The Georgian House (HTV West 1976)

[Alex Weidmann]

Hi all.

Wondered if anyone can provide details of the archive holdings for this serial, and how the four missing episodes came to be junked?

Judging by the DVD, episode 1 is on a quad master tape in fairly poor condition, and episode 3 looks like a domestic format: possibly a second generation VHS copy?
Haven't watched episode 7 yet.

I wondered whether the quad master tapes for all seven episodes survived into the VHS era; but were subsequently wiped?

[richardmarson]

Yeah, the master tapes survived into the early 90s. The idiots who were given the job of transferring them made such a bad job of it, the majority were deemed irretrievably damaged and so junked. The VHS copies which survived had been made for a classic TV convention before this disaster.

[Paul Vanezis]

Jan 2, 2019 11:57:04 GMT richardmarson said:

Yeah, the master tapes survived into the early 90s. The idiots who were given the job of transferring them made such a bad job of it, the majority were deemed irretrievably damaged and so junked. The VHS copies which survived had been made for a classic TV convention before this disaster.

This is true.

Back in 1986 when we were organising the TellyCon conventions, I approached various companies for copies of material. HTV Enterprises organised transfers at great expense to us of four episodes, 'The Georgian House' episode 1, 'Sky' episode 1, 'King of the Castle' eps 1&2 and they also made a transfer from a VHS viewing copy of the first episode of 'Children of the Stones' because they couldn't find the quad tapes at the time. But I did have a full list then of all the quad numbers and everything survived. As I recall, there was nothing wrong with the U-Matic copies that they supplied to us. But I'm afraid that we didn't get to keep the copies that we paid £50 per episode to get transferred and they were returned to HTV Enterprises.

However, our events did have one benefit at Thames Television. When they were transferring several episodes for us, again to U-Matic tapes that we had to return, they discovered problems with some tapes of 'The Tomorrow People' and 'Ace of Wands'. They then instigated a review and transfer programme which preserved their entire stock of quad archive.

When we started orgainsing our first event, 'The Georgian House' was just 10 years old. Oh how I wish we had more budget to spend on transfers back then! But I'm glad we did our bit to preserve the material.

Paul

[peterleslie]

Georgian House Episodes 1 and 7 survived as DigiBeta copies from the original Quad tapes or 1"/Beta-SP dupes of said originals. These were donated to the National Film Archive by HTV in the early 2000s. These were accessed by Network for the GH DVD release.

Episode 3 'Treachery' additionally survived as a VHS (possibly Phillips or U-matic?) copy from an unknown source. It doesn't appear to be a personal 'off air' recording but it was also obtained by Network for inclusion on their DVD release of the incomplete series.

[Alex Weidmann]

I used to be a VT Operator in the early 90s, and I'd be surprised if this loss were due to tape operator error alone. Was probably more nuanced than that, with multiple factors at play.

It's interesting to note that another Patrick Dromgoole series called "Sky" was similarly afflicted, with two episodes only surviving on VHS, after the quad tapes were damaged. Especially when you consider both "Sky" and "Georgian House" were made by HTV in the same year (1975).

I wonder whether HTV purchased a dodgy batch of quad tapes that year, with inferior oxide formulation. As a VT op. I was sometimes made aware of issues like that. Possibly the tapes didn't manifest a problem for a decade or more, then were suddenly found to be shedding oxide rapidly?
Or perhaps they were stored in damp conditions that caused deterioration of the oxide layer.

I mostly handled C Format to VHS dubs in the early 90s; but we occasionally dealt with quad tapes. We only had one playback machine, and when it developed problems, it was usually a fault in the TBC. Obviously that wouldn't cause any harm to the tape being dubbed.

It was common practice to clean the scanner with solvent before threading each tape; but sometimes we'd get a localised oxide build up on the scanner drum, which could perhaps cause scratch damage if it wasn't noticed.
However it seems unlikely the VT Op. wouldn't have spotted the problem, and stopped the dubbing job. Especially since six different tapes were supposedly damaged beyond repair!

Would be interested to know more details about exactly what happened.
I wonder what format they were being transferred to, and whether all six tapes were damaged in the same dubbing run.
If the dubbing process was left unsupervised, I wonder if the copies produced held any portion of the episodes that were watchable quality.

If the quad tapes were in fact retained (despite reportedly being junked), I wonder if there's anything that could be done to salvage them that wasn't available in the early 90s?
For oxide shedding, tapes can sometimes be salvaged by cooking them in a special oven: so I wonder if that was tried?

Around that time, a lot of quad tapes were being dubbed to analogue Betacam or Betacam SP, for broadcast on minor cable channels via Betacart or Odetics Cart. The U.K. SciFi Channel and Bravo channel both operated this way, along with many others.
In fact I remember handling the Betacam tapes of "Children Of The Stones".
It was broadcast on cable TV in the early 90s, as were the original "Tomorrow People" series.

I wonder if there's any chance "Sky" or "Georgian House" may survive on Betacam from an earlier dubbing run? Or perhaps on U-matic or VHS viewing copies?
Soho facilities houses sometimes kept their own archives of Betacam tapes, and companies like Miles Of Tape processed them for re-use.
So there may be additional enquiries that could be made.

[Paul Vanezis]

The story I heard was that the tapes were damaged during a transfer. I have a suspicion that it was an inexperienced operator.

I have personally transferred a great many original quad tapes dating back to the mid 1960's and I have never come across a tape that wasn't salvageable.

I'm working on a major quad project at the moment and I don't anticipate major issues.

Paul

[Alex Weidmann]

It's hard to imagine what the operator could've done to cause irreparable damage to one tape, let alone six!
I suppose he could've threaded them incorrectly, so the tension was wrong; but that doesn't normally cause tape damage.

[Paul Vanezis]

Jan 3, 2019 2:12:41 GMT Alex Weidmann said:

It's hard to imagine what the operator could've done to cause irreparable damage to one tape, let alone six!
I suppose he could've threaded them incorrectly, so the tension was wrong; but that doesn't normally cause tape damage.

It's extremely easy to damage quad tapes. And it's even easier to damage more than one if there is a problem with tapes and machine and you put one tape on after another. Don't forget that quad uses an air bearing so you need 95psi of compressed air feed before you even start. Then you have a tape transport running at 15ips and a head drum spinning at 15000 rpm. The drum has 4 heads the tips of which can be adjusted in and out and the guide height, the amount the tape is 'sucked' toward the spinning drum in the tape guide is also adjusted for optimal replay.

If you're an inexperienced operator, the machine isn't clean or well maintained and you're trying to play back tapes on any of the tape formulations which have problems (which is all of them) you're going to have problems. That's why archive transfers should really be done by experienced operators. The BBC transferred 69000 quad tapes and didn't lose one. That should tell you all you need to know.

Paul

[garygraham]

Jan 3, 2019 9:50:08 GMT Paul Vanezis said:

Jan 3, 2019 2:12:41 GMT Alex Weidmann said:

It's hard to imagine what the operator could've done to cause irreparable damage to one tape, let alone six!
I suppose he could've threaded them incorrectly, so the tension was wrong; but that doesn't normally cause tape damage.

It's extremely easy to damage quad tapes. And it's even easier to damage more than one if there is a problem with tapes and machine and you put one tape on after another. Don't forget that quad uses an air bearing so you need 95psi of compressed air feed before you even start. Then you have a tape transport running at 15ips and a head drum spinning at 15000 rpm. The drum has 4 heads the tips of which can be adjusted in and out and the guide height, the amount the tape is 'sucked' toward the spinning drum in the tape guide is also adjusted for optimal replay.

If you're an inexperienced operator, the machine isn't clean or well maintained and you're trying to play back tapes on any of the tape formulations which have problems (which is all of them) you're going to have problems. That's why archive transfers should really be done by experienced operators. The BBC transferred 69000 quad tapes and didn't lose one. That should tell you all you need to know.

Paul

What happened to the BBC's quad tapes? Were they junked or given to the National Film Archive? And any idea for companies such as Granada?

[richardmarson]

As I recall, the BBC's quad tapes were sent to the NFTVA. However, they didn't take the 1" tapes when their turn for transfer came round.

It's not quite true that the quad project transferred every tape successfully. Some were damaged (there were some notoriously bad VT ops at TVC - I recall watching one guy managing to scratch a TOTP from Christmad 1973) and others were lost along the line; this happened with the Blue Peter edition of 19.03.73. In the production office we had a time coded VHS from the original quad but this went AWOL during the big transfer project. There is a black and white film recording plus the original film insert but the VHS is now the only colour copy of the episode as broadcast.

Other errors during the transfer project included operators who covered up live PasB recordings with new electronic clocks, and on tapes where both Blue Peter and John Craven's Newsround were recorded back to back, sometimes the operator aborted the transfer just after Newsround started. I still hope these survive at the NFTVA as they contain unique presentation/trails as well as the value of the JCN editions themselves.

[Paul Vanezis]

Jan 3, 2019 14:05:12 GMT richardmarson said:

Some were damaged (there were some notoriously bad VT ops at TVC - I recall watching one guy managing to scratch a TOTP from Christmad 1973) and others were lost along the line...

This rings a bell. I think it's one reason why the archive project was brought entirely in-house to Windmill Road VT. Part of the spec was to replace the 'non-standard' old clocks with electronic clocks. Ultimately this was rather a pointless exercise as the new programme ID numbers which uniquely identify each programme, and which replaced the original recording numbers, are mostly already out of date.

Paul

[Ronnie McDevitt]

Strangely I have no recollection of this series although it was shown in my region.
It sounds rather intriguing so have just ordered the DVD in the Network sale for £3.60.

[garygraham]

Thanks for your insight Paul. The clocks are now a quaint novelty that people like to see. In a similar way as in photography contact sheets are now a piece of content in their own right and are sold to hang on the wall. Whereas 40 years ago they were regarded as purely functional. The same could said about continuity too. People love the behind the scenes stuff, particularly in this current social media era where it has become about being "real" (supposedly) - warts and all.

[Alex Weidmann]

Jan 3, 2019 9:50:08 GMT Paul Vanezis said:

Jan 3, 2019 2:12:41 GMT Alex Weidmann said:

It's hard to imagine what the operator could've done to cause irreparable damage to one tape, let alone six!
I suppose he could've threaded them incorrectly, so the tension was wrong; but that doesn't normally cause tape damage.

It's extremely easy to damage quad tapes. And it's even easier to damage more than one if there is a problem with tapes and machine and you put one tape on after another. Don't forget that quad uses an air bearing so you need 95psi of compressed air feed before you even start. Then you have a tape transport running at 15ips and a head drum spinning at 15000 rpm. The drum has 4 heads the tips of which can be adjusted in and out and the guide height, the amount the tape is 'sucked' toward the spinning drum in the tape guide is also adjusted for optimal replay.

If you're an inexperienced operator, the machine isn't clean or well maintained and you're trying to play back tapes on any of the tape formulations which have problems (which is all of them) you're going to have problems. That's why archive transfers should really be done by experienced operators. The BBC transferred 69000 quad tapes and didn't lose one. That should tell you all you need to know.

Paul

I'd forgotten a lot of these technical details. I do remember we had to make adjustments to avoid horizontal banding, due to the 16 tracks per field.

If the tapes were scratched, I wonder why the operator apparently didn't notice any problem on the output monitor. That suggests the scratching occurred somewhere along the tape-path after the contact point with the video heads. But if that's the case, the dubs should've had good picture quality: so it puzzles me that they don't seem to have been retained.
Perhaps the scratch damage was noticed at a later date, after the dubs had been lost, misplaced, wiped or spirited away!

Since the master tapes survived into the 90s, and the serial was well regarded, I'd be surprised if no viewing copies were made on VHS or U-matic (or even on one of the EIAJ-1 tape formats in the 70s).
Perhaps one of the producers could've retained personal copies? Leonard White died a couple of years ago (aged 99!); but Patrick Dromgoole is still around I believe.

[Nigel Lamb]

I believe it was shown on the now defunct "Children's Channel " as was the later missing episodes of "freewheelers".

I wonder what happened to the "Children's Channel " tapes when they disappeared???