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Post by garygraham on Aug 12, 2018 6:37:26 GMT
Tapes weren't always wiped totally in that way because some broadcast videotapes have the remains of previous programmes at the end of them. Broadcast VCRS had an erase head ahead of the record head in the same way domestic ones did. Furthermore it seems the BBC continued to do cut editing as late as 1981 - on fast turnaround sports programmes for example - and as I understand it a tape which had a physical edit in it wouldn't be used again for another recording.
So any tape that had a physical edit could in theory be out there somewhere with the last programme still on it unless there is a record of the tape actually being destroyed or wiped.
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Post by Ash Stewart on Aug 12, 2018 11:29:14 GMT
On this subject, is there any record as to which programmes the master tapes were reused for (e.g. the 3:10 from Ascot is taped over The Power of the Daleks ep1)? Have any of these master tapes - such as the 1975/76 (?) tape that once held Fury from the Deep - survived to this day? If so (and one's clutching wildly at straws here), will there ever come a day when some sort of technology can recover the original recordings from the magnetic tape by removing the various layers of later recordings??? Or was there a wiping process used (before the tape is ready for reuse) that guaranteed that the Doctor Who serial was 100% gone, no trace there anymore, nothing residual in terms of a signal to recover..? My recollection is that the only tape that once had a Dr Who episode on it that is still known to survive is the one on which an episode of The Space Pirates was recorded that now has an edition of Blue Peter on it. That's what I remember. I could be wrong.
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Post by garygraham on Aug 13, 2018 5:06:11 GMT
From a modern perspective it seems extraordinary that they were willing to broadcast a telerecording instead of videotape. Given that those were a step down in quality and didn't have the "live" look of interlaced video. It's no wonder some of us have memories of 405 line programmes looking a bit murky. However video recorders had only been been in use since the late 1950s and the telerecording technique would have been standard before that. I wonder if the BBC ever tried to develop a telerecording system that would capture the interlaced fields rather than 25fps progressive film?
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Post by Angus H on Aug 13, 2018 6:47:30 GMT
From a modern perspective it seems extraordinary that they were willing to broadcast a telerecording instead of videotape. Given that those were a step down in quality and didn't have the "live" look of interlaced video. It's no wonder some of us have memories of 405 line programmes looking a bit murky. However video recorders had only been been in use since the late 1950s and the telerecording technique would have been standard before that. I wonder if the BBC ever tried to develop a telerecording system that would capture the interlaced fields rather than 25fps progressive film? But good tele-recordings did capture both fields? And progressive or not it'll still be an interlaced signal on your television, that how television works. Do you mean capture each individual field on a single frame of film? That would be pointless.
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Post by Peter Stirling on Aug 13, 2018 9:27:42 GMT
From a modern perspective it seems extraordinary that they were willing to broadcast a telerecording instead of videotape. Given that those were a step down in quality and didn't have the "live" look of interlaced video. It's no wonder some of us have memories of 405 line programmes looking a bit murky. However video recorders had only been been in use since the late 1950s and the telerecording technique would have been standard before that. I wonder if the BBC ever tried to develop a telerecording system that would capture the interlaced fields rather than 25fps progressive film? But good tele-recordings did capture both fields? And progressive or not it'll still be an interlaced signal on your television, that how television works. Do you mean capture each individual field on a single frame of film? That would be pointless. I suppose two fields could have sat on a single frame and each frame dual scanned? However 'Spearhead from Space' remains a showcase of what they managed to achieve in the schedule time frame after the electronic camera dispute chaos at the studios... then you wonder why all of DW was not done like that, as we would not be having these discussions today.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2018 11:23:02 GMT
But good tele-recordings did capture both fields? And progressive or not it'll still be an interlaced signal on your television, that how television works. Do you mean capture each individual field on a single frame of film? That would be pointless. I suppose two fields could have sat on a single frame and each frame dual scanned? However 'Spearhead from Space' remains a showcase of what they managed to achieve in the schedule time frame after the electronic camera dispute chaos at the studios... then you wonder why all of DW was not done like that, as we would not be having these discussions today. I wish that dispute had lasted as long as the Miner's Strike of 84. Imagine Season 7 entirely on film! Come to think of it, I'd take the whole of Season 8 on film as well, especially with stories like The Mind of Evil and Terror of the Autons!
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Post by Angus H on Aug 13, 2018 21:27:48 GMT
I suppose two fields could have sat on a single frame and each frame dual scanned? However 'Spearhead from Space' remains a showcase of what they managed to achieve in the schedule time frame after the electronic camera dispute chaos at the studios... then you wonder why all of DW was not done like that, as we would not be having these discussions today. I wish that dispute had lasted as long as the Miner's Strike of 84. Imagine Season 7 entirely on film! Come to think of it, I'd take the whole of Season 8 on film as well, especially with stories like The Mind of Evil and Terror of the Autons! Derrick Sherwin once said that, had he continued as producer past the two serials he produced (The War Games and Spearhead From Space) he would have pushed for it all to be filmed. One of the greatest travesties in Doctor Who is that Sherwin didn't get to oversee a whole season. Sherwin saw the limitations of studio bound productions where no one else did. I've always said similar of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era, with all its gothic horror attributes can anyone imagine how much more effective that would look now had it all been filmed?...shame that. They couldn't even film The Sontaran Experiment which was CRYING for it.*sigh*
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Post by garygraham on Aug 14, 2018 5:57:57 GMT
But good tele-recordings did capture both fields? And progressive or not it'll still be an interlaced signal on your television, that how television works. Do you mean capture each individual field on a single frame of film? That would be pointless. I suppose two fields could have sat on a single frame and each frame dual scanned? However 'Spearhead from Space' remains a showcase of what they managed to achieve in the schedule time frame after the electronic camera dispute chaos at the studios... then you wonder why all of DW was not done like that, as we would not be having these discussions today. But I don't think I've ever seen a telerecording give an interlaced picture on screen? They are always 25fps progressive. More recently the VidFire process has been able to restore the interlaced look using a computer to recreate the fields.
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Post by Ralph Rose on Aug 14, 2018 7:04:37 GMT
I suppose two fields could have sat on a single frame and each frame dual scanned? However 'Spearhead from Space' remains a showcase of what they managed to achieve in the schedule time frame after the electronic camera dispute chaos at the studios... then you wonder why all of DW was not done like that, as we would not be having these discussions today. But I don't think I've ever seen a telerecording give an interlaced picture on screen? They are always 25fps progressive. More recently the VidFire process has been able to restore the interlaced look using a computer to recreate the fields. The film camera would have to be cranked up and record at 50fps and played back at the same 50fps. That would give you a more smooth look as video does and still be film. I remember talking to Peter Crocker about his discovery how Vidfire could work. He was watching a VCR tape of a telerecording at 2x speed.
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Post by Peter Stirling on Aug 14, 2018 7:51:01 GMT
But I don't think I've ever seen a telerecording give an interlaced picture on screen? They are always 25fps progressive. More recently the VidFire process has been able to restore the interlaced look using a computer to recreate the fields. No AFAIK it has never been done, I was only saying that each frame could have had a double image of the two fields say one above the other (crudely like the University Challenge two team shot) and then combined as each frame went through. This should give the 'live look' illusion of 50fps on a 25fps system. Obviously transmitting real 50fps (in those days) was just not practical, the signal would have taken much more space on the aerial bandwidth and cameras would have needed more light.
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Post by Sue Butcher on Aug 14, 2018 9:00:30 GMT
Not telerecording exactly, but I think there were experiments in the US which involved filming a show at 30fps and then putting it through a modified 30fps telecine for broadcast. The picture had less visible grain than film at 24fps, and more fluid movement without needing a bulky video camera and recorder. But the introduction of smaller camera-recorders like the Betacam made this approach redundant.
(Edited now that I remember the technique in more detail. In American Cinematographer probably.)
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Post by Richard Marple on Aug 14, 2018 14:18:51 GMT
I wish that dispute had lasted as long as the Miner's Strike of 84. Imagine Season 7 entirely on film! Come to think of it, I'd take the whole of Season 8 on film as well, especially with stories like The Mind of Evil and Terror of the Autons! Derrick Sherwin once said that, had he continued as producer past the two serials he produced (The War Games and Spearhead From Space) he would have pushed for it all to be filmed. One of the greatest travesties in Doctor Who is that Sherwin didn't get to oversee a whole season. Sherwin saw the limitations of studio bound productions where no one else did. I've always said similar of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era, with all its gothic horror attributes can anyone imagine how much more effective that would look now had it all been filmed?...shame that. They couldn't even film The Sontaran Experiment which was CRYING for it.*sigh* I agree Dr Who being made enterally on film would have been stylish, but I guess the BBC would have struggled to justify the increase in costs. Well into the 1980s it was common for high profile BBC dramas to have videotaped interiors rather than all film productions, though they managed to find the money for shows like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
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Post by simoncurtis on Aug 14, 2018 23:36:33 GMT
Wasn't the last 30 minutes of the missing episode of 'Out of the Unknown - The Little Black Bag' found at the end of a BBC tape?
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Post by garygraham on Aug 15, 2018 4:30:44 GMT
The BBC experimented with using film cameras multi-camera in the studio. The way some sit-com shows were shot in the US. Each camera being started and stopped as the vision mixer cut shots.
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Post by rmackenziefehr on Aug 20, 2018 10:18:20 GMT
One other caveat, even if tapes could be traced:
Some of this discussion seems to be assuming that reused tapes were only reused once. I would be deeply cautious about assuming that unless documentary evidence exists definitely proving that- in the United States, at least, tapes could (and were) reused rather frequently.
This makes the sort of recovers suggested in this thread much more complicated- if there are traces of multiple different programs on one tape, recovering any of them individually will be a lot harder, even if the technology allows for that.
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