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I didn't see where anyone had answered this question, so I'll step in. The single frame of a cue mark at the end of the SMPTE Universal leader was intended for use in television (that's why it's called a universal leader, it was designed for both theatrical and television use). This cue is not put on by the lab.

In operation, this was the "take" cue, where the television master-control operator had to pre-roll commercials on film, he would watch the countdown on his "Preview" monitor. When he saw the blip of the single-frame in preview, he hit "Take" to put that machine on the air. If you watch this leader for the cue, it will be seen immediately before the picture comes on (or fades in)....in about the time it would take you to press a button.

That's what that cue is for.

I sat here for several days trying to remember "Take" cue.

I, too, danced among the U-matic machines.

Many's the time I had a bottle squirted into my back at close range. SH*T that stuff was cold! (But very good at clearing head clogs).

I remember the techs used to go ballistic if we tried to clear a head clog on the run on the 2inch RCATR70 or the TR60. (they were not of the addage 'the show must go on'). They wanted us to put up the crash caption and remove the tape, carefully clean each head and continue...

HA! As if that would ever happen! Our tapes used to sit on the tarmac of airports all over Australia (very hot tarmacs) for long periods of time. This is not the ideal surroundings for video tapes and as such, most of our tapes shed oxide like a muthaf**kka. If we actually stopped every time, we'd be getting ratings on the crash caption instead of the program 'cos it would have been up so much.

I know this is film-tech and not video-tape-operator-tech so I apologize. (Personally, I blame the Freon )

We had 4 TR-7's (TR-70?) that took forever to lock up. All air films had an 8 second cue on them due to this. When we got a pair of Ampex VT-2000's we retired 2 of the TR-7's

What an improvement.

I had an engineer buddy that could yell at the TR-7 and make it work. Honest!

Freon® wars. Got shot in the back while loading a 90 minute 700 club VT late at night. Tape bounced on the floor. Bent reel. Show would mess up every turn of the reel. Nobody ever called to complain.

TV was fun in those days... 16mm live to air...2 inch tape...RCA-TCR100's that stuffed up the auto thread every other break...TR60's that would lose lock if you broke wind...(well, you get the idea).

Our TR70 would lock in four secs and in two secs from a standby mode. The TR60 ALWAYS took 7 secs even from standby.

Then along came one inch tape and everything changed...

My happiest moment was switching on air (the only person in the whole building) one Saturday night and being able to run Rocky Horror for the first time on televsion. I don't know what everyone else was doing, but I made sure I had a pizza delivered and some good ol' Bundaberg Rum with me for my own private party. I had the machine it was on patched into EVERY input and Every monitor I could and turned them all up to eleven.

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