[QuadList] Ampex Head Lines newsletter--Here's a look back to 1959-Page 2

Fri Mar 4 09:52:16 CST 2011

The article on interchangeability was interesting.  It high lighted  the 
early days of the videotape recorder.  Congratulations to the SMPTE for  
setting the standards and recommended practices that made the format a long  
running success.  

The article also shows tells us that good operating procedures result in  
good tapes.  

Chris Hill
WA8IGN

In a message dated 3/4/2011 10:27:43 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
ted at quadvideotapegroup.com writes:

In 1959, Ampex began publishing a newsletter  specifically about Videotape a
nd the company's Videotape products.  

Here's the second page of Volume 1 Number 3, published  in December, 1959, 
with type turned into editable text by OCR.  It  includes the conclusion of 
"Humble Oil Scores Big With Football Tapes from  Page 1.

Page  2

Let’s  Talk About...     

Ross  Snyder  
(Editor’s Note)  HEAD LINES welcomes Ross Snyder as a regular  contributor. 

He will discuss a  variety of technical topics concerned with television 
tape recording.  Snyder’s experience fully qualifies him as an authority.  
Before joining  Ampex -in 1952-as an engineer, he was an announcer-producer 
for WOR, New  York, and an audio engineer and newscaster for KJBS, San 
Francisco. Now  manager of video products, Ampex Professional Products Company, 
Snyder  supervises video product planning, systems engineering, industrial  
design and service engineering.  
He is a member of  the national board and a fellow of the Audio Engineering 
Society. He  holds membership in the Society of Motion Picture and 
Television  Engineers, the British Television Society and the Acoustical Society of  
America. 

60 SPLICES IN FOOTBALL  TAPES (continued) 
series, has put together  a team that moves with amazing speed and 
know-how. Most of the games are  played on Saturday nights. The edited versions, 
complete with commentary by  sportscaster Kern Tips and commercials, go-on the 
air at 5:30 p.m. the  following day. 
Briefly, here is the  productionroutine. Depending on the origination 
point, the entire game is fed  to an Ampex recorder in either KRLD, KPRC or WOAI. 
Lyerly watches the live  -feed and makes notes of the action. As soon as 
the game is over, he and his  tape editor go to work reducing the 
approximately 2% hours of recording to 25  minutes of highlights. Open and close 
commercials (filmed) are superimposed on  the tape. Then Tips views the completed 
tape and prepares his commentary. Tips  goes on camera in the studio, and his 
lead-in is taped. Crowd noise, which has  been held on a separate audio 
tape, is then mixed with Tips’ commentary and  dubbed onto the edited tape. A 
dub of the completed master is made for  back-up. And the show is ready. 
>From start of the game  until completion of the dub of the edited master 
tape, around 10 hours of  recorder operating time is logged for the complete 
job. 
“These edited tapes are  wonderful technical successes,” agency spokesmen 
said. 
Until last year, Humble  Oil used film for its football shows. 
“Tape is a tremendous  improvement,” the agency declared. “Not only is the 
picture quality far  better. 
But it would be  impossible to put the show on the air before Monday with 
film. Tape gives us  at least 24 hours’ advantage.” 

INTERCHANGEABILITY OF TAPES 
We’re impressed  constantly with the fact that interchangeability is not a 
black-and-white  affair. Interchangeability is a matter of degree. 
Monochrome tapes have been  interchanged among Ampex’s VIDEOTAPE television recorders 
for years - and very  satisfactorily whenever the operating engineer had a 
few minutes in which to  make some playback readjustments. This has also 
been true of color tapes made  on Ampex color-converted VR-1000 series 
recorders. Color tapes, recorded at  the 1958 American Medical Association 
Convention in San Francisco, were played  interchangeably on two different color 
recorders, before a public audience, on  July 22, 1958. The most dramatic 
interchange of color tapes was the now-famous  Nixon-Khrushchev debate, recorded 
on one Ampex color recorder at the American  National Exhibition in Moscow 
and dubbed and played back in color by NBC, New  York, on a different machine 
with a different recording head. 
Interchangeability of  black-and-white recordings among Ampex VR-1000 
series recorders is a  longproved reality. Hundreds of commercials, and dozens of 
syndicated  television programs, are exchanged every week. 
But Ampex feels that the  present degree of interchangeability is not 
enough. The television industry  demands, and rightly so, that recorded 
television tapes ultimately become  replayable on any television recorder, without 
readjustments of any kind, and  that tapes made anywhere be interspliceable. 
We feel that television tape,  While now interchangeable, must become as 
interspliceable as photographic  motion picture film. 
The attainment of  universal interspliceability requires a high degree of 
business responsibility  on the part of the recorder manufacturers. All must 
continue to improve  machinery and to make it easier to use. 
But the success or  failure of the manufacturer’s efforts will lie 
ultimately with the operating  engineers in the television industry. Monochrome 
tapes made on different Ampex  recorders can be interspliced, with care in 
operation. 
The care which is  required is care which must be exercised during the 
recording process. Once  the tape is recorded, there’s nothing we can do to 
change the mechanical and  electrical settings which will be required for 
satisfactory playback of the  tape. Only by universal observation of a single set 
of sensible operating  standards, during every recording session, can 
universal interspliceability be  achieved. 
Ross Snyder Video  Products Manager   

Ted Langdell
Secretary
Skype:  TedLangdell
e-mail: _ted at quadvideotapegroup.com_ (mailto:ted at quadvideotapegroup.com) 

=

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