1967 TOTP Reels

[Deleted]

Here's a pdf of Keith Badman's article on the find in "Record Collector" which has various relevent detailed quotes and comments on the discovery, the state of the tapes and the transfer process.

www.sydbarrett.com/press/RecordCollectorA_February10.pdf

[Paul Watkins]

Jul 22, 2013 11:22:04 GMT @phillipgruber said:

Here's a pdf of Keith Badman's article on the find in "Record Collector" which has various relevent detailed quotes and comments on the discovery, the state of the tapes and the transfer process.

www.sydbarrett.com/press/RecordCollectorA_February10.pdf

Thanks for posting that RC article Phillip, very informative.
That then explains the process that they went through to obtain the visuals that were shown at KAL.

It does say that the tape was handed over to the BBC for 'Restoration'. As this was 3 years ago, what's the update on this? does anyone know what has happened to the tape?

[Deleted]

I'm assuming the "tape" handed over to the BBC would be the optical transfer that was made, but nevertheless could also mean the original tape and it's current whereabouts would be interesting to know. Unfortunately the fact it had to go through the baking process two or three times is not heartening. The baking process is used to allow a tape - audio or video - to be played one last time to digitally back up it's contents for safety and posterity since the baked tape ends up becoming totally unusable shortly after the transfers are made. That's the way I understand it relating to audio tapes - for instance Roxy Music's final album "Avalon" had to undergo an emergency treatment on the multitracks in order to preserve them a few years ago and once done, the original tapes were only fit for junking... that's down to the glue issues when Ampex changed their tape formulas in 1978, but I'd guess the same principle applies to any tapes that suffer from stickiness which seemed to be the problem with the TOTP 67 materials.

[garyhaggarty]

I should think it's the optical transfer as Dick Fiddy at the BFI explained (during 'The Ghosts Of A Whiter Shade Of Pale' screening last year) that the tape in question featuring Floyd & Procol disintegrated during the transfer & what we see now is the result of that 'one shot' process.

[Chris Barratt]

I'm no expert - but I'm quite sure something could be done with the material transferred to make it broadcast quality, even if it takes some effort and time. From the information in the RC articles it was a minor miracle that this was saved in any watchable condition.
The soundtrack coud be cleaned of the drop-outs and flutter - put through a remixing process if necessary - and the picture drop-outs removed and replaced by frozen stills or, in the case of the second verse of See Emily Play, a combination of effects and images from the rest of the performance.
If all of those studio performances aren't worth doing, I don't know what is - look at the great restoration work the BBC performed to the Bob Pratt 60s orphan clips such as Bits & Pieces in recent years. It is certainly achievable.

[Deleted]

Jul 22, 2013 12:17:02 GMT Chris Barratt said:

I'm no expert - but I'm quite sure something could be done with the material transferred to make it broadcast quality, even if it takes some effort and time. From the information in the RC articles it was a minor miracle that this was saved in any watchable condition.
The soundtrack coud be cleaned of the drop-outs and flutter - put through a remixing process if necessary - and the picture drop-outs removed and replaced by frozen stills or, in the case of the second verse of See Emily Play, a combination of effects and images from the rest of the performance.
If all of those studio performances aren't worth doing, I don't know what is - look at the great restoration work the BBC performed to the Bob Pratt 60s orphan clips such as Bits & Pieces in recent years. It is certainly achievable.

When the clip of "Emily" appeared on YouTube, within hours there were Floyd fans concocting their own recreations to fill in the blank spaces, most reusing the first chorus footage where applicable, and in one realising it was getting a bit repetitive they even did a flip so it was seen as a mirror image. A couple used actual stills from the rehearsal... various variations and to be honest, I didn't enjoy any of them. Stills and maybe digitally treated zoomed shots is the only way to go with that entire missing second verse. The damage on the rest I think can be repaired with each frame being rebuilt carefully from what there is though that would clearly take many many hours. Some of the stretched jump parts could be restored by using motion estimation as has been used to restore missing frames in Doctor Who restorations. In fact I don't see why similar techniques used on DW could be used here - for instance, rebuild digitally every 5th or 6th frame then use the digital motion estimation to build new frames in their place to bridge the 5 frame gaps. The results might look a little strange but I don't see why that wouldn't work given the right software, time and patience.

The audio is actually pretty easy to deal with - just patch in the damaged moments from the actual record. It's not gonna make much difference since though Syd was singing live, it's barely audible for much of it and the audio bits that would need patching would only be brief anyway. It would work because for whatever reason, they never made an instrumental mix back then so they were adding odd live vocals on top of the record so the bed soundtrack is identical.

I use SVP - Smooth Video Project - on videos I watch on my PC and the results on T/R'd material is often very convincing giving the impression one is watching a video version... worked brilliantly on TOTP from 29-1-70, less so on the following show since that's a slightly less good T/R. When I watched "Emily" using SVP, it was very convincing. The bits that aren't damaged look impressive considering it was transferred optically.

[Simon Winters]

My understanding was that this was recovered from a standard 1" tape that had been stored badly, therefore was disintegrating. I also understood that at some point in the early 1980s this 1" tape had been dubbed from a 2" master tape, with no domestic formats involved at all.

If that's the case, there would once have been a 2" tape of this whole recording.

From the picture quality, it can't be off-air or domestic tape - the good bits are just too good for domestic recording.

[Deleted]

Yes, I thought I'd heard that it was from a 1" tape, Simon! As you say, the good quality bits look much better than half inch Sony open reel format, which the article mentions. I wonder what happened to the 2" though (and if it still survives, has it deteriorated as badly as the 1" if not stored at the same location)?!? Presumably it must have been transferred in the '80s, when 1" was introduced. Intriguing possibilities.

[Christopher Perry]

As I understand it the reels have literally fallen to pieces and are now unplayable.

It is now impossible to make them play again, they were the worst condition 1" C-reels I have ever seen.

Hats off to the NFA team that transferred them, it took them weeks. They were very persistent.

Thanks

Chris

[Deleted]

Thanks for clarifying what I suspected Christopher.

[Paul Watkins]

Jul 22, 2013 17:09:30 GMT Christopher Perry said:

As I understand it the reels have literally fallen to pieces and are now unplayable.

It is now impossible to make them play again, they were the worst condition 1" C-reels I have ever seen.

Hats off to the NFA team that transferred them, it took them weeks. They were very persistent.

Thanks

Chris

Such a pity, but at least we have the optical transfer which is what i assume the BBC are working on?
With all the advances in software over the last few years this has got to be a priority to restore surely!

[Dave Woods]

You'd have thought these days there'd be a way of "scanning" in a whole magnetic tape of pretty much any type to build up a digital "image" of its surface (magnetically speaking). Then you'd be able to manipulate that image in the digital domain (to compensate for stretching etc.) prior to interpreting the contents as a signal. Technology like that must exist somewhere other than my head, right?

[Greg H]

Jul 24, 2013 19:55:25 GMT Dave Woods said:

You'd have thought these days there'd be a way of "scanning" in a whole magnetic tape of pretty much any type to build up a digital "image" of its surface (magnetically speaking). Then you'd be able to manipulate that image in the digital domain (to compensate for stretching etc.) prior to interpreting the contents as a signal. Technology like that must exist somewhere other than my head, right?

The same thing has occurred to me before now. I haven't come across something like it in practice though. It might be possible, given sufficiently sensitive equipment to do this, but it would probably be very, very expensive (if the tech even exists).

[Deleted]

Jul 24, 2013 20:07:02 GMT Greg H said:

Jul 24, 2013 19:55:25 GMT Dave Woods said:

You'd have thought these days there'd be a way of "scanning" in a whole magnetic tape of pretty much any type to build up a digital "image" of its surface (magnetically speaking). Then you'd be able to manipulate that image in the digital domain (to compensate for stretching etc.) prior to interpreting the contents as a signal. Technology like that must exist somewhere other than my head, right?

The same thing has occurred to me before now. I haven't come across something like it in practice though. It might be possible, given sufficiently sensitive equipment to do this, but it would probably be very, very expensive (if the tech even exists).

Certainly an intriguing idea though whether it would technically be possible is another kettle of fish. Having said that, digital scanning technology was used and able to decipher and translate into sound the earliest existing sound recording, that stuff from 1860 that was recorded onto smoked paper.

As far as I know there's no such technology being used with audio tape - they still have to be played back in real time on proper equipment. I don't know... do others think it could be possible?

[Richard Marple]

I remember Tomorrow's World demonstrating a turntable that would play records with an array of lasers.