1958: Introducing VERA - Britain's First Videotape Recorder | Panorama | Retro Tech I BBC Archive
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- čas přidán 9. 10. 2022
- Richard Dimbleby introduces V.E.R.A. (Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus), during a live edition of Panorama. Then - thanks to the magic of videotape - he introduces it all over again.
Will this extraordinary new technology revolutionise television production? Mr Dimbleby speaks to Peter Axon, who led the development of VERA, about the benefits of his new system over existing methods of film recording.
Originally broadcast 14 April, 1958.
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Great - but a shiver went down my spine when it was mentioned 'the tape can be erased & recorded on again' Why? Because I'm a big 'Doctor Who' Fan and we know what happened there!
Cost! You didn't have to answer for budgets. Sure, we can regret those losses now, when storage is cheap. But there's a difference between keeping everything. For example, were the first few minutes of that Panorama worth keeping? (Since it was obviously also being filmed, I bet they didn't.
It is Doctor Who, a crappy kids show and it still is now. Nobody cares.
@@stephenguppy7882Doctor Who is not, and has never been a kids' show. Hence why it has never been made by the children's department.
@@MuchWhittering It always was and will forever remain a load of kid's crap.
This is lovely. And noticeable how there was an effort to inform without patronising the viewer.
In those days people presented information as knowledge and people received it gratefully without thinking they were stupid not to have known it previously, because on the whole we were all learning simultaneously (unless you're a scientist) but the rise of the programme presenters with low self worth like Jeremy Paxman, who wanted jobs to fill emotional holes, meant that self esteem was on the rise (rather than self worth) and information became nuanced....the trick is to learn it but ignore any inflexions.
That’s because predominantly it was middle / upper / educated class people who had access to TV.
They only started dumbing TV down once televisions became more affordable for common folk.
That's funny, I thought he treated the viewers like idiots! 🤣
The most challenging aspect of VERA was trying to get one to fit under the TV.
"This machine will allow the BBC to become the most infamous erasers of video tape that the world has ever known."
Who are you? Mr Hindsight?
But not the greatest destroyer of content. That would go to ABC Television in the US who acquired the entire existing archive of the US DuMont Television Network, which began in June 1942. DuMont was held back by the exorbitant costs of broadcasting and eventually went bust in August 1956. Most of their 20,000 programmes were broadcast live and recorded on kinescope. By the early 1970s most of the film had been destroyed to recover the silver content of the film prints and the rest was thrown in New York City's East River to make room for ABC's own videotapes. Only 350 programmes still exist mainly thanks to private collectors or having come from the performers themselves.
Yes, but many more recordings were made and then lost on the successors to VERA than on VERA.
@@BrianG61UKyep. VERA was a technical exercise, this I understand was one of the few times it was ever used.
The project leader Dr Peter Axon would be working for Ampex within a few months of this being made and the BBC had already seen demonstrations of the vastly superior Ampex system by this point.
@@gordonbeattie4864that sounds utterly barbarous, just throwing away history for a few lousy bucks back in silver, glad at least a fraction was saved.
Such good television. Took some creativity & execution to pull that off for the very first time.
In 1958 in the US, having videotape enabled "tape delay" which meant for the first time, networked programming on NBC, CBS & ABC could be seen in every time zone of the US, as they simply had a tape recording the network east coast feed & then replaying it in their own time zones. US has six time zones, with the 4 main ones being east, central, mountain and pacific time, all one hour differences.
Wonderful, thanks for sharing this. I always find it amazing how they made such great advancements.
My father is the same age as this footage, makes me feel somewhat in touch with this generation seeing this
Every time I watch old TV content like this my first thought, for the historical context of the piece in a way that feels real to me, is to calculate how old my parents were when it was filmed. In this case, my dad was 2 and my mum was -1.. Always blows my little mind.
Ironic inasmuch as the recording of this extract was on good old film, and it was interesting to note the dramatic step-down in vision quality when the playback of Dimbleby's introduction was shown (perhaps due to that very narrow tape?). Of course VERA soon capitulated to Ampex.
Back then, filming TV shows was the only way they knew how to get a recording of a live show. We're rather spoiled now, with a plethora of ways to watch TV in the highest of qualities.
Ah I love this! Fascinating!
A nice piece of television history. I don't think it really saw the light of day, usurped by the Ampex Quadruplex system that addressed a lot of the shortcomings of VERA.
Quadruplex has now in its own turn been superceded by digital technology but a few machines are now in private hands, they certainly are mighty beasts.
Brilliant footage
THE SPEED of it must of been crazy inches per second
Yep, 200 inches per second, or nearly 17ft. One of those reels could only record about 15 minutes of 405-line video.
@@scottishwildcat i guess it made less noise then the replacement video 2inch air compressor noise tho ;)
@@elijahmodnar1 Former Tape Ops of the world unite! 😂
wait for the video on the 2inch video recorders, bet they wont show the air compressor in the other room :P
@@elijahmodnar1 They were down in the basement of TVC - directly under the central fountain !
I think it's spinning so fast because it must have been before the invention of the spinning drum type heads .
No kidding. That's reels were moving!
Ampex were already selling the helical scan Quadruplex by this point. Dr Axon had even been to a demonstration of it in 1956.
Amazing! Love this archive footage! Love the BBC more than our own networks.
Which networks are you on about?
@@2511dhall those in the US.
@@salliemorrill2671 ok is PBS good?
@@2511dhall true! I overlooked that. Thank you.
Yes, you could record video onto a fast moving ribbon of tape but amount of tape needed was crazy. The next step was quad 2" which recorded 4 channels at once and then 1" helical which was even more efficient. Tape was cheap but moving it around and storing huge reels got silly. A 90 minute reel of quad 2" tape was about the size and weight of a space-saver automobile wheel and tire. The reel of tape cost around $150 in 1976 dollars.
A recording of a recording of a recording.....
Of a recording 👍
Only a genius could program V.E.R.A. to tape Dr. Who.
And then wipe it 🤦
only an idiot would want to.
@@stepheng8779 Videotape was not considered a long term storage medium when it began to be used, it was a production method. Film was considered as a long term storage and programme sales medium. All of the surviving Dr Who episodes from the 1960s survive as film copies. The original tapes where recycled to make new programming. VT was very expensive and hard to edit and fragile& sometimes would not replay properly. By the mid 1960s VT worked much better and Videotape formulations had improved. But Videotapes where bulky and used lots of space& in the UK it was unlikely most programmes would ever get more than at best a second repeat due to contractual terms and Union agreements.
@@martinhughes2549 Thanks, yes I knew all that, it was a flippant comment re. their vandalism.
Some surviving shows have never had a repeat due to contractual terms sadly.
@@stepheng8779 it's the same for lost ITV shows and for Australian programmes etc. It's amazing anything survived. However viewers at home often complained about repeats and I can remember people complaining abput b&w shows being repeated when they had just invested in a Colour TV. TV music shows seem to be hit the hardest in the UK though, Ready Steady Go, TOTP and a vast number of short lived music shows in ITV regions and the BBC that are entirely missing. It's very sad. However TV bosses where very short sighted.
If you liked this then you'll love The Secret Life of Machines with Tim Hunkin on the video recorder where the history of recording is told - czcams.com/video/g1JlUcFKm5o/video.html
You beat me to it!
@@64bakes as soon as I saw this BBC upload and the thumbnail it brought back memories of Tim and Rex on TV back in the late 80s early 90s :)
What you have been watching is really just a load of rust😁
@@christopherthompson2167 Lol - it really is! Some might not get this!
Exactly where I remember this from too. Always loved the demo showing the degradation of subsequent generational copies of the Channel 4 branding
Love it
Don't mention the word AMPEX, 2 years before this they had marketed the vastly superior VRX1000, light years ahead of VERA. In this same year NBC performed the 1st colour videotape recording, the quality is impressive for early NTSC.
czcams.com/video/4vBEMGTdDYc/video.html
Yes, Peter Axon who developed VERA was at the VR1000 demonstration in 1956 - they must have know this was a futile exercise.
In some ways VT is a retrograde step from 35mm film. The film "The Third Man" was released almost 10 years prior to this broadcast, but has been re-released in 4k HD. The only reason why this could happen was because it was recorded onto an analogue format that could be quantized . The problem with VT is that it's a fixed format and can't easily be re-quantized and is pretty much stuck at the native resolution such as 405-line as here. Plus a lot of memorable recordings were lost due to tape re-use to reduce costs. Obviously with film, once recorded it is permanent (unless nitrate stock...)
youre right, but i still think that even if bandwidth analog video is limited by 405/486/576 ect lines vertically, i feel that the horizontal resolution is much greater then modern square pixels of digital video resolution, as in even tho on paper say it says a betaSP recording is 640 to 720 rez horizontally, i feel its prob more than that in reality, prob 820ish
Of course low resolution analog video was a huge step back in quality even compared to even the earliest of film recordings, not in some ways, in every way, but as explained in the video it was all about the other advantages video has that were important.
Very true. It's one of the reasons I think they removed the definition gratings on test cards.
@@elijahmodnar1 and
That whole “we can erase it and reuse the tape” attitude came around to bite them. So many historical recordings were lost due the the BBC’s shortsighted penny pinching…
So easy to criticise, with 20/20 hindsight.
VERA... VERA... what has become of you? Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?
Scrapped.
Although one of the tape spool survives.
Was in a display case in TVC years ago.
Bring the noise back home!
a question came up about this in our little group: "Surprising that they continued with its development after Ampex introduced the first practical videotape recorder..." This would have been 2 years after Vera, so why did they continue with that technology of Vera?
That's exactly what I thought as well. Especially since the quality loss was apparent over a telecine as well (most likely that's how this snippet was preserved). It was really a dead end.
I can only assume that after all the years and money sunk into Vera the BBC were driven to have something to show for it even though they knew deep down the handwriting was on the wall.
It took until 1958 before Ampex had VTRs available that would work on the 405-line 50i system. The BBC got its first Ampex machine just four months after this broadcast.
It's the BBC
Ampex would own the patents on Quadruplex and could charge whatever they wanted. By having an alternate technology, even with the slightest sense of practicality, you have competition and that drives down cost and improves performance. That has happened many times: VHS vs Betamax, Blu-Ray vs HD DVD, Windows Media vs MPEG, Dolby Digital vs DTS, Dolby Vision vs HDR10+, HDMI vs DisplayPort...
Quaint but flawed, VERA didn't stand a chance with the Ampex design using thicker tape, transverse scanning and consequently, much slower tape speeds. Around this time, helical scanning heads were invented; a technique used in most video tape systems, including umatic, vhs, betamax and betacam. The Ampex system was still used in some tv studios for decades after its release.
dr peter axon what an awesome name😄
Ooh, look at that! At just about 9.20pm, the world's first ever 3rd generation copy of a video tape! What's that? You say it's not a copy? Oh dear...
Very interesting. But what about Ampex VRX1000 in 1956? Was that not the first video tape-recorder?
Britain's First and *Last* Videotape Recorder.
How long was the playing time of these very large tape spools?
How wide was the tape?
Where there any helical scan technique, or was it all done by linear recording at a very high speed?
4:25 - Well Richard, most viewers wouldn't have watched this, they would have been watching ITV (if they had it in their region by April 1958) where the popular Wagon Train was airing at that same time of the ballroom show.
But I wonder. How was this "original", live edition of Panorama recorded?! On another (helical scan) tape machine or on tele film? How was it preserved to this day?
Listen to what he says at 6:10 - this led to BBC/ITV being able to wipe their videotapes of many TV shows & led to a catastrophic loss of archive BBC/ITV shows from the 1960s & 1970s. Back then, with no streaming services, no online, two & later just 3 TV channels & restrictions on broadcasting hours until 1972, they felt in 1960s why need to keep archive copies of shows that would in their mind probably be rarely shown. This was prophetic speak from this man in 1958.
i wonder what type of media did they store this clip tho. im pretty sure they didnt store it on those vera tapes.
I saw a UK designed domestic vtr demonstrated in 1962-63 , but I don't think it used helical scanning. A very large tape feed rushed at very high speed over a stationary video head to retrieve the bandwidth of the signal and record time was limited to a few minutes only. It was an expensive flop as it was unable to record much more than a few minutes of low definition video.
That's how tech is. A promising idea, then another that improves upon it, and so on and so on.
AFAIK it wasn't actually used that much, as in 1956 Quadruplex was introduced which offered far greater quality with wider but slower tape. Linear recording for video was a dead-end often chosen because it promised lower equipment costs.
Hello Vera 👍
Hiya Cynth.
@@SpiritmanProductions 😂
@@garryleeks4848 Yes - we should confine ourselves to such haughty/cultural comenting.
6:01 Oh no !!!!!
"When my pen disapears you're on the telerecording by VERA, you can tell when it's on VERA because IT LOOKS LIKE AAASSSSSS". Honestly archive footage like this puts our current 8K higher-resolution-than-the-human-eyeball into perspective.
Funny, that's precisely what I yelled at the screen at that moment.
But just about to be overtaken by the Ampex 2" Quad system, which was visibly superior and made better use of the magnetic tape.
Deja-vu
So what was used to make this recording?
Since this was an historic event on British television, it was kept by the BBC in their archive. Most of the Panorama editions up to the mid 1970s are wiped. This was recorded on 16mm film, to be kept in the BBC archives after transmission.
so...Who, & what, was recording the show that we're watching in this video?
A regular film camera using film rather than magnetic tape. He explains this right at the very start of the video.
@@krashd No he doesnt, he explains that recordings of events have previously been recorded using film. I'd assume that the show is shot on normal TV cameras live to air.
@@thabudmaster Yes, but the fact that we're seeing it now means it was recorded on _something_ - Ric_was_here's question is perfectly valid, and Rob Fraser's answer is mostly correct. (OK, he doesn't specifically say "we're filming this now". But a little thought shows they must have been.)
Oh those accents! The UK truly branded on their tongues.
I suppose they had spent resources on this machine they had to show it off somewhere - meanwhile buying Ampex machines.
lt was already obsolete by the time they'd finished it, so I wonder how many recordings were ever made on this format? Have any of them survived in a dusty BBC archive? If they have, is there a machine left in existence that can play them back?
Probably not......
And now -turn that into a camcorder.
Dang! Not having helical scanning sucked.
You can almost count the 625 lines in that picture, or was it 405?😁
This was most certainly 405 line. BBC 2 was the first British television station to transmit in 625 lines from April 1964.
376 active lines interlaced. I think the telerecorder only captured every other field, so 188 lines... some possibly cropped out of the transfer.
VERA (Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus) had to be operated by "scientists!" 🤣
Does that mean, when I got my first VHS VCR in 1981, that I was a "scientist" too?
VERA, with it's ridiculously impractical high-speed tape transport, was doomed to failure, especially since QUAD was becoming available.
The cuts from VERA tape to live camera is not very nice. The sync is not perfect between the tape and the studio.
But how did they record this? 🙃
On good old film, the sort that Mr. Dimbleby explained they were trying to get away from. If you look carefully, you can see the odd dirt spot (and/or processing bubble), always a givaway for film. (As are scratches unless it's been always carefully projected in a very clean projector.)
16mm film was what the BBC used back then to keep programmes for their archive and also to sell them internationally.
Odd, in that the playback tape segment is chock full of popcorn noise and the even and odd lines are noticeably different in brightness and contrast. This type of recording was a technological dead end. The rotating drum method and FM recording were the future. Far clearer and far less costly of tape. Eventually you could record like 4 hours on one videocassette. As a rough estimate, about 50 times the time duration and ten times the video quality. I wonder if any of those huge VERA reels still exist?
Remember how the BBC kept this copy of Panorama. It was simply a telerecording off a TV screen, and recorded on to 16mm film, this is maybe what you are seeing. Most Panorama editions from the 50s to 70s are gone forever as they were never kept.
So what was the program recorded on?
That's what I was just asking myself! There's a noticeable drop in quality when they're playing the recording - so how was the rest of the programme recorded?
Film. Did you skip that part of the video?
@@nukesean Hadn't watched all of it when I posted. Get up the wrong side of the bed this morning?
VHS of course what were you expecting?
@@Tmuk2 When people ask dumbass questions without watching the entire video, it's appropriate to call their dumbass out. Probably something you should get used to, bub.
So this was the first tape recorder in use in the world?? What was TV studios elsewhere like US using in 1958??? Rolls of film?
The US were designing their own system called Ampex. In fact, only months after this recording, the BBC decided to go with Ampex (VR1000).
@@diond1333 Ha typical - Much like TV itself when the BBC were pushing the Baird mechanical system only to finally pack it in and use the far superior all electronic technology from the US not long after.
@@diond1333 was it same method of recording on tape??
@@fidelcatsro6948 Pretty much, except Ampex used rotating heads rather than VERA's static. There's actually quite a bit of interesting information about the two systems on the Internet.
@@diond1333 hmmm vcrs used rotating heads so they took ampex design i guess 🐱👍🏿
Not exactly portable is it?
It was not intended to be "portable". It is a stationary studio machine.
Только реальных трансферов не осталось.
videotape? what's that? :P
Sing me a song
My aunt was called Vera , just saying 🙄🙄
Small world, mine isn't!
To save a few pounds these fools went on to erase many episodes of the first Dr. Who!
"few pounds" - in 1960s video tapes were vastly expensive and were huge to keep in archive storage. So not just to save a few pounds it was to save thousands of pounds, which in 2023 value was saving the BBC millions of pounds over the years. I really dislike that these TV gems were wiped, but don't trivialise with a flippant comment of "few pounds"
Only the BBC video tape machines at the time, was centuries behind what was being used in the USA, they were already using colour recordings and the picture quality was miles superior. Anyway Video records were barely used by the BBC in the 50’s only a few times at most, and it didn’t come into regular use until the early 1960’s it was even then still pretty poor quality TBH.
Not the very best picture quality from the VERA......
Nah, it won't catch on.
The biggest potato-cam ever made
I’m with you spud 👍
Erase the tapes!? You should never erase tapes with original programs! Who knows what can be of utmost value for the future! This is a terrible statement!
Imagine if all this that you watch today was erased and not preserved!