Quad demo H 264 HQ

Experiments with deinterlacing, noise reduction and image enhancement with video material from the early 1970s from Quadruplex VTRs. The goal is to get the best images from a variety of source material. Video played from the Quad VTR to an Accom D-Bridge decoder/enhancer to an AJA IO LA to a Mac computer with Final Cut Pro as DVCPRO50. Output as H.264 file through Compressor with deinterlacing, noise reduction and image enhancement.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Ampex
• Quad
• video
• 1970s
• deinterlacing
• noise
• reduction
• image
• enhancement

[douglas787]

Dear AVP, simply awesome Quad playback. It is amazing to me how much recorded material has been lost over the years due to mishandling of tapes. The Beatles last TV perfomance, almost all the 60's and early 70's Tonight Show broadcast, most soap operas before 1979 and countless other material lost forever. Much of lost so tape could be reused, I find it very hard to understand with the production budgets of these shows they can't buy new tapes and have decent archive for all previous work.

[Audiovideopark]

A $250 reel of tape in 1959 would cost almost $2,000 today. Also, storage costs are to be considered. I think it was NBC who erased the Tonight Show tapes because of storage costs.

$40,000 a month for tape in a soap budget would be a huge expense. But many tapes were saved. Currently transferring 50 Quad tapes from the 60's and 70's from a station in Arizona.

[Audiovideopark]

Every little thing is important. First, the Quad VTR has to be adjusted correctly. The guides that position the tape up and down and in and out are adjusted properly for no skew. Head EQ and gain matched. Then sent to the Accom decoder with image enhancement. Then to AJA IO box to convert to Firewire. Apple conversion to H.264 with deinterlacing, noise reduction and image enhancement. The Accom D-Bridge did a great job going from composite to component. And a lot of adjustments along the way

[Xerox6085I]

The Booker T and the MG's segment gave me chills. Thanks so much for sharing this! Don Resor Los Angeles

[zenpho]

This really made me think about the current trend for ever-lowering signal integrity in modern digital video systems.

The designers of these historic quad machines had fantastic foresight and impressively high standards for signal integrity, such that you'd think a logical progression would mean modern systems could capture historic material with ease. The reality is almost an absurd shambles where a transfer is a huge struggle against modern encoders that throw so much of the signal away.

[analyzingfunny]

Looks great even on XP box!

[stratocat9999]

Did you change this to 24P? It looks a bit more like clean film (sports footage) as opposed to tape. Overall this looks awesome!

A note about the NBC vaults; I knew someone that worked there and what I was told was that a de-gaussing station was placed adjacent to one of the vault outer walls, and after a few years of use, they had unknowingly slowly erased and damaged the tapes within, and that the 'destruction to make space' story was a cover. Otherwise, I think UCLA would have them.

[wrtlpfmpf]

The quality is amazing considering it's NTSC material. The resulting youtube video actually looks like video.

BTW, if you want to batch-process video, I can recommend you mencoder which is a part of mplayer.

[pvx]

Whoa....  I have to say, this video looks beautiful, awesome job digitizng/encoding this!