[Quadlist] [oldvtrs] Restoration of Oldest color videotape, three others to be shown...

[C. Park Seward]

The WRC-TV tape was interesting.

Imagine if you were the engineer responsible for the picture quality  
of the main camera that was to photograph not only General Sarnoff,  
your big boss, but also the President of the United States at a very  
important function that wold be seen for the next 50 years and beyond.

That main TK-41 had an excellent picture. I bet each tube was tested  
for performance and the IO tubes were hand selected and mated with  
hand selected yokes. It was probably the best camera of the day.

The other color camera was not as good, with corner registration off.  
They had only two color cameras for this show.

The tape had some herringbone patterns that were very obvious. Caused  
by, as Tim Stoffel says, "The FM frequencies originally chosen for  
quadruplex were 4.28 MHz for sync tip, 5 MHz for blanking, and 6.8 MHz  
for peak white. This combination gave excellent black and white  
pictures. But when color started to be popular, this combination  
caused a strong beat between the color subcarrier and the FM carrier"

I assume that is what I was seeing.

Now the Kitchen debate tape did not have that problem. The camera  
didn't look nearly as good but the tape was much better.

As David Crostwait says, different frequencies  and pre-emphasis were  
being tried and the images were going to be improved.

The Jack Benny tape was great in B&W. A well set-up TK-30 and a good  
Ampex quad could create some outstanding images. You really needed  
real engineers back then. Camera matching then was a science and a  
black art!

Good show. Thanks to the UCLA Archives.


C. Park Seward
Cell: 818-535-2747
Home: 949-679-1870
Visit us: http://www.videopark.com




On Jul 25, 2008, at 2:49 PM, dcfwtx at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 7/25/2008 11:37:52 AM Pacific Daylight Time, david_breneman at yahoo.com 
>  writes:
>
>> I guess that depends on how long the recording was. I have
>> no idea how long it is, although I have a copy of what is
>> supposed to be the complete audio from it, and it's only a
>> few minutes long.
>
>
> The Kitchen debate, 1959, is about 20 minutes long. It was a singe  
> RCA color camera and an Ampex VR 1000, standard low band color  
> recording. The color is quite good. The original is at the Library  
> of Congress or The National Archives (I don't remember which). It  
> was transferred onto D-2 about 15 years ago.
>
> In 1958, the WRCA dedication was a Saturday morning special program  
> fed to the network, and was zone delay recorded at NBC Burbank in  
> low band color with RCA 8:1 pre-emphasis on an RCA TRT-1. The low  
> band color standard was not quite agreed upon at that time, hence  
> there were various modes of pre-emphasis being experimented with. It  
> is about 29 minutes long. The program starts in black and white,  
> showing President Eisenhower arriving outside the WRCA studios.  
> Later inside, General Sarnoff pushes a button signifying the  
> inauguration of the WRCA new color studios. As he pushed the button,  
> the color encoder switches from a mono picture to color. This  
> transfer was also made to D-2 about 15 years ago.
>
>
> David Crosthwait
> DC Video
> Archive Videotape Re-mastering
> 177 West Magnolia Blvd.
> Burbank, CA. 91502
> 818-563-1073
> 818-563-1177 (fax)
> 818-285-9942 (cell)
> DCFWTX at AOL.COM
> DAVID at DCVIDEO.COM
> WWW.DCVIDEO.COM
>

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