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Post by richardwoods on Sept 10, 2023 8:28:27 GMT
Yep, they were early adopters of colour, with Stingray in, iirc, 1963/4 and Lew Grade bankrolled them. I wonder if lower speed, finer grained film was used too in the 1960s with brighter lighting? Perhaps the economic crisis of the 70s led to a reduction in light levels on set and the use of faster film? On top of the technology improvements as the 70’s rolled on, there was a fashion trend in the 70’s toward low level moody lighting as well as mumbled dialog, to give a sense of realism. This was evident in TV productions as well as movies of which Alien is a good example.
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Post by garygraham on Sept 10, 2023 8:51:45 GMT
I wonder if lower speed, finer grained film was used too in the 1960s with brighter lighting? Perhaps the economic crisis of the 70s led to a reduction in light levels on set and the use of faster film? On top of the technology improvements as the 70’s rolled on, there was a fashion trend in the 70’s toward low level moody lighting as well as mumbled dialog, to give a sense of realism. This was evident in TV productions as well as movies of which Alien is a good example. That's right. Faster lenses became available and the old Hollywood style of lighting was used less in favour of more natural, sometimes softer (and less bright) lighting. It was even possible to shoot by candlelight. Which must have been helpful during the power cuts
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Post by John Wall on Sept 10, 2023 8:52:12 GMT
Yep, they were early adopters of colour, with Stingray in, iirc, 1963/4 and Lew Grade bankrolled them. I wonder if lower speed, finer grained film was used too in the 1960s with brighter lighting? Perhaps the economic crisis of the 70s led to a reduction in light levels on set and the use of faster film? Film was slower in those days. I did a fair amount of film photography when I was younger and remember newer, larger grained!, faster films coming out. In the 60s they’d probably have been shooting with film speeds <100 ASA, probably <50ASA.
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Post by garygraham on Sept 10, 2023 9:12:19 GMT
I wonder if lower speed, finer grained film was used too in the 1960s with brighter lighting? Perhaps the economic crisis of the 70s led to a reduction in light levels on set and the use of faster film? Film was slower in those days. I did a fair amount of film photography when I was younger and remember newer, larger grained!, faster films coming out. In the 60s they’d probably have been shooting with film speeds <100 ASA, probably <50ASA. Possibly 40 ASA like Super 8 film! When i started 35mm still photography in 1980 100ASA colour negative was quite grainy. But within a couple of years 200ASA was being touted as the standard. By the mid 70s it was clear that in the UK at least TV companies weren't going to use 35mm anymore. That must have given Kodak a push to develop finer grain colour negative stocks too.
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Post by John Wall on Sept 10, 2023 9:42:20 GMT
Film was slower in those days. I did a fair amount of film photography when I was younger and remember newer, larger grained!, faster films coming out. In the 60s they’d probably have been shooting with film speeds <100 ASA, probably <50ASA. Possibly 40 ASA like Super 8 film! When i started 35mm still photography in 1980 100ASA colour negative was quite grainy. But within a couple of years 200ASA was being touted as the standard. By the mid 70s it was clear that in the UK at least TV companies weren't going to use 35mm anymore. That must have given Kodak a push to develop finer grain colour negative stocks too. My slide film of choice in the late 80s and into the 90s tended to be Kodachrome 64 but I remember Kodachrome 200 coming out. I always fancied trying Kodachrome 25 but never managed it.
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Post by garygraham on Sept 10, 2023 9:53:03 GMT
Possibly 40 ASA like Super 8 film! When i started 35mm still photography in 1980 100ASA colour negative was quite grainy. But within a couple of years 200ASA was being touted as the standard. By the mid 70s it was clear that in the UK at least TV companies weren't going to use 35mm anymore. That must have given Kodak a push to develop finer grain colour negative stocks too. My slide film of choice in the late 80s and into the 90s tended to be Kodachrome 64 but I remember Kodachrome 200 coming out. I always fancied trying Kodachrome 25 but never managed it. 25ASA - much too slow for our British weather
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Post by John Wall on Sept 10, 2023 11:13:54 GMT
My slide film of choice in the late 80s and into the 90s tended to be Kodachrome 64 but I remember Kodachrome 200 coming out. I always fancied trying Kodachrome 25 but never managed it. 25ASA - much too slow for our British weather I was taking piccies in Egypt and a friend said that there was plenty of light and the pyramids didn’t move very fast!
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Post by garygraham on Sept 10, 2023 11:50:20 GMT
The Gang of Four, mmm, I quite like the sound of that despite the echoes of Chinese Politics. What do you recon guys? Though it has SDP connotations too! Difficult times lie ahead for the high priests of PC as they're in the minority (probably even on here) and more and more ordinary people see it. Must order extra popcorn for the general election next year
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Post by richardwoods on Sept 10, 2023 12:24:06 GMT
The Gang of Four, mmm, I quite like the sound of that despite the echoes of Chinese Politics. What do you recon guys? Though it has SDP connotations too! Difficult times lie ahead for the high priests of PC as they're in the minority (probably even on here) and more and more ordinary people see it. Must order extra popcorn for the general election next year Yeah, had completely forgotten about the SDP Gang of Four 🤣🤣👍🏻
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Post by richardwoods on Sept 11, 2023 6:57:16 GMT
I think that the best conclusion to draw is that no archive is ever “safe”.
As we know buildings and their contents can be destroyed in war or riot.
To my mind, It’s always about risk reduction & the proliferation of hard copy in the form of vinyl, tape, cd, dvd & Blu-ray has been a great help in securing the country’s broadcast legacy.
Which ever way you look at it, the move to streaming for both audio and video material is bad news for security of material, if the masters get destroyed, then what?
It also gives too much power to anyone with an agenda to distort the past by censoring or otherwise restricting material and thereby preventing the masses from accessing it.
How should we deal with this? Multiple copies in multiple locations to give multiple masters, strict guidelines & rules over access, personally as pretty much a free speech absolutist, I would like to see open access to material in some form, but appreciate that might be difficult.
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Post by jamesvincent on Sept 11, 2023 8:15:25 GMT
" The DVD bitrate and compression can't even get close to being an identical copy even of a 40-year-old VHS tape. And a VHS tape is not the same as a broadcast tape. " A computer encode of a VHS tape would be as good as the original if encoded properly. Same for a broadcast tape. You don't lose anything. All these older formats (Umatic for example) are much lower resolution that today's HD world - so nothing is lost if recorded properly. A computer can very well do its part for preservation - but it does ultimately depend on what you're playing it on. My biggest headache trying to preserve VHS (as an example) is being able to find a VHS player that's up to scratch in this day and age, without spending a small fortune and forking out for a time base corrector. In short, the DVD bitrate is much higher than any of these old formats - meaning it can capture them perfectly, if you know what you're doing. But what does "encoded properly" mean? I encode VHS and S-VHS to digital all the time. Some of my home encoded shots have even been shown on TV. If the encoding is uncompressed then yes the digital file will be identical to the VHS. But the file size will be about 500Mb per minute and only about 9 minutes of video will fit onto a DVD disc as data. DVD is MPEG2 encoding. I believe the BBC uses a bitrate of around 50 Mbit/s for archival material in MPEG2 format. Whereas best quality on a DVD is only 9.80 Mbit/s. That isn't the whole story either because archival video is encoded with all iframes which increases quality but also the filesize. Lossy (compressed) formats such as MPEG2 or MP4 give an illusion of quality. They throw away data that is less likely to be noticed and they smooth the picture. If uncompressed can't be used, I've found the best compression for VHS is still the MJPEG codec. That works out at about 22.5 minutes on a data DVD. The bitrate for this episode of Vision On on YouTube is about 1Mbit/s! It is effectively encoded at 640x480 whereas the original programme would have been 768x576. The frame rate is at 25 frames per second instead of the 50 fields interlaced original. However it's a telecine anyway which is only 25fps. This is all vastly inferior to the original 2 inch broadcast tape. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBWJ8TqJxL0
Who on earth is using DVDs in 2023? Are you seriously using 1990s tech to store these shows? You may as well leave them on the VHS! Apple stopped putting DVD drives on their laptops in 2012!
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Post by richardwoods on Sept 11, 2023 8:51:57 GMT
Well, me for a start. Apple software is still designed to let you burn & reload from a plug in drive, thank goodness. I do use the cloud for our 39,000 and growing photo archive but that’s our private life, stuff that’s in the public domain I prefer hard copy.
I will stream ephemeral stuff for entertainment but if I particularly like a series I will consider buying a copy for my own collection and always will if it’s an old series that I really want to see.
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Post by garygraham on Sept 11, 2023 14:37:22 GMT
But what does "encoded properly" mean? I encode VHS and S-VHS to digital all the time. Some of my home encoded shots have even been shown on TV. If the encoding is uncompressed then yes the digital file will be identical to the VHS. But the file size will be about 500Mb per minute and only about 9 minutes of video will fit onto a DVD disc as data. DVD is MPEG2 encoding. I believe the BBC uses a bitrate of around 50 Mbit/s for archival material in MPEG2 format. Whereas best quality on a DVD is only 9.80 Mbit/s. That isn't the whole story either because archival video is encoded with all iframes which increases quality but also the filesize. Lossy (compressed) formats such as MPEG2 or MP4 give an illusion of quality. They throw away data that is less likely to be noticed and they smooth the picture. If uncompressed can't be used, I've found the best compression for VHS is still the MJPEG codec. That works out at about 22.5 minutes on a data DVD. The bitrate for this episode of Vision On on YouTube is about 1Mbit/s! It is effectively encoded at 640x480 whereas the original programme would have been 768x576. The frame rate is at 25 frames per second instead of the 50 fields interlaced original. However it's a telecine anyway which is only 25fps. This is all vastly inferior to the original 2 inch broadcast tape. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBWJ8TqJxL0
Who on earth is using DVDs in 2023? Are you seriously using 1990s tech to store these shows? You may as well leave them on the VHS! Apple stopped putting DVD drives on their laptops in 2012!
Where did I say I was storing anything new on DVD? Someone suggested that because things are on YouTube that is some sort of archival strategy. I pointed out that YouTube is inferior even to (authored) DVDs. These days I use bluray discs and hard drives for storage. Having said that, a data DVD is still a viable method of storage. The discs cost pennies and drives are cheap. The discs are reliable and long lasting if written properly. Out of thousands of data DVDs I've only had a handful become problematic and the second copy (on a different brand of disc) always worked. What would you suggest other than optical disc? Hard drives alone certainly aren't a safe method and LTO tape drives cost thousands.
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Post by sonnybh on Sept 11, 2023 20:28:08 GMT
I was recording episodes to DVD until recently, my machine started to be a bit temperamental so I just use a hard drive recorded these days & hope it behaves itself.
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Post by richardwoods on Sept 12, 2023 6:51:51 GMT
I was recording episodes to DVD until recently, my machine started to be a bit temperamental so I just use a hard drive recorded these days & hope it behaves itself. I was in a similar situation & managed to get a decent Sony DVD Recorder with 160Gbs hard drive off eBay for £40. There’s bargains to be had if you are prepared to take the risk. Mind you I always found the eBay guarantee to be good so far. Very good results on HQ setting & the hard dive allows easy editing.
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