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Author Topic: return videotapes heads out or tails out? William Hooper Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1879 From: Mobile, AL USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-07-2005 02:04 AM                        Just throw those tapes in the Goldberg Rewinder, slam the door, & stand the hell back.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 12-08-2005 04:28 AM                     quote: I have heard also "laser disc"? so confused!! ...here's one for you - ...and this is the CAV side due to those line reflections at the "2:00" and "8:00" position-being each a half frame. Shoot, Goldberg "Model B" rewinders aren't that fast, it's those STRONG Muts that can wind film like nobody's business when you crank the variac wide open. quote: Mark Lensenmayer As for old audio tapes, my dad has some paper backed tape from around 1950 (this was the standard before plastic tape and after wire recorders) that still play just fine. Standard 1/4" format with a gray paper front and a black magnetic back. Most are on 5" reels. Paper backed Scotch 100, or 101, Audiotape and the Brush Soundribbon were a good start for the paper backed, black oxide variety. I've got a roll of the Brush Soundribbon and it's amazing how much fidelity can be held and come off of this early stuff  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 12-17-2005 04:59 AM                       At the station where I worked, we mostly used 3/4" U-matic broadcast cassettes. There were (4)record-play decks for recording satellite feeds and on-air program playback. We also had (14)playback-only units (controlled in configurable sequences), which served as the spot machine. The program tapes always got rewound, but the spots stayed tails out, because of the way the sequencer worked. You had to continually load the commercials manually during the breaks and stay on top of the sequencing of the 14 machines (some elements in a spot break are only 5-10 seconds long, so they go by fast). There was no time to rewind them as they ended. The drill went like this: as soon as a commercial ended in one machine and the next deck took to air, hit EJECT, wait for it to un-thread, pull that tape out, quickly set it aside, grab the next commercial in the sequence, shove it in the deck and hit REWIND. Then go to the next machine to repeat the sequence for as long as the spot break lasts. Cue tones did the rest. Done properly, the effect on the air was a seamless fade out/fade in from one commercial to the next. You had to stay far enough ahead of the advancing vtrs to allow tapes to cue, and to hit a 3-second pre-roll. If you had any kind of a problem or stopped moving, the spots could quickly catch up with you and the whole shooting match would come crashing to a halt. Then you'd take black and everyone would know you screwed up. Oh, and by the time you figured out what went wrong, the program would be back up again, just running into black, and you'd have to make good on the spots somehow! I loved it!  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 12-17-2005 05:09 AM                     haha That reminds me of running a changeover booth without a splicer. Every trailer on the other machine! That sucked. Needless to say, the short 30 second teaser trailer was always first.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-17-2005 07:32 AM                        I'd hate to see the thread-count numbers for those machines, Tim! I would have assumed that there would be one tape that contained all the commercials to be shown during a particular program and that there would be some sort of automation system that would cue the tapes and do the switching without human intervention. I guess not. How are commercials inserted now? Are they played from tape, or do they originate from some sort of disk-based system?  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 12-17-2005 08:29 AM                       quote: Brad Miller That reminds me of running a changeover booth without a splicer. Yes, every film break meant another c/o. Hope you didn't have to do that too long. Scott, this was the Fox affiliate in Lexington, KY, nearly 15 years ago. They've since moved to brand new studios, got new equipment, etc. They were bottom of the barrel, though, when I was there. Not much in the way of equipment or budget. The sequencer was originally designed for cable television local-insertion work; so rapid-fire, multi-spot breaks weren't its forte. All the other stations had standalone, automated (or cartridge-style) spot machines, which required little attention. I think back and I'm amazed that little sequencer we had worked as well as it did; but compared to "normal" stations, we were effectively running those breaks by hand! Today, many stations run digital video servers. A station in Cincinnati that I know of has a unit with 15TB (that's terabytes) of RAM. Before a break, hard drives start loading video files into memory, in broadcast order, where they can then "take" to the air instantly. No pre-rolling. It's funny you mentioned one tape for the commercials. If I had an especially difficult event coming up (like a couple-minute break with 8 or 10 elements, back to the (television) program for a fast :30 of closing credits, and then right back to the spot machine for a heavy top-of-the-hour break), and if I had enough lead time... I'd setup and run the first break offline (in preview) and record it onto a blank tape. That way, those first 8 or 10 elements would only tie up one VTR when they aired, and leave me a sporting chance at staying on top of the rest. Btw, some shows have some commercials "built-in" to the program (like on syndication runs of network shows), so that's something else to keep an eye on. (That's why sometimes you'll be watching a show and you'll see the exact same commercial run twice in a row. MCO misread the log.)  |  IP: Logged

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