Getting a 2" Quad Videotape to Play
Vložit
- čas přidán 25. 08. 2024
- We forget sometimes how far video technology has come in just the past few years. I recently needed to get some video from an old 2" Quad videotape and discovered that the machines that can play them are almost non-existent, not to mention people who know how to operate and maintain them. Also the tape manufacturers built in a time-bomb that is literally destroying these old tapes as they sit on shelves - even in properly climate controlled rooms! My friend Larry Odham just happens to have a working Ampex VR-1200B - and he shows us what it takes.
I sent my quadruplex tape to Larry last year.. it was amazing.. 1) the quality of his service, and 2) the video quality.. 100% recommend his services... Regards from Uruguay - South America.
I know of libraries with thousands of these tapes on their shelves and they don't realize the machines to play them are mostly gone and the tape is disintegrating day by day.
My first job in TV in 1985, I trained on two RCA TR-600's. We aired primarily Quad, Umatic and 16MM film. When I first started, it would take me a good 5-10 minutes to align the heads and do all the setup, but as time went on, I got to the point where I could set Quads up in less than a minute. Most of our commercial spots arrived on Quad, and were dubbed over to Umatic overnight after we signed off (wait....stations signed off?). Got quite a workout lugging those 90-minute reels across the control room (dropped one on my foot once - don't recommend that). "The Virginian" and "Name of the Game" were my favorites for weight-training.
The air compressor for the TR-600's was in the basement storage room of the station. Occasionally I would forget to put the head guard up when racking a tape, and can still hear the "dentist drill" sound of the head drum sawing the tape when it cued. Another good workout - running across the room to throw up the guard before the heads were trashed!
Ahhh....the memories. Thanks for sharing!
I just watched one of those machines get sent to a recycling plant. All I had time to grab off of it was a 14" reel.
It's like watching a lost art come to life. Really, really cool!
While there are still people around who can operate and maintain these machines, we need to make use of this opportunity! Better Late than Never!
I worked on 1200s for years. One of the funniest things I every heard at an NAB convention was this...around 1992-93 someone put up a display of various tape formats and included a 1200. As I was looking at the machines a couple of young people, college students I suspect, came by and were also looking the display over. Looking at the huge VR 1200 one of them turned to the other and said " that's all we need, another new tape format!"
The video head motor that spins the headdrum has frictionless air bearing surfaces. Dry, filtered, compressed air is supplied at 58 psi to the head panel and it is forced out thru the air bearing creating a cushion of air the motor bearing surfaces 'ride' on. The motor spins at 14,400 rpm. At that speed, the video head tips travels a distance of about 22 miles in one hour. The vacuum tape guide requires 40 inches of vacuum to hold the tape in constant position against the rotating head tips.
My dad worked for a local news station that had these machines. He showed me how they worked once but I sure don't remember much. Thanks for this video.
Back when the video playback quality depended on the skill of the operator.
Beautiful machine, great to see history get preserved. I wish I had the know how for these kinds of things.
My first job in Silicon Valley was at CMC technology. You can see their sticker on that head unit. I worked in quality control, adjusting the four head tips, guide alignment and control track head position on hundreds of units before getting bored and moving on. I do love the sound of a well adjusted quadruplex VTR. You get an ear for when they work right and that deck is in great shape. Thanks for the nostalgia.
yes this problem is exactly the same here in australia, our national archives have thousands of these tapes for "preservation" with the only copies available in many cases on VHS . Yet its considered this material is "saved" for the future - the same mentatility applies to many tv stations who still have early material on quad and no plans to transfer it - its as good as destroyed now!
I miss those quad days but they were tricky to set up. I started in engineering at Global Television in 1977 and the TR-70 was the only video tape playback that was considered "broadcast quality". Boy have those standards changed. I recently dumped a number of old 2-inch tapes that I had commented. Just a memory now.
You can still find the old machines if you know who to ask and where to look.
The companies that rebuild the heads (they only last about 1000 hours) are still around.
But most people don't realize how much air conditioning, power, space, spare parts, and air compressor support systems you have to have just to fire one up! Much less how to tweak it to make a tape play!
I indeed had no idea. I mean, I knew that they were absolute behemoths, I knew that operating one was a specialized occupation, etc., etc., but I didn't know that the infrastructure required to support one was reminiscent of the Apollo program, lol. For someone who has no frame of reference, it's simply inconceivable unless someone explains it.
I think it might be easier to set up an MRI at your house--assuming the electric utility played ball.
I am 44, and back when I was a kid I was really interested in video production (until the Internet came along), so I have some fond memories of playing around with some U-Matic decks at the community college. And they had some tube cameras, too. But all these years I've always wanted to see one of these babies operating. Thanks.
I hope you are well.
I've always wanted to see one of these babies in action ever since I was a kid (I'm 44). Thanks. Undoubtedly, this is the closest I will ever get to one. Indeed, I didn't know that they required an infrastructure reminiscent of the Apollo program to operate, lol.
All the best. I hope you are well.
So did these not even use helical scanning?
Man, this is cool. I love looking at the history of technology, how far it's come, all the 'blunders' manufacturers made along the way (even the CDR's I made back in highschool with my $500 4x burner are losing data, albeit the cheap CompUSA ones). All I take for granted, now this would be a 700mb file on my 2tb drive I could watch on my Blu-Ray hooked up through Ethernet. My how things have changed.
Brian, we may have run into each other. I was VP of R&D at Omnibus, and we had our video facilities near TVO's in the Transamerica Tower on Yonge st. You probably knew Mike our engineer, and perhaps Dan Krech, who went on to start DKP.
I worked in Engineering at TVO, on Yonge St, from
82 to 92. Became friends with Mike Johnson.
You worked at Omnibus???? I DIDN'T KNOW THAT!
Great video! I do audio, film, & video transfers and restoration, but am limited by space and budget to consumer formats. I have an EE degree, and I am in awe of what Larry has to do in order to maintain sync and keep the three-ring-circus Quadruplex contraption running. It takes skill, artistic knowledge, and a lot of dedication to transfer video from this original format.
Ahh I was a tape op at GTV9 Melbourne in the 70s. Our senior used to check the tapes with black and tone while eating his jam sandwiches. We still love you Chaff. We had the first VR1000 low band, 3 hi band 1000s and 2 2000s then the avr1 and 2
The memories,
I was born at least a decade after these went out of style. I'd really like to hold a reel of quadruplex tape, just to feel it. I guess in the next 20,30 years the same fate might await VCRs.
they made many more vcr (vhs) than quads and they still make a new models vhs with dvd they may be scarce but not gone in 30-40 so i still have hope i can play a vhs in 2050 lol
Re: Compressed air: Actually vacuum is used in the tape guide to make the tape conform to the circular profile of the scanner head. The tape guide also controls the
head to tape spacing. You could use use vacuum directly if you have a vacuum source or compressed air going through a venturi can generate a vacuum for the tape guide.
We had two of the VR 1200's at KTAB in the 1980's. We bought them second-hand in 1979 when the station went on the air, They were in daily use until the mid 80's when they were replaced with AVR-2's. They didn't get one inch until after I left in 1989.
Thanks for this video! I remember seeing 3M tapes in the laste 80's where the foam was starting to break up. Look what 20 years has done. :) JC
Wow and Thank you for sharing that. I was glued to the video the whole time.
@2:39 If you have the footage of the 6 hour cleaning, i would like to watch it. currently been in quarantine in NYC for over 10 months
Indeed... I was thinking "Well no, not all of it, but to get the idea... Absolutely"
Actually it was Mark Goodson that ordered the transfer of all his video tape library for the to be launched GSN network. CBS has several 2" machines. I saw them two months ago.
They had two AVR-1s and an AVR-2 (and I think there is a spare near by too).
I understood that they didnt do anything to transfer them other than play them out!
It was one of the largest tape transfer projects back in the early 90s. It's actually mentioned in a library of congress tape preservation report.
These machines conformed to the NTSC broadcast spec and did a pretty good job of reproducing up to 4.5 mhz, with the notch at 3.58 mhz for color. I think that comes out to about 350 lines on a reso chart.
i worked in high school and til early 20s on 2 1200s and 2 tr 60s that were commercial playback and this was in 1990-1997 banding dropouts changing the tape hoping our bulk tape supplier didnt give us audio 2 inch blank, the whine of the heads made it feelinke the master control was alive i miss it. as a 19 year old kid signin on saturday cartoons and having the chief talk me over the phone on a head repacement made me feel like i was a vip .we went from 5 2inch machines to a profile digital playout now and it got replaced with sundance systems and omneon spectrum avid playout, i worked with all the master control formats of the station since 1954, i still have a ikegami hl79A retubed in 1994 that works need registering of the tubes but powers up and makes a decent picture the tubes have may be 60 hours on them. i about cried when we destoyed the 1200s for scrap metal and threw away the 6 freshly rebuilt in 2001 heads we had never used just spares on the shelf i was gone that day or i would of grabbed them.
@@gritsngravy1226 Always enjoy hearing from old quad tape wranglers! There is a special place in hell reserved for anyone who would trash perfectly good quad heads! Not to mention machines! Now that they are becoming as rare as hens teeth and no refurbishers in business, suddenly everybody who has been holding onto their old archival materials wants them transferred! Fortunately a few people still can do a good job and have well-maintained machines and heads! (See some of my other videos for examples)
WOW!! larry you are DA GUY!! i admire people like you.. im 32 years and i'm totally agree with you.. the quality is perfect even over 30 40 years..
I Work with 1 inch but i found few 2 inch reels.. unfortunately, we don't have any 2 inch machine to save the material.. they throw all 2 inches to the trash (literally) but the smart guys missed first to copy the material...
All the best! Sorry my bad english.
Nice video, Dave. Actually, I would be very interested in seeing how he cleaned that tape though!
thanks
Fascinating! Thanks for making this video.
The reel shown in this video would hold about 60 minutes of tape.
It weighed in at about 10-15 pounds.
In some cases, it's not that people don't know the tapes are sitting there going bad, it's that they're just so expensive to transfer. Two or three hundred dollars for a half-hour reel. That's not anybody's fault; it's a monumental amount of work and people like Mr. Odham can't be expected to do it for nothing. Still, companies aren't going to do it unless there's a commercially viable reason (like having product to launch GSN) and individual collectors have a hard time justifying the cost.
Sony made a special back-coating on their half-inch reel tapes in the 70s which now totally clogs the machines and make them impossible to run! It acts like an effective brake and stops all tape transport.
A real time bomb and a disaster for old recordings, that never can be viewed again!
2" Quadruplex still rules. I miss it!!!
25 years later and we would have hd video on something as small as a sd card
I know of a rare 2" quad videotape library at a university, but not sure if they still have them, how many are still around, and if they were successful at transferring them. I am going to find out what I can soon. There was an interview program in the late '70s through early 80s (that I was a P.A. for) shown locally to only a handful of viewers, and I know of 2 guests who were famous/infamous enough that tapes of those interviews at the very least would be valuable/invaluable if they could be found. The fans of those people don't even know the tapes ever existed. Books have been written about those people and the authors still, to this day, have no idea about these interviews.
that machine was built on awesome.
I have operated those beats!. What was the different between VR1200 and VR2000?
VR1200 had the monitor bridge overhead; the VR2000 had the side cart for the monitoring and the "A scope" built into the machine. On our VR 1200's the A-scope displays were sent to the B input of the waveform monitor on the overhead monitor bridge. I remember back in the 1980's seeing the glue breakdown/oozing out issue you pointed out. It didn't take long for a tape to become unplayable without major cleaning. 3M came out to all the stations and swapped out the offending reel flanges with new ones. I worked at KLCS channel 58 in Los Angeles from 1984 to 1992. Thanks for the look back at the technology of the day.
It's amazing how transitory most of the recording media has been and continues to be.
Without the medium the machine's a hulk, without the machine the medium is a relic.
I would think that by the 1980's long term medium survival had been solved. Unfortunately most recording tape relies on polyurethane binders which hydrolyze after a period of time-- some a rather short time. The binder failure issues so evident here will ultimately prove the extinction of both media and machines.
This kind of thing is just heartbreaking.
Ahhhh, well its kind of his "secret sauce" :))
Unfortunately, thousands of hours of 2" Quad tapes are being dumped into landfills every week before video from them is transferred. Real estate costs are extremely expensive for these tapes, plus most of the mainstream U.S. public could care less since they've bought into the false worldview of a disposable culture. After all that, *then* you have all these technical issues and the expense of transferring video from these tapes.
but in due respect nice upload and keep analog alive 73
Does anyone know where they sell two inches video tape? An Kurdish TV channel wants to but it
I'm only 30 and no expert on these older machines, but, when you play in 'LP' mode, the tape is traveling at a slower speed, thus lower quality (like a lower bitrate on digital video). The crackle must come from the control/audio heads. On VCR's, there's the video head (round helical scan), erase head (before the video), and control/audio track head (after video). I used to clean all of these with alcohol and q-tip real well, making sure no cotton left behind. Hope this helps.
Hi, that 3/2 pulldown for interlacing can (and should) be removed before uploading. You'd get rid of the annoying lines that didn't show on TV, but are clearly visible on flat screen.
3:2 pulldown only applies to material that was originally on film at 24 frames/sec. You may be referring to the interlacing of the two fields in NTSC and yes, transferring to digital at 60frames/sec is the best way to avoid those artifacts, but is rarely done because it makes for much larger files, and most capture software doesn't have that as an option.
But what's with the interlacing artefacts?
I cut my teeth on a Ampex 2000 with Editec and 2000B's later AVR1's, great memories..........
Yes, its realy stupid, that somebody have such tapes for a few years and finaly decide to throw out. Somtimes there can be somesthing interesting for history.
I can´t hear what he says! Too much noise in the background!
Where do you get refurbished heads from now!?
i bought mine at estate sale Judd Hamlick audition hes a tv announcer it has a logo of cbs from new york ship to los angeles.
Hi, have you heard of Christine Chubbuck?
Oh my god, look at the tapespeed... How long would it play with 500 metres of tape?
Beautiful machines!
Tape speed typically 15 ips. Some could play back tape recorded at the rare 7.5 ips.
I have a 2' Quad master of the commercials for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I don't have a machine to play it unfortunately. I'm wondering, how do you get a Quad Machine?
Its a shame the adhesive on the tape reels are eating away at the tape and television stations do not want to store these old 2inch qwaud tapes takes up too much room so what do they do? Throw them away asap!
Nice machine.
But 35mm film is and always will be superior to any type of video tape.
70mm is the ultimate.
I have vintage quadruplex 2" film, from late 70's early 80's championship wrestling. I need them digitized. Wrestling stockpile. Help
Larry Odham quadtapetransfer.com
can you turn this into dvd?
Are they only using one inch tapes now in tv stations ?
No, its all digital
@@davesieg is it hard drives they are digital too
can you convert this into dvd?
He is not particularly careful when loading the tape!
Hello Friend
Is this video tape really 2 inch audio?
no. different formula.
Great idea! Why don't you suggest hey consider doing so! I suspect the members of the quad video tape group (quadvideotapegroup (dot) com) would be happy to help find any such old equipment - whether Ampex or RCA!
SUPER!!! NO COMMENTS!!!
over TAAAHAAAM
ok its very good I want to buy one vtr how mutch the (coast) with shiping to iraq