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I feel like a total junior here... didn't spend much time with engineering Quads, but I do have a special fondness for them as an operator.<div><br></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"> My history with Quad tape spanned 1976-1985. I worked in two facilities; an on-air station in Saskatoon, Sask (Canada), and a high-end post house in Toronto. The on-air station was an RCA house, but converted to AMPEX when Type-C took over with VPR-2s. Then they went SONY. The Toronto house was AMPEX all the way.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">I worked first as an engineer, then as an operator/editor at the TV station, which had five machines in its tape room and two in a truck for location taping. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"> The machines (as I recall) consisted of: one TR-70C, used for mastering and editing "Hi-Band" commercial programming (no timecode)</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"> two TR-60s, used for on-air program and commercial playback ('short' run) and donor source video for production</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"> one TR-4(5?) Lo-band recorder for programming tape delay, and</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"> one TR-3 (?) Lo-band recorder, also for tape delay.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">The VTRs in the truck were also TR-3's if I've got that right -- they were the horizontal flat-bed type recorders.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">We avoided Lo-band where we could, but because half the machines in the mix were Lo-band only, scheduling was critical. Lots of midnight and very early AM shifts doing the commercial runs for the day -- this was before the availability of a cart machine for this market. Eventually they installed a Betacart-- circa 1986.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">It was during this time that VT playback traffic went from somewhere around 70-80 plays a day to north of 250, so the department was under enormous pressure, handling commercial on-air, program delay, production, news, etc., all with ONE operator and a supervisor -- who was mostly concerned with file management and traffic rather than actual operation.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">I worked as an on-line editor / vision-mixer at the post facility in Toronto (VTR on Scollard) where five Super-HiBand AVR-3's were in service; three directly controlled by an RA-(4000?) editor (with a Vital Squeezoom!) for A/B Roll editing, and two more for duplication, wild recordings, studio recording, etc. Several 7.5 ips recording heads were acquired for feature-length capability when the facility became a film-transfer point for the new home-video market. The important thing was to re-adjust the erase-delay before use!</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"> There was originally one VPR-2 (which got "Merlin'ed), and later 3 VPR-3's showed up (late 1984?) with an ACE and two ADO's. And I suspect those same three VPR-3's continued their careers in Edmonton when the Toronto company demised a couple of years later.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Its been 23 years, but if there's any little practical hands-on thing that might help.... We needed to do a lot of on-the-spot things, not many of them orthodox, to keep them "on-the-air"! I believe they all had personalities, like dogs or Douglas Adams' "Marvin", in the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy.</font></div><div><br></div><div><br><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div>Joe Owens</div><div>Presto!Digital Colourgrade</div><div>302-9664 106 Avenue</div><div>Edmonton, Alberta T5H0N4</div><div>+1 780 421-9980</div><div><a href="mailto:jpo@prestodigital.ca">jpo@prestodigital.ca</a></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span> </div><br></div></div></body></html>