[QuadList] Non-Contact Extraction of the Program from Quad Tape

Tue Feb 17 20:33:32 CST 2009

Don, 

Responses follow below. 

Allan 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Norwood" <dwnorwood at embarqmail.com> 
To: "Quad List" <quadlist at quadvideotapegroup.com> 
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 6:08:17 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Re: [QuadList] Non-Contact Extraction of the Program from Quad Tape 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: < allanmc-avtech at comcast.net 
> 
Allan: 

I have not given this prior consideration, so these are my initial reactions in regard to your thoughts. My replies are inserted below: 

>SNIP< 

I'm suggesting non-contact playback! Its being done for other media such as phono records and we are all familiar with the development of magnetic tracks for editing. 

A couple of things to consider. With phono records, you are measuring (with a laser) the physical properties of the grooves. That's a totally different task from reading magnetic recordings. As far as the magnetic developer, I believe the particles in the developer are far too large to resolve the frequencies required. 
I did not mean to exactly duplicate the same manner in which phono records are recovered by laser. My intent was to get folks to thinking and talking about "non-conventional" ways of playing the tape which we've not really given serious thought to before. 

- What do you think? 

- What are the challenges to be overcome? 

I suspect that the nature of the video recording will make it extremely difficult to recover using non-contact magnetic heads. Such an approach obviously works in disc drives, but the recording process for data is very different from that used in analog VTR's. 
Agreed on all points but let's not discard the potential use of non-contact just yet. 

>SNIP< 

But, couldn't we do better.... with a NEW non-contact method that potentially would recover everything originally recorded into a recovered and restored state? 

While I see problems with the methods you have mentioned, I certainly would not want to suggest that some thinking "outside the box" might not come up with a totally new approach. Whether it would be economically feasible for anyone in the private sector to undertake such a project is another matter. I doubt that there is enough market to ever recover the R&D expenses involved. But it would be an interesting experiment! 
You are right on target concerning the private sector funding issue and this being a limited market. I don't think it could be accomplished by any company driven for profit only. Perhaps, we can interest someone in a proof of concept experiment and then look for a grant or passionate source of funding dollars. 

Just musing........because I think the goal must be to extract the program information more than it is to just play the tape again in the same way we used to do it. 

Allan McConnell 

Don 

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