[QuadList] Early Quad Color--"Saving Cyd Charisse" gets a second look at AMIA's The Reel Thing, this Saturday.

Tue Aug 10 02:51:20 CDT 2010

Quad Video recovery by one of our QuadList members is getting a second  
look with new footage this Saturday at the AMIA "The Reel Thing" in  
Los Angeles.

The 25th presentation features evening screenings:  The 4K restoration  
of Dr. Zhivago, the restored Fantasia and a sneak preview of a  
restored major classic.

Ending two days of film and cinema audio restoration "how we did it"  
presentations, David Crosthwait's work on recovering "Meet Cyd  
Charisse" will be presented on the West Coast for the first time, with  
augmentations to the his presentation made last November at the AMIA  
Conference in St. Louis.

It took some midnight schematic and manual pondering and late night  
soldering iron work to modify Ampex AVR-1 boards to handle the RCA  
Labs heterodyne color signal.  I seem to recall David posted photos of  
that work and the RCA TRT-1AC manuals... but I can't find them on my  
laptop or when he did the mods.

However, the results of the mods and his recovery skills are here in  
this frame-grab from "Meet Cyd Charisse," now nearing 51 years old.

Imagine this on a theater screen at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts  
and Sciences—possibly through a 4K projector!

The St. Louis presentation and clips caused QuadList member Jeff  
Martin to post after the screening:

> Well, I was lucky enough to be at The Reel Thing today--wow. The Cyd  
> Charisse material was just amazing, as was the story of its  
> recovery. David, I hope you'll share that story here, if you already  
> haven't. Suffice to say: the show fades up on Cyd in a hot-pink  
> negligee, reclining on a chaise lounge, and gets better from there.   
> Really, nothing else looks quite like that early color.

As David mentioned in a Nov. 3, 2009 QuadList post:

This recently found 2" original color recording that has never been  
seen since it's airing in December of 1959. The program will discuss  
the background of this RCA labs color (non-standard low band) program  
with some details about the machines that were involved at that time.

Archival Screening Night: There will be a presentation from what is  
believed to be the third oldest surviving 2" color videotape in  
existence, recorded November 9, 1958. This is an RCA labs (non- 
standard low band) color recovery.

That was a Dinah Shore Chevy Show, also recorded at NBC Burbank.

These two shows had mechanical splices in them, as David noted in a  
January, 2010 post to the QuadList.

Should you encounter a spliced master from NBC Burbank, you should  
have no problems with the physical nature of the splice itself. I have  
yet to have one break apart. In the restoration and recovery of two  
color shows for the AMIA Conference this past fall in St. Louis, I  
gave presentations in technical detail. On the "Meet Cyd Charisse"  
program, taped in 1959 with the RCA Labs color recording system, no  
splices fell apart. And that included the heavily spliced dance  
segment in act 1, which was shown at "The Reel Thing" at AMIA. The  
same stable splice success story also applied to The Dinah Shore Show  
clip, recorded on 11/9/58 (also RCA Labs color). All spices intact.

I think with all of the spliced shows we have run over the years, only  
a couple of them have failed. None of those breaks were network edits.

He was responding to a comment by Library of Congress' James Snyder  
regarding playback of "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In." The edited  
masters from "Laugh-In" have hundreds of splices per show, and James  
was concerned about playback.

Of additional interest is the presentation in front of David's work,  
involving the RCA Color stabilizer used with NBC Burbank's first Quad  
recorders.

The two presentations close out two days and three nights that create  
a snapshot of the state of the art of Moving Image Preservation for  
film and videotape.

http://www.amianet.org/events/thereelthing/2010/schedule.htm

Here's the description of what's happening beginning at 4:30 p.m. on  
Saturday:
A Look at the RCA Color Stabilizer for Early Monochrome Videotape  
Recorders
AKA: The Heterodyne Color Corrector
Ralph Sargent, Film Technology Company, Inc.

In tandem with the Cyd Charisse special restoration presentation, this  
paper will discuss the RCA design for a color stabilizer for early  
monochrome VTRs. Specifically, Ampex VRX 1000 prototype machines which  
NBC used at Burbank until RCA built their own recorders. This design  
was used for about two years before Ampex and RCA settled on an  
agreement on the specs for "Low Band" color.

___________________________________________________

Saving Cyd Charisse - A Second Look
David Crosthwait, DC Video
Dan Wingate, Sony Pictures

Except for filmed programming pre-produced for television, the  
commercial broadcasts of the late 1940s and early 1950s only exist in  
the form of kinescopes - specially made film records of the television  
experience. But by 1956, a unique form of capture native to the video  
world began its ascendancy: 2" quadruplex videotape. This new,  
electronic recording medium was used to capture both live and pre- 
recorded programs, including many spectacular productions that rivaled  
Broadway and Hollywood for production value and talent. As these 2"  
tape machines developed, they evolved from verbal time code and  
physically edited tape towards the mature medium of television  
recording that dominated the last quarter of the 20th century.  
Unfortunately, problems including tape deterioration and equipment  
obsolescence have made it difficult to recover these high-quality  
television programs. This presentation will elucidate the process of  
capture and restoration of "Meet Cyd Charisse" - a Ford Startime  
special originally broadcast December 29, 1959 - and will touch upon  
the problems of the VTRs and heads, the capture and manipulation of  
the original non-standard color recorded signal, and the conservation  
of these early television images in a way that expresses their  
original quality and aesthetics.

Dan Wingate will make this presentation from the one prepared and  
presented in St. Louis in 2009 by David Crosthwait. This will have  
examples from the program not previously shown.

Registration for The Reel Thing is still open, and one-day  
registration may still be available:
http://www.amianet.org/events/thereelthing/2010/registration.htm

Quad Videotape Group impromptu gatherings during Reel Thing:
QuadList members Gary Adams, myself and perhaps others will be  
attending, and having impromptu QuadList/Quad Videotape Group  
gatherings during meal breaks.

You're invited to join us even if you're not attending The Reel Thing.

Call or text my cell (530) 301-2931 or E-mail  
ted at quadvideotapegroup.com to find out where in the neighborhood near  
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences we'll be gathering.

Ted

Ted Langdell
Secretary for the  QuadVideotapeGroup.com:
Preserving Tape, Equipment and the Knowledge to use them, in  
conjunction with the Library of Congress
ted at quadvideotapegroup.com

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