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Post by Richard Marple on Oct 10, 2020 13:00:43 GMT
I had recorded them off BBC4 HD onto my HDD recorder, then watched them on my 32" Samsung set I've had for nearly 4 years via HDMI.
It also has a Scart connection to a modulator for my Toshiba 10" set I have in the lounge for watching older shows and setting up the HDD recorded without disrupting my viewing on the larger set.
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Post by nicadare on Oct 10, 2020 16:02:25 GMT
I didn't notice the shows on Friday were filmised to any great degree, though the picture quality Hits did look a little soft once or twice. There were some brief lines on screen during Better The Devil you Know, but these could be on the original tape. Nothing wrong with the picture quality on either the Story of 1990 or Big Hits 1990 as far as I could see, recorded from BBC4 HD (Freeview) the usual bit rate on Big Hits (around 12000mb/s) although The Story of 1990 was lower (9400mb/s) probably due to some poor quality source material. The lines on the Kylie Minogue "Better the Devil You Know" clip were on the original broadcast on Christmas day 1990. Talking of which check out the audience from her performing the song on Spanish TV, looks like it was recorded at the undertakers convention. link
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Post by Al Hine on Oct 10, 2020 17:53:53 GMT
Just watching "The Hit List" on BBC 1 - a music based quiz show, they did a round about Ska music & kudos for the correct aspect ratio, but the four Top Of The Pops clips were very definitely filmized, & looked horrendous. I wonder who at the BBC I could moan to about this hideous practice?
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Post by Al Hine on Oct 11, 2020 18:22:46 GMT
Mr Neal said "Yes" when I asked him if I could repost his reply to my question about filmizing:
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Post by garygraham on Oct 12, 2020 12:14:07 GMT
They really are amateurs at the BBC these days. The editor just needs to work out the field order of the clip: top or bottom field. I would guess most video from the BBC Archive is the same order?
You CAN check the field order is correct on a PC by setting up a player with a Bob Deinterlace filter. That runs the video at 50fps and it is apparent if the fields are correct or not.
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Post by garygraham on Oct 12, 2020 12:24:54 GMT
I didn't notice the shows on Friday were filmised to any great degree, though the picture quality Hits did look a little soft once or twice. There were some brief lines on screen during Better The Devil you Know, but these could be on the original tape. I noticed that a 1982 repeat had drop outs which aren't on my (still great) VHS from the time. I believe these drop outs are from the BBC's 1990s D3 transfers.
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Post by Richard Marple on Oct 12, 2020 20:59:29 GMT
I didn't notice the shows on Friday were filmised to any great degree, though the picture quality Hits did look a little soft once or twice. There were some brief lines on screen during Better The Devil you Know, but these could be on the original tape. I noticed that a 1982 repeat had drop outs which aren't on my (still great) VHS from the time. I believe these drop outs are from the BBC's 1990s D3 transfers. I did wonder if it was an artieict during playback for digitising or the original tape had been slightly damaged or had deteriorated. Some from 1988 were skipped due to the tapes having faults, normally live editions.
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Post by garygraham on Oct 12, 2020 21:58:59 GMT
I noticed that a 1982 repeat had drop outs which aren't on my (still great) VHS from the time. I believe these drop outs are from the BBC's 1990s D3 transfers. I did wonder if it was an artieict during playback for digitising or the original tape had been slightly damaged or had deteriorated. Some from 1988 were skipped due to the tapes having faults, normally live editions. A smaller tape format and the metal formulation tapes seem to be prone to dropouts. I noticed some on the Network release of the Granada series Ladykillers. Gosh I didn't know some episodes of TOTPs have faults which prevent them from being broadcast. It would have been better to keep the one inch or two inch tapes. Easy to be wise nearly 30 years on, however I know there were concerns about the lifespan of metal formulation Video 8 and Hi8 domestic tapes at that time. So it wasn't unknown.
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Post by Richard Marple on Oct 13, 2020 8:20:05 GMT
I know all the Dr Who 2 & 1 inch tapes were donated to the BFI after all were copied to D3. Was every BBC tape which was digitised also sent there or were some junked?
TV Cream has been reporting on editions of TOTP on BBC4, and mentioned when they were skipped.
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Post by garygraham on Oct 14, 2020 1:34:20 GMT
I know all the Dr Who 2 & 1 inch tapes were donated to the BFI after all were copied to D3. Was every BBC tape which was digitised also sent there or were some junked? TV Cream has been reporting on editions of TOTP on BBC4, and mentioned when they were skipped. Good question. I believe there's a fee to borrow back any tape that's been donated. So perhaps that is off putting? I suspect the BBC Archive will be unsustainable at the current level, considering the cost of migrating digital content every decade. Unless a more sustainable long term digital system comes along. I wonder if keeping old tapes under perfect conditions and investing in the development of new equipment to play them, even if it cost a few millions, wouldn't be a better strategy? I can't understand why the BBC didn't pay Panasonic or someone else to keep making video heads for D3. If you have hundreds of thousands of tapes, why not? It's bizarre that they could waste £98m on that failed Digital Media Initiative but couldn't fund the manufacture of some new heads.
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Post by Al Hine on Oct 18, 2020 12:33:54 GMT
Friday 16 October TOTP 1990
The Nicky Campbell episode looked OKish, but the Mayo/ Brambles edtion looked like VHS quality!
I have a very old FreeSat HD recorder - could it be on it's last legs? It's 98% full of mainly TOTP episodes recorded off BBC Four HD.
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Post by edhayden on Oct 27, 2020 17:33:17 GMT
TV Cream has been reporting on editions of TOTP on BBC4, and mentioned when they were skipped. There's been a few examples, off the top of my head, where a TOTP has had to be skipped not because of Savile or other banned presenters, or because it was wiped The first was 07/05/1981 - this show was also the first to go out live from TV Centre since the early 70s ones. After the opening Kim Wilde performance + Stray Cats promo video, all of Peter Powell's links between songs are mute, and the studio ambience audio is missing on most performances as well. BBC4 were sent an off-air recording of it to try and dub at least the link audio in for it to be suitable for a repeat showing, but the copy was incomplete (missing one of Powell's links + the last couple of minutes), and thus it was skipped over. From 1982-1984 there were at least five other live editions which had some or all of the DJ links mute on the master tape, but complete off-air recordings could be found for these and were duly sent in for dubbing so that they could be rebroadcast. After that it was thought we were out of the woods with stuff like this, but then the mute link issue came up again with two shows in close succession - 23/06 and 14/07/1988. These shows appeared to have problems of their own as well that prevented a suitable restoration getting made; the former had a good 2 minutes of complete silence, with all sound cutting out midway through the opening Pasadenas performance and only coming back in during the Phil Collins promo video after it, and the latter's chart rundowns were also mute in addition to the links. Strangely, BBC4 apparently found a complete PasB of 23/06 at the last minute (and its existence has since been verified through reputable sources), but no effort was made to broadcast it, and the show was skipped over in the end anyway. 14/07/1988 remains the most recent TOTP to not exist in full broadcast quality at the BBC, to the best of my knowledge, and live editions became significantly less common in the 90s, so fingers crossed it won't happen again... And the only TOTP from the 80s thought to not exist at the BBC in any capacity whatsoever is 21/03/1985. A red flag was already raised when what clearly were clips from an off-air recording of it were used in that year's Story Of documentary, and then it of course never turned up in the schedules once the repeats reached March. Exactly how and why this one has disappeared isn't known for certain, although there were rumours that the 1" tape went missing en route to a digitisation suite.
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Post by Richard Marple on Oct 27, 2020 22:04:53 GMT
I remember TV Cream mentioned the 1982 editions had mute links which had been fixed with off-air tapes.
Considering the BBC started logging their output with VHS tapes from 1987 onward, I'm surprised the ones from 1988 couldn't have been redubbed in the same way from the PasB copies. Maybe BBC4's budget is currently too tight to even allow a session in an editing suite plus the cost of pulling the tapes out of the archive?!
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Post by edhayden on Oct 28, 2020 14:34:45 GMT
Considering the BBC started logging their output with VHS tapes from 1987 onward, I'm surprised the ones from 1988 couldn't have been redubbed in the same way from the PasB copies. Maybe BBC4's budget is currently too tight to even allow a session in an editing suite plus the cost of pulling the tapes out of the archive?! Perhaps so, but the master tapes of 14/07 and the one that was initially found of 23/06 did have bigger problems than just mute links - if they'd attempted to dub in even fairly clean VHS audio over the silent chart rundowns of the former, and especially the two minutes of silence of the latter, there would've been noticeable drops in sound quality that probably wouldn't be fit for broadcast. Also missing from those two editions were any computer generated captions - these were used for the presenters, song titles, and end credits by this point. If it was just the presenter + song titles that were missing then that'd be fine, but there's more of a problem when none of the people involved with the show are actually credited, even on a rebroadcast over 30 years on. And it looks odd as well:
Again this is something BBC4 could've potentially replicated, but probably can't in this day and age.
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Post by edhayden on Nov 17, 2020 19:33:20 GMT
It's also just recently come to light that the 25/08/1983 episode of TOTP doesn't exist in full broadcast quality at the BBC - VHS footage of the Style Council's performance of Paris Match was used in the recent documentary about the group, and it has since been confirmed that the copy they have does indeed cut to VHS starting with the introduction to the aforementioned Style Council appearance.
Mike Smith was a co-host, so it wasn't shown during the 1983 repeat run, and was of course assumed to be complete until now.
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