Telerecording on broadcast

[Ken Griffin]

Jul 23, 2013 20:59:32 GMT Simon B Kelly said:

The engineering department would have been capable of recording everything onto Ampex temporarily and this is the most likely scenario. It's just a shame that videotape was so expensive back then...

It's an interesting question and one that I am uncertain that we will get a definitive answer on. I have encountered references to audio tape being used for such purposes in the 1960s but I have also encountered a situation from the late 1970s where a PasB recording of a live programme onto U-Matic was used in a libel case.

[Neil Megson]

Jul 23, 2013 20:59:32 GMT Simon B Kelly said:

On 13th November 1965, during a live tv debate, Kenneth Tynan became the first person to use the F-word on television, but no recording of this, either audio or video, appears to exist. Maybe this event may have inspired the legal team to start making temporary recordings of live shows? After all, it's far more likely than a guest is going to say something litigious than a continuity announcer.

From a legal point of view, wouldn't it be better to not have a recording of everything ? That way, if someone complained that "last night, a guest on the BBC said I was a ----", the reply could be "no he didn't - prove it"... (Of course, 10 million witnesses to slander may be a hindrance to using this defence.)

[Rob Moss]

I take your point, but often, context is key, so being able to demonstrate that somebody said something, but it was clearly intended as an ironic comment, may be the difference between a payout and being thrown out of court.

[Ian Watlington]

Jul 23, 2013 17:46:13 GMT Richard Develyn said:

I wasn't being fancyfull or wishfull, I was told about this by someone who worked there at the time. Having said that, I don't suppose that they knew for sure, it was just what they thought was happening.

I guess the point though is that everything visual was pre-recorded and continuity announcers could just have their sound recorded at the time of broadcast, in case they said something they shouldn't. Would that be about right?

I'm afraid your friend's memory is completely wrong. The BBC never telerecorded everything for legal reasons, not before the VHS era anyway. It would have been impossible for cost reasons as much as anything else.

Your friend may have been remembering the Shib Shed, which was a room in Recording Area 2 full of Shibaden half-inch VTRs. These were used for making backups of the studio recordings which directors and producers could take away and view in their offices. In the 70s Philips VCRs were also used to record selected programmes off-air for use in programme review sessions and the like.

Full-time video logging of all output only came along with VHS.

[Richard Develyn]

Ok.

Can you tell us any more about the Shib Shed?

Any chance some of these recordings (of Doctor Who) might still be around?

Richard

[Richard Bignell]

Aug 1, 2013 8:05:42 GMT Richard Develyn said:

Any chance some of these recordings (of Doctor Who) might still be around?

The few that survive have featured on the DVDs such as Talons, Robots of Death, Fendahl, The Invisible Enemy and City of Death, although trying to get any usable playback of some of the existing tapes has been a feat in itself.

Just to point out that the Shib Shed only came into existence around 1971, so you won't find any recordings earlier than that.

[Deleted]

Jul 23, 2013 20:59:32 GMT Simon B Kelly said:

I doubt even recording continuity would have been a consideration. On 13th November 1965, during a live tv debate, Kenneth Tynan became the first person to use the F-word on television, but no recording of this, either audio or video, appears to exist. Maybe this event may have inspired the legal team to start making temporary recordings of live shows?

I think they already were. TW3 was telerecorded for legal reasons (i.e. libel etc.). Not all of the BBC's output was though (unfortunately).

[Neil Megson]

I saw this reference on an audio forum recently, discussing continuous recording of a station's output :
"we know the limitations of the three-inch spools of quadruplex videotape that carry a full 24-hour day's worth of broadcasting - used for the same purpose - to prove that commercials and programs aired as they were scheduled. Yet many times - the only surviving copy of a program or commercial is mastered off this media and restored."

Anyone ever heard of these "three-inch spools of quadruplex videotape" ? Were they ever used in the UK ?

[Simon B Kelly]

If you read back the thread where you quoted from, Neil, you'll see they're talking about sound recording of American radio stations.

Something similar was used over here (in the UK) for recording a full day's radio output, although I always thought it was just a very slow running reel-to-reel recorder using 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch tape?

If you browse TV listings from the sixties, you'll see that BBC1 and ITV only broadcast for about 12 hours a day back then, and BBC2 (which began in 1964) was only on air for about five hours a day! If only today's technology had been available back then to record this output - what a wonderful archive of programmes there would be...

[Neil Megson]

Aug 27, 2013 13:25:37 GMT Simon B Kelly said:

If you read back the thread where you quoted from, Neil, you'll see they're talking about sound recording of American radio stations.

Yes, I know the thread was about sound recording - it was on an audio recording forum !

I was asking about the reference to quadruplex videotape - was there ever an "ultra-low quality" slow-speed video recorder used for continuous recording of TV stations' output ?

Even if there was, I would guess the tapes were routinely re-used every month or so.

[Simon B Kelly]

The earliest video recording system used by the BBC was VERA (Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus) developed in-house between 1952 and 1958. It used 20" reels of tape that ran at 200 inches per second so you could only record 15 minutes of 405-line video per reel! It was abandoned in favour of Ampex Quad that runs at just over 15 1/2 inches per second for PAL recordings. Dual speed quad was only available on NTSC machines where you could record at 7 1/2 inches per second to fit 2 hours onto one tape.

AFAIK the first PAL video recorder to be able to record 8 hours on a single tape was the Phillips V-2000 in 1979 - although you had to physically flip the tape over after 4 hours so it would still be missing a minute or two in between! In 1984 Phillips brought out V-2000 XL (eXtra Long) that could record at half normal speed and fit 16 hours on a single tape - I don't think this has ever been bettered. The longest VHS tapes were the ultra-thin E-300s that could record for 10 continuous hours (in LP mode).

So, unless someone else knows otherwise, there has never been a tape-based machine that could record 24 hours of continuous video (ignoring time-lapse recorders that only capture 1 or 2 frames a second). Of course, with modern HDD recording, that limitation no longer exists, but it has taken us up to the 21st century to perfect that...

[Richard Marple]

My family used to always use LP mode to get more use from our tapes, & carried on doing it.

On my current player the picture quality is almost as good as normal speed.