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Post by Greg H on Jul 24, 2013 23:08:55 GMT
I remember Tomorrow's World demonstrating a turntable that would play records with an array of lasers. Yes that certainly is possible as far as I know, I recall reading about it. I may have seen that tomorrow's world too. It strikes me as the sort of thing that ought to be possible if no one has done it yet. That said, the research to get it up and running might be prohibitively high for something that wouldn't have a great deal of commercial application so far as I can imagine. If chroma dot colour recovery is possible who knows? Although the chroma dot thing is algorithmic isn't it rather than sophisticated and specialist hardware that I would imagine would be required for scanning magnetic tape. Perhaps someone who is more in the know can inform us about this?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2013 8:01:14 GMT
I'm wondering if Nigel Kneale had the right idea in the Stone Tape ...
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Post by Neil Megson on Jul 25, 2013 9:53:22 GMT
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. The Keith Badman article quotes Bill Harrison as saying "I came across an old, half-inch, Sony reel-to-reel video [...] which had been recorded via the old 405 line VHF signal [...] it did start off with a few shots of the client's house, taken with his fairly new home video camera, then it suddenly cut to some television programmes [...]" So was the tape actually a CV-2000 Sony tape ? This would explain why an optical transfer had to be made, as the CV-2000 outputs a non-standard video signal - only every other field is recorded, and then repeated twice on playback. And 405 lines, of course. If the tape was 1980s C-format, how was it dubbed with a 405-line programme ? Is this the "optical transfer" referred to ? Does anyone know the name of Bill Harrison's client who gave him the tape ?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2013 10:43:34 GMT
Optical transfers have been made of various formats of tape in the past, if the original is troublesome (not just Sony open reel) so it doesn't necessarily mean anything because it was copied in this method. Chris Perry will more than likely know the ins and outs of it all very well though to be able to speak with certainty.
The client name has never been revealed, so far as I know.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2013 12:12:57 GMT
From what I recall, Bob Monkhouse had some of his older videotapes transferred to newer formats in the 70's for the sake of preserving the material.
As for the original owner of TOTP 67 tape, there has been much speculation as to who it could be... Nick Mason and Ray Davies have been suggested whilst I've always had a feeling about Mike Read, a renowned early Floyd fan who had to sell off his entire collection around the time this surfaced since he was declared bankrupt. I'm probably wide off the mark and we'd be entering the realms of Doctor Who speculation about this!
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Post by Sue Butcher on Jul 25, 2013 13:37:32 GMT
Back to the question of scanning the information on magnetic tape without physically stressing it. Perhaps it could be done with a laser by measuring the change in polarisation as the light bounces off the magnetised surface of the tape?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2013 15:28:04 GMT
Laser record players are available at a predictably frightful price but even now, they continue to split hi-fi buffs down the middle since despite the advances in digital technology where one can switch between tracks like a CD at the touch of a button, it's generally been concluded that they offer no real improvement over what one can get out of a decent standard stylus record deck. The only real positive selling point is the lack of wear in the grooves but for the price it comes at, it's not any improvement. They're also prone to frequent errors and regularly need to be calibrated using a special record so it ends up being too much of an expensive fuss.
There is still nothing that can improve cassettes or tapes either. There was the short lived DCC format - Digital Compact Cassette but it still didn't overcome the big problem with tape - oxide dirt and the stickiness. As I've found too often, no matter how well a tape has been stored for 20 years or so, dirt still builds up making tape transfers a long process where one has to stop every few minutes to clean the heads before continuing, so if any laser based device could read tapes, it'll still have those issues to contend with. So, like wetgate techniques used on film, a foolproof way would need to be found to be able to use some kind of liquid solution to be able to remove dirt from tape to enable any kind of optimal playback signal. A real nightmare.
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Post by Greg H on Jul 25, 2013 16:03:49 GMT
Laser record players are available at a predictably frightful price but even now, they continue to split hi-fi buffs down the middle since despite the advances in digital technology where one can switch between tracks like a CD at the touch of a button, it's generally been concluded that they offer no real improvement over what one can get out of a decent standard stylus record deck. The only real positive selling point is the lack of wear in the grooves but for the price it comes at, it's not any improvement. They're also prone to frequent errors and regularly need to be calibrated using a special record so it ends up being too much of an expensive fuss. There is still nothing that can improve cassettes or tapes either. There was the short lived DCC format - Digital Compact Cassette but it still didn't overcome the big problem with tape - oxide dirt and the stickiness. As I've found too often, no matter how well a tape has been stored for 20 years or so, dirt still builds up making tape transfers a long process where one has to stop every few minutes to clean the heads before continuing, so if any laser based device could read tapes, it'll still have those issues to contend with. So, like wetgate techniques used on film, a foolproof way would need to be found to be able to use some kind of liquid solution to be able to remove dirt from tape to enable any kind of optimal playback signal. A real nightmare. Many thanks for the input Phillip. I can see the lack of inevitable wear being a good selling point with laser record players, but they do sound like a headache. As for 'video tape scanning' of some variety I see where you are coming from. The accumulation of gunk on tapes would essentially render it just as difficult to get a clean signal from unless you could 'magically' scan through the oxide dirt etc and I can't imagine how that would be done. It was a nice idea though
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Post by Dale Rumbold on Jul 25, 2013 17:26:27 GMT
There is still nothing that can improve cassettes or tapes either. There was the short lived DCC format - Digital Compact Cassette but it still didn't overcome the big problem with tape - oxide dirt and the stickiness. As I've found too often, no matter how well a tape has been stored for 20 years or so, dirt still builds up making tape transfers a long process where one has to stop every few minutes to clean the heads before continuing, Dodgy tapes are surely the exception, particularly if you're talking cassettes? My home-recorded cassettes, many not big brand names, that date from 1974 through to early 90s, still play perfectly, apart from the REALLY cheap ones which were rubbish right from the start anyway. I listen to them all, in succession, while doing the washing-up : typically each one gets a run out once every 2 years. I HAVE had to loosen screws and replace furry pads from time to time, but don't really have a problem with the magnetic tape itself. I have to clean oxide off the head once every 20 or 30 cassettes, I would guess.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2013 17:45:28 GMT
Interesting... most of my tapes are Chrome and go back to the mid 80's. Some brands age better than others yet about 80% of what I've so far transferred (between 300 and 400 tapes) have had to have the multiple pass approach to clean the dirt off the heads. Very rare one gets a totally clean transfer where the signal remains consistent. Around ten of them have snapped during rewinding or fast-forwarding and quite a few have gotten gummed up meaning they could only be carefully winded through by hand in order to make them playable. It's been utterly maddening. Most of the time, the results are pretty good with no real audio degradation and requiring minimal digital restoration but others seem jinxed and doomed, riddled with hiss, dropouts and more. There's no real rhyme nor logic to it. It is insane that a tape from 1986 can still play and sound fine whilst one from ten years later is plagued and infested with tons of hiss and noise, dropouts the lot.
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Post by Richard Marple on Jul 25, 2013 19:45:41 GMT
I tranferred the unique contents of my tapes to computer a few years ago.
I knew one was getting worn from being played so much but it coped ok.
The only tape that didn't play well was a cheapish pre-recorded compilation that came free with something in the 1980s. Then it was just the sound quality, the psyical tape seemed fine.
I was impressed that some WHS branded tapes with some old chart shows on played back fine 20 odd years later.
Every now & again I played them, but for most of the time they had been stored in a fairly normal domestic enviroment.
In all the biggest problem was getting the recording settings correct on my computer. It needed a fair bit of fine tuning to get everything to sound right.
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Post by Dale Rumbold on Jul 25, 2013 20:48:54 GMT
I'd be horrified if any of what I would call my 'recent' cassettes (i.e. post 1985!) gave me any problems at all. My first 2 cassettes from 1974, both of the utterly unknown 'Raphone' brand, still play perfectly ; well, as perfectly as they ever did : the contents were all recorded by pointing the Mic at TV / Radiogram / Tranny so they were never exactly Hi-Fi. Have recently digitised those tracks which are 'missing' TOTP audios from 1974-75 on said cassettes without any problem at all : certainly only one pass each.
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Post by Richard Marple on Jul 25, 2013 22:53:16 GMT
Most of my tapes were transferred in one pass, apart from the odd track that had a problem. I remember a couple of songs that played fine through a stereo, but sounded tinny on my laptop's speakers. A simple rerecording was required.
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Post by Matthew North on Aug 15, 2013 10:04:29 GMT
Theese were sony CV2000 type format 7" reels with half inch video tape.
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Post by Christopher Perry on Aug 15, 2013 13:00:38 GMT
The tape held by the BFI was a 1" VT. It may have been a transfer from something else, I don't know.
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