<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18854"></HEAD>
<BODY style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" id=role_body bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 rightMargin=7 topMargin=7><FONT id=role_document color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>
<DIV>We all have had our share of the trials and tribulations of editing.
I started doing the cutting of the tapes and ended using PCs and data with no
tape. The stories are wide spread.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I did some thinking about how did we get to the Electronic Editor.
Splicer for the RCA folks.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As far as I know the first machine that you could edit on was the
VR-1000. There was a 2 or 3 rack unit chassis that was installed with
square buttons on the front.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>To get to this required a lot of changes. First was the development
of the Intersync to get the machine to frame vertically and lock horizontally to
the incoming video. Second was the change to the master erase head.
It had to be split so that it only erased the Video tracks and the control track
in full record. That had to be an interesting challenge as the strength of
the erase field could not lap over into the cue or audio track and cause any
erasure there. Third was the sequencing of the control so that the turn on
times would be correct. It had to be exact for the edit to occur at the
correct point.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I was thinking about AMPEX and the changes to the erase stack over the
years. First they had a front of tape full erase. Then they went to
a moveable head. That must have been a variable in terms of trying to
get the erase delay perfect every time. Finally there was the back of tape
erase assembly. Interesting the position with respect to the video record
head was shortened with the last head. Thus the delay was changed by a few
frames. Note that the canoe was not changed and thus still met SMPTE
specs. The erase assembly had to have a cue track head added so that the
EDITEC could read the cue tone early enough to do the edit. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I never heard about RCA having an electronic splicer before the
TR-22. I do think that they had an innovative way to check the timing of
the splice and set the capstan speed. Much better than AMPEX in my
opinion. If RCA had only the equivalent of an EDITEC in the early
days. AMPEX did copy the splice timing procedure in the AVR-2.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I was thinking about some of the stories that I went through as I was
reading the posts. I was glad that the only 7.5 IPS recordings that I did
were not edited. Just think of the wait time of 30 or 36 frames from push
of button to start of edit.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I still remember the chief engineer of an unnamed place now out of business
that did a recording on 3/4 tape in the insert mode to edit as he went
along. The tape was blank and thus no control track. We were able to
salvage it by building a control track in another machine jumpering circuits
from one machine to another while the tape was playing and doing some return
jumpers. The recording was the president of a top 10 corporation giving an
important address that could not be repeated. Did we save their bacon on
that one.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Late at night I once hit record on the wrong machine and wiped a bit of a
master. Fortunately we could reconstruct it very quickly. Those all
nighters were terrible.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I even sliced a dub at the wrong spot late at night.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>We had editors that would hit the buttons on the RA-400 with a lot of force
and actually sent them through the bottom a few times. Fortunately I
had spares after the first time. I was able to steal an unused one the
first time and had enough the rest of the times.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Assemble vs Insert was not an issue with us. We only did insert and
the machines other than for a couple of months were under a controller.
Either an AMPEX RA-4000 or a CMX control. Thus the need for insert.
It was interesting that all edits were Video only inserts in the structure of
the CMX. The audio was run as an separate insert that controlled.
Thus the split edit capability. The RA-4000 did not have that feature but
it was not that big a deal to us. We did CMX editing with AVR-2's and
RA-4000 with VR-1200 and AVR-2's.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The 1200 audio chassis did the audio editing. It was hard to get a
really good clean no thump edit. The audio turn on times were the
key. Still it was never perfect. The AVR-2 had better timing
circuits but CMX built their own piggy back board. Who know why.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I do remember that he RA-4000 would let us start the show exactly at zero
time code. The CMX could not handle the transition through zero. To
see the machines go crazy when we got our first CMX was nuts. You had to
stop it fast. The RA-4000 was a great edit controller but it did not have
any memory. Paper was our savior. Yet I could out pace a CMX
most days on 30 sec drop in the product spots. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>That is just some of the things that come to mind. I hope that we all
look back and thank our lucky stars for being able to see the great leaps that
were made.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Chris Hill</DIV>
<DIV>WA8IGN</DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>