|
Post by Alex Weidmann on Jan 6, 2019 23:40:09 GMT
Interesting! If it was on TCC, people could very well have made home recordings on VHS. Suspect their Betacam copies would've been bulk erased and recycled; but I suppose they might still be archived somewhere?
|
|
|
Post by Alex Weidmann on Jan 7, 2019 1:39:10 GMT
After 1998 TCC became Trouble Channel, which itself closed down in 2009. It was probably broadcast from one of the TV Facilities houses in Soho, some of which had their own archive vaults: so that would be the best place to look for old tapes. Problem is many of those companies in Soho have also closed down or changed hands over the years.
Could be wrong, but I think TVi in Wardour Street may have hosted TCC at one time? TVi was owned by Carlton; but it folded many years ago. Possibly their archive went to Carlton?
|
|
|
Post by Ronnie McDevitt on Jan 7, 2019 9:31:59 GMT
Yes, off air copies of some episodes from Seasons 7 & 8 of Freewheelers with the TCC logo have been doing the rounds for years so there may be similar recordings of The Georgian House somewhere.
|
|
|
Post by peterleslie on Jan 7, 2019 17:26:48 GMT
'The Georgian House' never aired on the 'The Childrens Channel' (the tapes had been 'lost' by that point), it was another HTV serial (which survives complete) - 'The Clifton House Mystery' - that did air on TCC.
|
|
|
Post by garygraham on Jan 7, 2019 18:22:44 GMT
What a sad story. It almost sounds as if the operator put them on to transfer and didn't bother looking at the output. Maybe cutting corners with lesser trained staff. Shelf space is a cost which is why many of these archives of copies were probably junked. As I've written before I have serious concerns about a lot of material that was broadcast on Channel 4 as the only surviving tapes may have been with small companies which eventually went out of business.
|
|
|
Post by Alex Weidmann on Jan 7, 2019 23:15:10 GMT
What a sad story. It almost sounds as if the operator put them on to transfer and didn't bother looking at the output. They probably didn't watch the dubs all the way through; but they would've used the colour bars at the start of the tape to set picture levels (black and white levels, burst-to-chroma phase, etc...). So any problems should've been noticed at that stage.
|
|
|
Post by Robert Manners on Mar 8, 2022 18:47:53 GMT
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 A lot of the digital archive masters do have the original chalkboard VT Clocks with the original project and recording numbers on, is this just pure chance that they survive? There was a discussion with regards to the VT Clocks on the season 8 Blu-ray set, where the original VT Clocks survive on the archive masters for the 'Claws of Axos' and 'The Colony in space'so are on the Bonus disc however Peter Crocker advised that the archive master for' The Dæmons' episode 4 had an electronic replacement VT clock so wasn't included with the other ones on the 'Studio Clocks' feature on disc 8.
|
|
|
Post by Richard Marple on Mar 8, 2022 21:32:55 GMT
Did the Dr Who clocks normally have the serial code on?
I'm mentioning this because sometimes the titles were only decided on late in the day, with Claws of Axos replacing The Vampire From Space when the opening titles & Radio Times listings has already been created using that name.
|
|
|
Post by Robert Manners on Mar 11, 2022 17:33:02 GMT
Did the Dr Who clocks normally have the serial code on? I'm mentioning this because sometimes the titles were only decided on late in the day, with Claws of Axos replacing The Vampire From Space when the opening titles & Radio Times listings has already been created using that name. Not all of them had the serial code on. However not all of them have the serial title on either. The surviving VT Clock for the Ambassadors of Death episode 1 just has 'Serial CCC' chalked on. The project number is 2349 7010, where the 23 = drama serial as Doctor Who was/is a drama serial not a drama series.
|
|
|
Post by Richard Marple on Mar 11, 2022 21:57:25 GMT
Did the Dr Who clocks normally have the serial code on? I'm mentioning this because sometimes the titles were only decided on late in the day, with Claws of Axos replacing The Vampire From Space when the opening titles & Radio Times listings has already been created using that name. Not all of them had the serial code on. However not all of them have the serial title on either. The surviving VT Clock for the Ambassadors of Death episode 1 just has 'Serial CCC' chalked on. The project number is 2349 7010, where the 23 = drama serial as Doctor Who was/is a drama serial not a drama series. OK I see, the BBC seemed to have some codes for various things, with 71 onwards for VT edits & 91 for programmes edited on film from what I remember.
|
|
|
Post by Robert Manners on Mar 12, 2022 5:40:51 GMT
Not all of them had the serial code on. However not all of them have the serial title on either. The surviving VT Clock for the Ambassadors of Death episode 1 just has 'Serial CCC' chalked on. The project number is 2349 7010, where the 23 = drama serial as Doctor Who was/is a drama serial not a drama series. OK I see, the BBC seemed to have some codes for various things, with 71 onwards for VT edits & 91 for programmes edited on film from what I remember. The 71 was used for the first edit once programme numbers replaced project and recording numbers from 1978 onwards. Before this if the original edit had to be changed or restructured an /ED sufix would be added to the end of the TRN number on the VT clock. You may have seen the blue/green replacement VT editors clocks that were added to the new edits from 1973 until 1978? The latest programme that I have personally seen this on is from Blakes 7 Project Avalon, that is either a double or triple ED sufix on the clock.
|
|
|
Post by Richard Marple on Mar 12, 2022 14:47:57 GMT
OK, I've mostly heard about 71 edits from Doctor Who Magazine features on the BBC archive holdings.
|
|
|
Post by Paul Vanezis on Apr 5, 2022 10:04:47 GMT
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). Here's an example of what can happen when a tape starts to deteriorate. I have posted this before. This is the first replay of 'Doctor Who - Death to the Daleks' episode 1 at Pebble Mill in 1992. The tape had been stored in 'not optimal' conditions: This tape was successfully transferred later once it had been baked. The tape does still exist and is available for re-transfer if required. During the various attempts to get it to play, it never got scratched. So I feel somewhat sceptical that the tapes that were damaged at HTV actually were and if they were it was due to a lack of experience in transferring problematic tapes. Paul
|
|
|
Post by Robert Manners on Apr 9, 2022 19:27:04 GMT
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). Here's an example of what can happen when a tape starts to deteriorate. I have posted this before. This is the first replay of 'Doctor Who - Death to the Daleks' episode 1 at Pebble Mill in 1992. The tape had been stored in 'not optimal' conditions: This tape was successfully transferred later once it had been baked. The tape does still exist and is available for re-transfer if required. During the various attempts to get it to play, it never got scratched. So I feel somewhat sceptical that the tapes that were damaged at HTV actually were and if they were it was due to a lack of experience in transferring problematic tapes. Paul It's interesting to see that the VT Clock on the 2" tape is one of the replacement versions added by a VT editor during a re-edit. Hence the /ED sufix after the recording number. Does this mean that at one point there was another edit of Part one that used the studio floor VT clock that survives on the existing 'Studio Session' and also potentially had extra scenes that were missing from the final transmission edit/version?
|
|
|
Post by Paul Vanezis on Apr 11, 2022 6:44:08 GMT
No.
If there had been another edit, it would be an ED/ED.
Although studio clocks were still used as VT ID's on transmission tapes in 1974, there was a longish transition to a more formalised method of visualised VT identification, ultimately culminating in a complete change from recording numbers to programme core numbers in 1978, where the 'version' of the programme had to feature on the clock. This was to avoid situations where the wrong version of programmes had been broadcast. This electronic version of the VT clock was introduced in 1972.
Paul
|
|