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Post by Simon David Hunt on Jul 13, 2013 5:14:32 GMT
This sounds obvious but for some reason I've never seen it discussed...
It's often discussed how many prints of various stories were made for overseas sales, but couldn't overseas broadcasters have made their own copies of some episodes before sending them back? For all we know some obscure TV station might have run off loads of copies of The Macra Terror! Or at least made their own print so they could show it for as long as they wanted having returned the originals. Would this have been possible?
Si.
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Post by Andrew Haddow on Jul 13, 2013 7:14:11 GMT
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Post by Peter Stirling on Jul 13, 2013 7:24:54 GMT
This sounds obvious but for some reason I've never seen it discussed... It's often discussed how many prints of various stories were made for overseas sales, but couldn't overseas broadcasters have made their own copies of some episodes before sending them back? For all we know some obscure TV station might have run off loads of copies of The Macra Terror! Or at least made their own print so they could show it for as long as they wanted having returned the originals. Would this have been possible? Si. You have to think of the economics and that time is money. A TV Station would have paid for say one showing and that once seen that was its only interest in it. It would not allocate time & expensive resources to making copies of things it did not own. If it wanted to show it again at some point then it would expect that the copyright holder to provide a tape or print again....even though as we know sometimes the copyright holder (in this case the BBC) never bothered to check if the said TV Station had returned the original print from the original showing...the reason being that the BBC had made their money from it to a point that the telerecording was regarded as disposable. Which sadly we know now is what happened to many of them.
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Post by Simon David Hunt on Jul 13, 2013 7:34:03 GMT
But in theory it would be possible?
Couldn't a TV station have made a covert income from making their own prints & selling them on?
Si.
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Post by richardwoods on Jul 13, 2013 8:50:44 GMT
Have a look at the South Africa vs England 1972 Rugby Union thread in the General section, this touches on this topic too.
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Post by Peter Stirling on Jul 13, 2013 10:00:22 GMT
But in theory it would be possible? Couldn't a TV station have made a covert income from making their own prints & selling them on? Si. A TV station wouldn't because which ever TV Station it sold it on to would have to pay the BBC rights to show it, so it wouldn't bother with a copy of a copy from somewhere else (which had been degraded just by the copying process itself) it would gets a recording straight from the BBC, where it would also get the service of requesting a different print if it found a print not up to standard. Of course there is always the possibility of a dodgy engineer with a clandestine operation making his own recordings to sell on, but you have to remember the time which this took place (presumably you are thinking of the Hartnell/Troughton/Pertwee era? ) Television was very much 'here today gone tomorrow' amongst the mentality of the population they were not that interested in seeing things again because exiting new stuff was coming along all the time. IE you would not want go back to Pertwee once you had seen Baker and so on.. You also have to remember engineering staff in TV Stations were extremely well paid....would they risk their lifestyle by doing a dodgy copy? but as you say anything is possible, and perhaps a rich,eccentric might have got a copy for his collection for example?
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Post by Sue Butcher on Jul 13, 2013 11:38:02 GMT
I don't think anyone would have done this for profit. Film copying is very expensive. The cheapest way to get a copy of something would have been to borrow a video portapak, project the film, and record it with a camera. That's how I used to do it. (Sorry, no missing BBC material!)
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Post by Martin Dunne on Jul 14, 2013 5:02:21 GMT
Is it possible? Yes, (qv Russell's teapot). Is it likely? No (qv Russell's teapot).
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Post by Sue Butcher on Jul 14, 2013 12:36:57 GMT
Russell Hobbs' teapot.
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Post by Charles Daniels on Jul 15, 2013 10:21:55 GMT
Two questions (actually thought about it a bit more and it became four) -
1) If I wanted to transfer an episode from 16mm film to a Philips n1500 tape, say to make viewing copies, how hard with this be?
2) Would there have ever been a case where, let's say in 1973, an episode might have been desired for visual review, but not necessarily wanting to lug a film around? So dump it to tape, and watch the tape?
3) If I wanted to transfer an episode from 16mm film to an uncompressed digital file, how hard and expensive would this be?
4) How good a quality could I get capturing something optically? I mean, could I project a film and get a reasonable quality copy in the right conditions?
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Post by Brad Phipps on Jul 15, 2013 21:52:38 GMT
It's often discussed how many prints of various stories were made for overseas sales, but couldn't overseas broadcasters have made their own copies of some episodes before sending them back? For all we know some obscure TV station might have run off loads of copies of The Macra Terror! Or at least made their own print so they could show it for as long as they wanted having returned the originals. Would this have been possible? The Chase 1 and The Faceless Ones 1 were apparently both sent back to the BBC in 1975 from Australia and yet they later showed up in David Gee's collection. The Faceless Ones 1 still had the ABC's censor cuts to it. Now either these two episodes never went back or the ABC made copies.
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Post by Sue Butcher on Jul 16, 2013 2:24:17 GMT
Two questions (actually thought about it a bit more and it became four) - 1) If I wanted to transfer an episode from 16mm film to a Philips n1500 tape, say to make viewing copies, how hard with this be? 2) Would there have ever been a case where, let's say in 1973, an episode might have been desired for visual review, but not necessarily wanting to lug a film around? So dump it to tape, and watch the tape? 3) If I wanted to transfer an episode from 16mm film to an uncompressed digital file, how hard and expensive would this be? 4) How good a quality could I get capturing something optically? I mean, could I project a film and get a reasonable quality copy in the right conditions?
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Post by Sue Butcher on Jul 16, 2013 2:40:25 GMT
Two questions (actually thought about it a bit more and it became four) - 1) If I wanted to transfer an episode from 16mm film to a Philips n1500 tape, say to make viewing copies, how hard with this be? 2) Would there have ever been a case where, let's say in 1973, an episode might have been desired for visual review, but not necessarily wanting to lug a film around? So dump it to tape, and watch the tape? 3) If I wanted to transfer an episode from 16mm film to an uncompressed digital file, how hard and expensive would this be? 4) How good a quality could I get capturing something optically? I mean, could I project a film and get a reasonable quality copy in the right conditions? Some thoughts on these questions: (1) For a good copy to be made on video you'd need access to a telecine machine, no matter what format you were saving it on. This might have been hard to arrange. (2) By 1973 Umatic tapes were coming into use as a viewing and audition format. These were much more convenient to view than 2" Quad, and easier to transport than 16mm film. I doubt that the BBC would bother to put older material on Umatic, it would just be the new stuff that they wanted sell. (3) Don't know. (4) I've tried this, and the results are mediocre at best. It doesn't matter if you refilm with a video camera or a Super8 camera, you'd have a problem with the exposure "strobing" because the camera wouldn't be synchronised with the projector's shutter. The best transfers I made were on Super8 at 18fps from 16mm projected at 24fps, which reduced the strobing.
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Post by Brad Phipps on Jul 16, 2013 2:46:35 GMT
Two questions (actually thought about it a bit more and it became four) - 1) If I wanted to transfer an episode from 16mm film to a Philips n1500 tape, say to make viewing copies, how hard with this be? 2) Would there have ever been a case where, let's say in 1973, an episode might have been desired for visual review, but not necessarily wanting to lug a film around? So dump it to tape, and watch the tape? 3) If I wanted to transfer an episode from 16mm film to an uncompressed digital file, how hard and expensive would this be? 4) How good a quality could I get capturing something optically? I mean, could I project a film and get a reasonable quality copy in the right conditions? I can do 1 and 3 very easily, but sadly have never had the opportunity to do it.
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Post by Charles Daniels on Jul 16, 2013 6:23:33 GMT
It's often discussed how many prints of various stories were made for overseas sales, but couldn't overseas broadcasters have made their own copies of some episodes before sending them back? For all we know some obscure TV station might have run off loads of copies of The Macra Terror! Or at least made their own print so they could show it for as long as they wanted having returned the originals. Would this have been possible? The Chase 1 and The Faceless Ones 1 were apparently both sent back to the BBC in 1975 from Australia and yet they later showed up in David Gee's collection. The Faceless Ones 1 still had the ABC's censor cuts to it. Now either these two episodes never went back or the ABC made copies. Would they make copies for sending to other Australian stations? Or could it be that they got one set of prints, lost them, and then had to emergency ask for another set from the BBC? And the missing prints were essentially nicked? And the later ordered prints were returned?
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