ,wich is able to approximate many colors back from recognized objects in a scene ,and for those lost stereo recordings from the beatles such as ‘love me do’ , with modern ai audio source saperation, it is now possible to saperate vocals from instruments etc,,, and since many beatles stereo recording contained the instruments on the left channel and the vooces on the right channel, it’s possible to those saperated voices & instruments to those appropiate channels to reconstruct it how it should,ve been in stereo, this is fantastic new for artists who desires to have their lost vocal & instrumental recordings back.
@@johneygd One reason why many old color tv shows exist only in B/W was because blank tapes were expensive so they taped over them. Many times a B/W film copy was made for stations to play as reruns in syndication. Many early soap operas and game shows are missing because they didn't have much value for reruns
Chris W it’s actually an Ampex ACR-25 cart machine, which is the competitor to the RCA TCR-100. It was more advanced than the RCA in that it had almost instant pre-roll and could play multiple 10 second spots back to back.
@@Nosix88 nope, that's an RCA TPR-10 at 6:32. Ampex had a similar "portable" 2 inch VTR, the VR-3000. The RCA TPR-10 VTR was widely used in the military as a data recorder. You're right about the ACR-25 and the RCA-100 equivalent, both being used for commercial playback. the ACR-25 is shown at 2:55 and 3:55. It was a far superior VTR to the RCA-100 which I always likened to my grandfather's hay baler. The RCA being very mechinal while the Ampex mostly handled the tape with air columns and vacuums. I always got a chuckle that ACR was RCA spelled backwards.
@@WeWereYoungandCrazy Somewhere along the lines I read that MTV in the early days used the Ampex ACR-25 to playback music videos. Part of the choice on using the Ampex ACR-25 was that it had stereo playback, (useful once MTS stereo was launched a few short years later; it would have been known to be in development at the time) , plus I don't think anything at the time of MTV's lunch was capable of playing back to back tapes so quickly. Such as 10 sec interstitials. Considering the number of different videos they would play an hour, a video cart machine is the ideal choice, you could certainly load up an hours worth music videos on an ACR-25. Except for Michael Jackson Thriller, I suspect that was played separately. I also understand they had two of them for redundancy, I think they got them used at the time so having another as a backup was a good idea. The station I worked for early in my career was still as using an ACR-25 (affectionately called Jaws for obvious reasons) in early 90's. From that experience I recognize the typical playback errors you would see on an ACR-25, and I remember seeing the same kinds of playback glitches on MTV in the 80's, usually just as a cart begins playback. They were fascinating machines to watch in operation and listen to as well. The way the tape guided up the head along a long vertical window using negative pressure or suction, it was so fast. Seen here. ua-cam.com/video/m_YXCNpTfAg/v-deo.html
@@marcusdamberger The errors were aplenty for sure. But much less than the RCA TCR-100 cart machine. A maintenance fix that today seems like an almost insurmountable feat of labor and determination, was to remove IC sockets and solder the ICs directly to the printed circuit boards. This fix came about after a few years of use and our engineers noticed resetting ICs corrected a lot of logic problems. This was due to an oxidation issue between the IC pins and the socket. I didn't work on this fix myself but observed the process. Our TV station had 2 ACR-25s and One was taken offline to get the resolder work and it's boards would be rotated back into the machine to be tested then on to the next board. A very long slow process but apparently worth the trouble in the long run. The second ACR-25 served as a backup to the primary machine and was often used in video production since multiple clips could be rapidly played back to back. Each ACR-25 had 2 playback transports. I recall there was a minimum clip length of 10 secs for one transport to load while the other transport played out. The ACR-25 used technology from the AVR-1 that consisted of vacuum columns, and vacuum capstan, so no pinch roller! It even had a shuttle knob. Many thanks to Mr Renz from TV-5 for keeping all those parts running as smooth as a Swiss watch. The best of the best.
I doubt she wore that everyday while operating the camera. This was made for a studio tour introduction, so everyone dressed-up, instead of wearing torn blue jeans.
I'm sure plenty of countries took longer than others to receive color TV at all (Italy didn't until the late 70's I think). It makes us Americans feel very spoiled for having it earlier.
Australia was late in getting colour television, in 1975. In Britain, colour television began in 1967 using the PAL 625 line system, but was only broadcasted on BBC 2. BBC 1 and ITV didn't receive 625 line or colour transmissions until November 1969 and even then, many parts of Britain, such as the South West (Cornwall and Dorset) and Cumberland (now Cumbria) didn't receive colour until 1972. British television wasn't fully in colour until about 1976, and the Channel Islands only got colour in 1976 due to the complexity of transmitting UHF 625 line broadcasts past France which was using the SECAM system and because of the long range it had to go from the Dorset coast to Fremont Point. Ireland got colour in 1970 or 1971, but many programmes were still in monochrome (black and white) 1976, when the last studio in RTE to get colour cameras was complete.
Having broadcasts in color and people having color televisions are of course two different things... Here in Finland the first color broadcasts took place in 1969, but many families had B&W televisions long after that.
Are the cameras in our phones more powerful now than these gigantic studio cameras with huge handles and knobs? I’m not super familiar with this tech but it seems incredibly interesting.
Yes and no. The lenses alone in those old cameras, are way better than the lenses on any smartphone, not to mention they let in more light. Broadcast cameras are of higher quality than whatever smartphone can have. Resolution and power consumption are basically where smartphones win. Smartphones also have crappy CMOS sensors with rolling shutters.
Wow i had no idea broadcasts were relayed in microwaves to the transmitting antenna sites. What format was it sent in and why couldn't you receive it at home? Does he mean that you couldn't receive it without microwave antennas / receivers? It was regular unencrypted PAL / NTSC composite, right?
Yes, I think that's what he was referring to . Microwave transmissions to Other facilities.. I think the reasoning was, being able to put the TV station any where in town they wanted and have the transmitting antenna placed for maximum coverage for transmitting watt.. Mobile News trucks also used microwaves to "beam" back to TV stations
FM radio is still relayed in microwaves from the studio to the transmitter. And digital TV probably too. You can't watch at home because it uses much higher frequencies and the signal is directed directly to the antenna and not scattered.
Audio/Video signals sent to and from the antenna tower are still transmitted via a microwave link, but is now 100% digital. Nearly everything mentioned is still in use today. The videotape machines may not be on the front line anymore, but are still available for archiving vintage video to the modern digital record/playback systems.
Anybody know what make those studio cameras are as well as the video switcher? 40 years in the business and I don't recognize either. It was cool, though, to see the Ampex quad machines and the ACR 225 in play. Brings back memories of my first real job in TV in master control playing shows back to air. We used much of the same VTR equipment although 1" tape was starting to phase out the 2" stuff.
All the switchers appear to be made by Richmond Hill Industries (RHI), I think that's the right name anyway (see correction below). I've looked for them online but can't find any reference to them anywhere. They were widely used in Australia and it leads me to believe that they were made here but I can't be sure. I have a dual effect bus dual mix bus version from the same era as my coffee table! Sadly I didn't get the rack of switchgear (grumble grumble), just the control panel. Mine looks more like the version used in the commercial production suite. If I have a peek under the switch panel I'll update this comment with whatever I find. Edit: Hmm just did another search and finally found something! They're actually from Richmond Hill Laboratories (RHL) which was a Canadian company.
Took a bit of finding, but I think the camera might be an Ikegami TK 301A: eyesofageneration.com/mystery-solved-1-the-first-ikegami-studio-camerawithout-a-doubt-this-is-t/
Can anyone identify the manufacturer and model of the studio cameras in this clip? Don’t recognize them from my TV career in the USA spanning the 70s-90s
Oops I actually had researched this before - according to Bobby Ellerbee’s TV camera website the cameras are Ikegami TK301s which were the first full size color studio cameras.
In their studio there were probably at least 5 cameraMEN covering 2 shifts a day. But when it was time to make this video.. they used the cameraPERSON. I have no idea why.
@@joojoojeejee6058 I definitely threw that out there as a joke. I didn't really know. Would be interesting to know how this old tech compares with what is very cheap now.
I worked in Broadcasting in the 80s and 90s. There was nothing better than hearing those VTRs hiss in the background when they were running a program on the air. The NBC and CBS affiliate stations I worked at had those Cart machines which were somewhat problematic. When they got jammed, it was bad because they wouldn't just co m e out and run the next spot in the correct time. When we were transmitting from network (large old analog dish), it was very quiet in tje Master Control Room and a good time to eat or get a coffee.
Although the vast majority of the equipment featured in this video is now obsolete, I think it's absolutely fascinating to see this.
Everything is now obsolete.
It's not. The stuff we use now are just upgraded forms of this stuff. They all still work,and are programed the same way. The methods to get the correct sound is still the same. The ways to get the right lighting is still the same. The techniques to getting the right camera angles are the same. Writing scripts is the same way whether it's on a typewriter, or a computer.
¡Excelente material de archivo audiovisual! ¡Felicitaciones por su trabajo y su difusión! ¡Saludos desde Argentina!
Neat tour! Love seeing the equipment. Also the host is extremely handsome!
At 2.53 and 3.40 are Ampex 2000B quadruplex machines which we had several and were very reliable. We cleaned the tape transport , including the heads , every time we put a different tape on.
At 3.52 is an Ampex ACR25.The cassettes load using a vacuum. Initially, the cassettes were very unreliable and we had to do modifications to get all cassettes in a break to work without one failing to load. We did succeed and they worked well.
Both the 2000B and ACR25 machines were very noisy as they needed air bearing and vacuum loading pumps.
Here in the UK, the 2000B machines were changed in the 90s for 1" VPR2 machines.
Our Telecine machines were Cintel flying spot machines which had continuous film motion and a 30,000 volt cathode ray tube to illuminate the film and three detectors for red , green and blue. X rays are generated at this high voltage.
At the station that I worked at over 30 years ago, we used the RCA TR70 machines. By that time, we were using recycled tape that you could physically see the oxide look like powder and clogged the heads. You could see four bands in the video and you knew it was coming. Sometimes I'd open the head guard and stick my finger nail very gently on the heads to keep them from completely clogging on screen. Those heads could take it. We also used Freon to clean the metal parts and alcohol to clean the rubber parts. When 2 inch was working properly it looked fantastic and when it wasn't, it looked awful. 1 inch was my favorite broadcast format, but I've seen U Matic, MII, Beta, DigiBeta, and DVC Pro. There's also the XDCam discs and I can't remember what the format that did HD tape in a cassette format. I believe that tape was half inch wide but the tapes were huge. I'm thinking M5, but I'm probably way off.
Replying 5years later. @ 2:53 Those quad machines are not 2000's. They are VR 1200's. The 2000's had the side monitor cart and the 1200's had the overhead monitor bridge as seen here. Basically the same tech. The 2000's had the A scope on the monitoring on the right. The 1200's did not have that feature. A scope displays for the VR 1200 were fed into the "B" input of the Tektronix waveform monitor on the monitor bridge. I used to work with 1200 quad machines at KLCS TV UHF Ch. 58 in Los Angeles from 1984 to 1992. We also had the AVR 2 quads which were also shown here at 5:34 . We also had a couple of AVR 3 quads for a short time. Those were the very last quads that Ampex manufactured. Very nice quads.
@@stephenbeecher7545 You are correct, Stephen. .. they are 1200. We had the 2000B with the monitoring and A scope on the RHS.
A walk down memory lane, the this was right before the betacam came out for, the same year, no more back packing the video recorder, a single unit..
Engineering Tech, 1200s and 2000s were still in use, when I started. It was these machines that helped inspire my interest, the ultimate in open real technology. CND
3:50 The good old ACR-25
That deserves a full program of its own.
When it was developed (in some relationship with NASA in the late 60s), I heard that the engineering team were given a plaque by NASA, celebrating ‘the most complex electro-mechanical device ever built’.... remember this is the same timeframe as Apollo and the Saturn V booster !!
Back in the day when the adults were in the room, the world wasn’t ruled by clowns, and the public weren’t treated like infants
The moustache was used to clean the tape heads.
Respect your elders! ;-)
Cleaning heads was just a small part of the duty my dear... :p
The moustaches! The Hair styles! The Flared Trousers! The fat bloke in Trackie bottoms - Marvellous!!!!
sfbodotcom---EXCUSE ME???-----HOW ABOUT THE "CAMERA-PERSON"---IN HIGH-HEELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ooooooh. 1980’s television studio technology. I’m drooling all over those VTR’s and the cartridge machine too :D
INFLATABLEPLANE---I OWN A 2 INCH STUDIO COMMERCIAL TAPE!!
-2 DOLLARS IN 1990!!-----BUT I NEVER KNEW THEY HAD THEM IN CARTRIDGEs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's more like 60s technology
Just not on the head assembly, ok? 🤣
Love the sound of 2" machines !
Fantastic description on how magic happened behind the scenes.
Thanks God for the digital era for video at least.
In the other hand, I still listen to reel to reel tapes because they sound great and look cool...
Half the fun is watching the reels spin.
@@RaymondHng Yes, I miss the "visual part" of the old ways- now a days it's all hidden in harddrives.
I just downloaded this video and shot it across my home network to my room-mate's iMac from my PC in under 5 minutes - imagine what these guys would've thought of that in 1982!
Just imagine showing them how today, any random person can do a live stream from their smartphone from anywhere.
Several thousand pounds and several million dollars down to half a pound and an internet connection
Geez it was exciting getting into a new TV network at its launch in 1975....everything was new and on the move.
I used all this gear in the late 80s and 90s 1" sony, beta and umatic.. And 16mm , 35mm and diffrtent standards conversions. All episodes of kojak and little house on the prairie to sync up and voice over.
Unbelievable seeing 2" tape decks from the 1950s still going strong, right into the MTV era.
Back then when they were making things to last long
Looks more like VR-2000's which date to 1964.
@@wmbrown6 Ampex VR-1200s are the first Quad decks seen... with the first models of that range introduced in 1966. The other quads are Ampex AVR-2s, introduced in 1974... the most popular Quad recorders during the heyday of the 2" Transverse scan videotape format. Decks like these are still in use, transferring materials that range in age from nearly 64 years old to the 1990s.
Those were definitely 2-inch Quadruplex videotape recorders.
Hey Mate, how ya doin’?
Thank you, I had heard of Quad Cart machines, but never seen one before!
I operated almost all of that from beginning in 1969
It's incredible how highly skilled you had to be to do such simple things like advertisements, really cool to see the gear back then and also makes me pretty grateful for today's technology.
Absouletly not, everyone could do that in comparison with today, when those things can't do someone who is not such "computer talent". It was much easier to get a job to everyone.
7:17 You can see a U-matic tape being loaded. At some point this programme was recorded on the same format, using the non-ideal Composite Video connectors rather than U-matic Dub. As a result you can see "ringing", vertical lines to the left and right of some vertical features. U-matic was known for this weakness, especially when using Composite Video ports.
"Greater Eastland Television / 10 / 4 / 5a" - such an elegant name and uncluttered logo. :-)
I was doing service/support on many of the types of broadcast systems shown in this video.
I remember those days back at WRDW Channel 12 in Augusta Georgia
I am absolutely nerding out over the equipment, I ran the Ampex ACR25, that film chain & slide chain. I'm sure there are a few I missed.
Took me ages to get the cadence down for programming the ACR.
I actually felt like I did something every day, now everything is mouse clicks. Convenient, but far less satisfying.
Hearing and seeing an Ampex ACR25 in operation was fascinating.
The good old days. I like these (old) professional TV machines, even though working with them has often been problematic ... I say this as a former TV technician.
Surprising he says 2 cameras was the norm for production. Even when I volunteered as a teenager at a cable access station, we used 3 cameras for any of the productions I can remember. That was in the early 90s.
Aussie camera “people” have terrific norks!
Pat O’Shea at 6.54. RIP Pat. His son James is Toowoomba city regional councillor now.
Wow, I didn't expect quadruplex videotape to be used in the 80's.
I once worked at a station that had quad machines up until about 2000. They were replaced with a server.
Try 90s and a little 00s where I was.
@@TysonNeil i named my fursona after this format hehe, i love old tech its so cool
Meanwhile the biggest difference between amateur and professional equipment are the optics - these are important and very expensive.
One hour of 2 inch videotape in today’s dollars: $550. No wonder they reused it. And the reels were huge storage hogs.
Yes correct
Wow i can’t belive those equipments were mostly analogue but they still could do some stunning effects with it, now eventrough i do data back from 1982 but even for me 1982 feels sooo old school, even in the early 90’s i already considered 1982 to be old school, strange he?
I think the "bloom" animation for the station ident at the end of the video probably came from a Scanimate production house in the US. The vision mixers/switchers were only really capable of cuts, mixes, wipes and key effects.
I believe compilation tapes of Scanimate backgrounds were available for stations to purchase to "jazz up" their in-house titles, or the Scanimate production houses could do custom effects and idents on contract.
Recently there have been a lot of Scanimate videos uploaded to UA-cam as one machine is being preserved by one of the original engineers.
LOL. What do you mean "mostly analogue". It was analog signals everywhere. Character generators were the first "digital" video sources but their output was still analog video.
I’m 61 and I feel the same way when comparing the 70’s with the 60’s. In the 70’s, we went from using slide rules and vacuum tubes to $200 calculators (in 1970’s dollars) with integrated circuit chips to $20 calculators that could do the same thing by 1979, and the first home computers. TV was mostly B&W in the 60’s and consumer goods all had terrible fit and finish compared to the 70’s.
Reminds me that I almost had an opportunity to become a camera operator at SBS, but it was too hard for me to there as a young adult straight out of high school. So I never even applied.
That camera woman has some nice equipment 8)
Exactly, and the Rockhampton area is overlapped between RTQ7, MVQ6 Mackay (Tropical), and SEQ8 Maryborough (Sunshine Television) as well.
this studio this video is older than me, and the technology from 50's WOW!
No, it much better than the '50s- they were using vacuum tubes and 16mm film in the '50s.
Most of the equipment shown is from the 60s, 70s & 80s. All fairly state of the art for the time period when this was shot.
The only thing missing was contemporary VCRs , but this could be on the cusp of ßetacam in widespread use.
A visit to the transmitter would have been interesting, at least to people like me.
10y later and it was all 1" and Beta, nil cine or 2" to be seen.... 15y after that all tape was gone and digital gear ruled.... Ahhh, new technology....
Good to see some of the gear that was used back then - now sadly, computers do a lot of the on air work. Would have loved to have been born a few years earlier!
2.00: However, DDQ also has a translator in Toowoomba on channel 5A, transmitting from Picnic Point.
1.38: Some of the northern areas of 10-4-5a e.g. Kingaroy would have also been able to receive SEQ8 Maryborough as well.
"and tape can be reused many times...."
Ha! Is that the same thing the BBC was saying while it was wiping most of the Doctor Who episodes?
Early videotape was expensive. It wasn't the just the BBC, may videotaped programs in America either still exist on kinescopes (telerecordings) or were lost. The footage from NBC from the day Kennedy was assassinated starts at 14 minutes because they didn't turn on the VTR right away.
If you think it was bad that TV recordings were erased, some audio recordings were lost this way too. The Beatles "Love Me Do", "P.S. I Love You", "She Loves You", and "I'll Get You" studio recordings will only every be in mono as the studio recordings were erased. The master tape for Love Me Do was actually lost completely and has since been recovered from a copy that was held by a record collector.
John McFerren what i do like is that despites many color recordings were lost whereas only the B&W version of it exists, if those chroma dots are still present in it, then those original colors can be recovered with software,if not then we can halicunate many colors back with todays computer AI colorization ,wich is able to approximate many colors back from recognized objects in a scene ,and for those lost stereo recordings from the beatles such as ‘love me do’ , with modern ai audio source saperation, it is now possible to saperate vocals from instruments etc,,, and since many beatles stereo recording contained the instruments on the left channel and the vooces on the right channel, it’s possible to those saperated voices & instruments to those appropiate channels to reconstruct it how it should,ve been in stereo, this is fantastic new for artists who desires to have their lost vocal & instrumental recordings back.
@@johneygd One reason why many old color tv shows exist only in B/W was because blank tapes were expensive so they taped over them. Many times a B/W film copy was made for stations to play as reruns in syndication. Many early soap operas and game shows are missing because they didn't have much value for reruns
Everything has been converted to digital since then.
That's really cool!
It's still quite the same today. Digital, of course, and much smaller devices. But still, video switchers have a quite similar user interface.
0:43 Real physical backdrops? Chroma had been a thing for years already...
cool freakin video
I knew of a rinky dinky station that had two cameras in it's studio.
Did they use the U-matic format here for ENG?
I used it myself for a number of productions back in 1982!
RCA TPR-10 portable quad VTR at 6:32 !
Chris W it’s actually an Ampex ACR-25 cart machine, which is the competitor to the RCA TCR-100. It was more advanced than the RCA in that it had almost instant pre-roll and could play multiple 10 second spots back to back.
@@Nosix88 nope, that's an RCA TPR-10 at 6:32. Ampex had a similar "portable" 2 inch VTR, the VR-3000. The RCA TPR-10 VTR was widely used in the military as a data recorder. You're right about the ACR-25 and the RCA-100 equivalent, both being used for commercial playback. the ACR-25 is shown at 2:55 and 3:55. It was a far superior VTR to the RCA-100 which I always likened to my grandfather's hay baler. The RCA being very mechinal while the Ampex mostly handled the tape with air columns and vacuums. I always got a chuckle that ACR was RCA spelled backwards.
@@WeWereYoungandCrazy Somewhere along the lines I read that MTV in the early days used the Ampex ACR-25 to playback music videos. Part of the choice on using the Ampex ACR-25 was that it had stereo playback, (useful once MTS stereo was launched a few short years later; it would have been known to be in development at the time) , plus I don't think anything at the time of MTV's lunch was capable of playing back to back tapes so quickly. Such as 10 sec interstitials.
Considering the number of different videos they would play an hour, a video cart machine is the ideal choice, you could certainly load up an hours worth music videos on an ACR-25. Except for Michael Jackson Thriller, I suspect that was played separately. I also understand they had two of them for redundancy, I think they got them used at the time so having another as a backup was a good idea. The station I worked for early in my career was still as using an ACR-25 (affectionately called Jaws for obvious reasons) in early 90's. From that experience I recognize the typical playback errors you would see on an ACR-25, and I remember seeing the same kinds of playback glitches on MTV in the 80's, usually just as a cart begins playback. They were fascinating machines to watch in operation and listen to as well. The way the tape guided up the head along a long vertical window using negative pressure or suction, it was so fast. Seen here. ua-cam.com/video/m_YXCNpTfAg/v-deo.html
@@marcusdamberger The errors were aplenty for sure. But much less than the RCA TCR-100 cart machine. A maintenance fix that today seems like an almost insurmountable feat of labor and determination, was to remove IC sockets and solder the ICs directly to the printed circuit boards. This fix came about after a few years of use and our engineers noticed resetting ICs corrected a lot of logic problems. This was due to an oxidation issue between the IC pins and the socket. I didn't work on this fix myself but observed the process. Our TV station had 2 ACR-25s and One was taken offline to get the resolder work and it's boards would be rotated back into the machine to be tested then on to the next board. A very long slow process but apparently worth the trouble in the long run. The second ACR-25 served as a backup to the primary machine and was often used in video production since multiple clips could be rapidly played back to back. Each ACR-25 had 2 playback transports. I recall there was a minimum clip length of 10 secs for one transport to load while the other transport played out. The ACR-25 used technology from the AVR-1 that consisted of vacuum columns, and vacuum capstan, so no pinch roller! It even had a shuttle knob. Many thanks to Mr Renz from TV-5 for keeping all those parts running as smooth as a Swiss watch. The best of the best.
The camerawoman in a skirt and high heels....
I doubt she wore that everyday while operating the camera. This was made for a studio tour introduction, so everyone dressed-up, instead of wearing torn blue jeans.
Ahh back when women were women ..no confusion then 😅
I'm sure plenty of countries took longer than others to receive color TV at all (Italy didn't until the late 70's I think). It makes us Americans feel very spoiled for having it earlier.
You weren't spoilt by having 525 lines, tho.
@@youtubesworstguitarist6809 True!
Australia was late in getting colour television, in 1975. In Britain, colour television began in 1967 using the PAL 625 line system, but was only broadcasted on BBC 2. BBC 1 and ITV didn't receive 625 line or colour transmissions until November 1969 and even then, many parts of Britain, such as the South West (Cornwall and Dorset) and Cumberland (now Cumbria) didn't receive colour until 1972. British television wasn't fully in colour until about 1976, and the Channel Islands only got colour in 1976 due to the complexity of transmitting UHF 625 line broadcasts past France which was using the SECAM system and because of the long range it had to go from the Dorset coast to Fremont Point. Ireland got colour in 1970 or 1971, but many programmes were still in monochrome (black and white) 1976, when the last studio in RTE to get colour cameras was complete.
Having broadcasts in color and people having color televisions are of course two different things... Here in Finland the first color broadcasts took place in 1969, but many families had B&W televisions long after that.
@@joojoojeejee6058 Not surprising.
Are the cameras in our phones more powerful now than these gigantic studio cameras with huge handles and knobs? I’m not super familiar with this tech but it seems incredibly interesting.
Cameras in today's smart phones are higher resolution.
Yes and no.
The lenses alone in those old cameras, are way better than the lenses on any smartphone, not to mention they let in more light.
Broadcast cameras are of higher quality than whatever smartphone can have.
Resolution and power consumption are basically where smartphones win.
Smartphones also have crappy CMOS sensors with rolling shutters.
@@GoldSrc_ 👆 This. Smartphones could have 500M Pixels , but without a proper lens they are no better than the best iphone.
wow just wow
these day region stations get their feed from their metro counterparts
I worked with 2inch quadruplex as seen at 2:58
At this time they still used 2" video tape and didn't the transition to 1" video tape yet
But they changed to use outdoor video tape instead the usual 16 mm film.
Very very good
Wow i had no idea broadcasts were relayed in microwaves to the transmitting antenna sites.
What format was it sent in and why couldn't you receive it at home? Does he mean that you couldn't receive it without microwave antennas / receivers? It was regular unencrypted PAL / NTSC composite, right?
Yes, I think that's what he was referring to . Microwave transmissions to Other facilities.. I think the reasoning was, being able to put the TV station any where in town they wanted and have the transmitting antenna placed for maximum coverage for transmitting watt.. Mobile News trucks also used microwaves to "beam" back to TV stations
FM radio is still relayed in microwaves from the studio to the transmitter. And digital TV probably too. You can't watch at home because it uses much higher frequencies and the signal is directed directly to the antenna and not scattered.
Audio/Video signals sent to and from the antenna tower are still transmitted via a microwave link, but is now 100% digital.
Nearly everything mentioned is still in use today.
The videotape machines may not be on the front line anymore, but are still available for archiving vintage video to the modern digital record/playback systems.
5:48 i think it was created using after effects
Sensacional
This guy looks like he belongs in an adult movie from the 70s
Nowadays it's only the laptop and a chair 🤦🏾
What was this cartridge player called? How long was the playing time for these cassettes?
Very interesting
Anybody know what make those studio cameras are as well as the video switcher? 40 years in the business and I don't recognize either. It was cool, though, to see the Ampex quad machines and the ACR 225 in play. Brings back memories of my first real job in TV in master control playing shows back to air. We used much of the same VTR equipment although 1" tape was starting to phase out the 2" stuff.
All the switchers appear to be made by Richmond Hill Industries (RHI), I think that's the right name anyway (see correction below). I've looked for them online but can't find any reference to them anywhere. They were widely used in Australia and it leads me to believe that they were made here but I can't be sure.
I have a dual effect bus dual mix bus version from the same era as my coffee table! Sadly I didn't get the rack of switchgear (grumble grumble), just the control panel. Mine looks more like the version used in the commercial production suite. If I have a peek under the switch panel I'll update this comment with whatever I find.
Edit: Hmm just did another search and finally found something! They're actually from Richmond Hill Laboratories (RHL) which was a Canadian company.
@@ffsireallydontcare I'm pretty sure Richmond Hill were made in Canada.
@@Geebax2 Yep! I edited my response with the correction.. You didn't read to the end did you, you naughty boy! ;-)
Took a bit of finding, but I think the camera might be an Ikegami TK 301A: eyesofageneration.com/mystery-solved-1-the-first-ikegami-studio-camerawithout-a-doubt-this-is-t/
Supposedly the cameras are Ikegami TK-301.
6:53 those adidas pants though
yes, they are look like they are being stretched beyond the intended limits - in spots not meant to be streatched
Nice!
@0:34 - High heels always a good idea for cameraperson - not. LOL!
she had a hot date with the director after the newscast.
Clip clop, clip clop...LOL...mind the cables.
No such thing as a "cameraperson". It's cameraMAN (man meaning person not male)
Good
I could do all this with a Video Toaster twenty years ago. Now anyone can do this with a laptop computer.
Can anyone identify the manufacturer and model of the studio cameras in this clip? Don’t recognize them from my TV career in the USA spanning the 70s-90s
Oops I actually had researched this before - according to Bobby Ellerbee’s TV camera website the cameras are Ikegami TK301s which were the first full size color studio cameras.
eyesofageneration.com/ikegamis-first-full-size-color-studio-cameras-the-tk301-this-australian-stu/
I won't say premiere pro is difficult again
Chyron 3!!!!
At least they weren't using "Mini-Cam" like us yanks did!
Is it just me, or does his accent become even more "Australian" the deeper into the video you go?
In their studio there were probably at least 5 cameraMEN covering 2 shifts a day. But when it was time to make this video.. they used the cameraPERSON. I have no idea why.
you phones camera is now better. :p
The optics aren't.
@@joojoojeejee6058 I definitely threw that out there as a joke. I didn't really know. Would be interesting to know how this old tech compares with what is very cheap now.
and not only that show.... but hey, horse races were sooooo much more important, eh?
cameraperson wears heels as regulation safety footwear = epic fail
보나!
0:27 "The cameraman (or should I say cameraperson)" that "correction" really was unnecessary
That's your second comment on this, why?
Two torpedoes behind that camera 0:27
yes, they are used to press the buttons on the back of the camera while she uses both hands to keep the camera steady
wow my camera has more power and quality than all these machine put together...
Good old days... :'(
My iPad has more power and quality than the whole tv station from those days.
0:27 ... example of the right gender in 1982 🙈
Corruption, I’m restricted from commenting on Australia Channels.
So Corrupt! I don’t know anything about about AUSTRALIA.
Hi! I'm Gay.
cool
+Jasper Van Der Blint hi gay!
I'm happy too.
@@harrychestwigg But Marvin was not gay so he changed his name to Gaye.
Sorry to hear that .not really . More girls for me 😁