1275 successive single frame edits from 1979

In 1978 I built an electronc editor for an RCA TR-5 quad VTR. To test its reliability, I set it to make a single frame edit, advance the in and out frames and roll back and repeat. I stopped it after about 5 hours after it had made 1275 perfect edits from off-air TV. I recently found a 3/4" copy and realized it was a time capsule of prime-time TV of the era!

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• quad VTR
• electronic editing
• Dave Sieg
• TV Time Capsule

[davesieg]

It was Memorex stock and I don't recall any dropout accumulation at all. Unfortunately this file was made from a 3/4" copy. The original is long gone and I wouldn't have any way to play it back anyway. It was a "stock" TR5 except for the edit mods and the master erase being filed away where the control track was.

[pvx]

Wow, very interesting indeed, and on 2"quad....! Reminds me totally of the "time lapse tv" scene in the movie "Koyaanisqatsi" (which had bits of ABC's programming featured also... :).

Awesome work with building the editing controller, it looks like it must of passed all tests with flying colors... :)

[davesieg]

Thanks! It did! I was more amazed at how much you retain from 1/30 second of video and audio. I wish I had the original 2" Quad!

[pvx]

Indeed, some quite ideal frames got recorded here...! :)

A tech question about the editor you made--was it computerized or did it use it's own ttl logic or was it, dare I say, electro-mechanical?

[davesieg]

The hardest part involved leaving the control track intact, so I had to file away a 1/8" slice from the 2" wide erase head and fill it in with epoxy. The circuitry involved tricking part of the machine into thinking it was in playback when it was actually in record. There were some 1-shot millisecond timers. RCA VTRs in those days used 70-volt logic! YIKES!

[pvx]

70V logic? Man, most logic & IC circuits I've worked with usually are 5-12v....! Just curious, why did RCA go with such a high voltage?

Also, did you have to do the head modification and playback trickery due to the TR-5 being a record-only machine?

[davesieg]

The TR5 could play back enough to verify a good recording, just had no color TBC.

The erase head mod kept the control track from being erased when the machine went into edit record. I have no idea why RCA chose 70v logic except that was the highest votage DC supply in the system.

Control cables in those days were long unshielded multiconductor cables so I guess they were trying to minimize stray pulses.

[waldopeppa]

damn that was annoying as fuck

[sneeyize45]

This not only from prime-time of the era, there is also much of daytime television on this as well, including all three of the major networks morning shows of the time, Today, Good Morning America and whatever CBS was calling theirs at the time, and also some of the cartoons and daytime reruns of primetime shows and also a few of the soaps (at least one scene from Edge of Night, that I'm aware of & I think All My Children, Another World and As the World Turns have scenes shown here.)

[MattTheSaiyan]

Awesome!! Retro and groovy.

[Synthetrix]

Cool!

[RCAquadruplex]

That quad tape stock sure took a beating with all those passes, but it appears to have survived pretty well!

Was it more or less, a "stock" TR-5....except for the editor mods?

[99Hooker]

Didn;t follow tech talk, but the result is amazing (found it nice counterpoint to the forced naturalism of koyaanisqatsi style imagery myself) - thanx 4 posting

[pvx]

Ahh, I see.....

So the only requirement for everything to work would be for a pre-blacked tape to be used, with fresh control track pulses recorded (much like any editing VTR requires)?