wot: nostalgia for vtrs, etc.,

ushere wrote on 10/13/2014, 7:54 PM
just wondering if any of you old farts have moments of nostalgia for the old days of a/b vtr roll?

i've spent the last couple of days with a pretty straightforward project that for all intents and purposes was no different than editing a word document - no feeling of having created something unique, of being in control, of actually doing anything other than simply pressing buttons, and couldn't help thinking that i do occasionally miss the clunk and click of vtrs, the 10sec preroll that gave me pause for thought, the flashing lights that indicated wheels were turning, the dedicated control surfaces and jog/shuttle controllers that were simply an extension of my body and part and parcel of everyday life for so long, etc. etc,

yeah, i know it could be a pain sometimes, but with a couple of 75's to 1", calloway controller, gvg vision mixer, ad51 fx, soundcraft board, etc., there was a certain feeling that no amount of pc umph behind cut and paste and dropping fx onto a tl ever generates...

there was also the respect you garnered from clients who knew and acknowledged the skill required to use such equipment, and were more than happy to pay for your talents.

sometimes i feel like a relic, the old fart i hated when i was 17/18....

just one of those days.....

Comments

larry-peter wrote on 10/13/2014, 8:40 PM
I feel ya. Especially in the days before the switchers were under computer control, running an online session was like conducting a band. I feel the same way when I think about the old 24 track mixdowns where you pulled in musicians from other sessions - "You got 18 - 24. Take notes during the rehearsal."
Serena Steuart wrote on 10/13/2014, 9:08 PM
Ah, all that modern stuff. I miss acetate with all those real images strung out alongside sprocket holes. Strips hung from hooks in real bins with paper notes on each. That lovely smell of freshly processed rushes. I resisted video until HD, so the memories aren't quite so old as you might be thinking. Now film has practically gone, Kodak now only manufacturing 35mm to bulk order.
farss wrote on 10/13/2014, 9:40 PM
I think I was lucky, I took a two decade long sabbatical from film and TV working on SCADA systems. All of my school mates stuck it out but now none of them are in the industry and I am. Sure all those VTRs ets were marvellous pieces of engineering and I do know a few pioneers of television in the country, one of them has an old studio dolly parked in his driveway that weighs over 1 ton and needs 3 phase power and three strong men to operate it.

I guess I'll never know what I missed but I know none of my digital stuff needs a tech in constant attendance and the only "porch" I worry about is where I drink an ale :) I should admit that I do still worry about head clogs, where are those %&^# car keys??

Bob.
riredale wrote on 10/14/2014, 4:59 PM
I came later to the video-editing party. My first project was in 2001, using Pinnacle Studio7 to create a 2-hour documentary.

What was so cool about Studio7 was that you edited with a low-res proxy. This in an era when a 40GB hard drive was expensive and nearly state-of-the-art. Proxies made it possible to do a big project with maybe 10GB of disk space.

Anyway, once you finished the project and told Studio7 to render, it then asked for Tape1. You loaded it in your camcorder which was controlled by the program via Firewire, and the program proceeded to fast-forward and rewind as needed to pick up all the original full-res chunks as required. When it had everything it needed it then asked for Tape2 and the process continued. Was fun to watch as the program proceeded to build up a full-res version. Probably put years of wear on the camcorder tape transport, but it worked well--as long as you were mindful not to put any gap in the timecode when shooting.
ddm wrote on 10/14/2014, 6:13 PM
As someone who lugged a Sony BVU110 around my neck for a few too many years... I don't miss tape machines at all.
GeeBax wrote on 10/14/2014, 6:41 PM
Sweet and Sour memories, I don't miss our first VTR, about half a ton of Ampex VR1100 that we used to lift into and out of the OB van as required using a fork lift. Or the early EECO edit programmers, where you needed octopus arms to set them up. But I do have fond memories of CMX and one inch machines that performed flawlessly. And I am talking Sony, not Ampex.

My most enduring memory though was a special backpack designed to carry a Phillips LDK5 Camera, split from its zoom lens, and scrabbling up scaffolds with it on my back to rig OBs. That I will certainly not miss.
john_dennis wrote on 10/14/2014, 6:53 PM
In the early seventies a friend showed me an open-reel video tape recorder that looked like an AKAI audio recorder but with a spinning head. I think it was an AKAI or Roberts and I didn't ask him where he got it. I got out of there as quickly as I could and never touched a video device of any kind until I bought my first VHS VCR in 1988 or so. I still never owned a camcorder until 2000 when I was on a house-hunting trip and bought one on the way to look at a house. I taped the home tour and sent the tapes back to my wife.

I slipped into messing with video via Sound Forge and audio editing. I'm not nostalgic for old video hardware though given my love for tinkering with other types of hardware, I likely would have been.

I did, however, end up working on a tape storage device that striped digital data across a tape at a diagonal just like a VCR. It had two robots waaay before robots were cool.

I also worked on the IBM 3895 Document Processor which located and read unconstrained hand print on checks using a CRT and a photo-multiplier tube and lots of CPUs. That was in 1977.

One thing I like about this forum is that one can participate in a community of people who share your common interest. In the seventies, people would look at you like you were crazy at a cocktail party when you told them what you were working on. Most people didn't believe machines could do those things.

But by the grace of God...