[QuadList] DVE use to meet blanking specs

[Chuck Reti]

We made a lot of money doing Blanking Corrections at Producers Color  
in Detroit. A good part of the facility business was spot dubbing and  
distribution. Many agency spot masters were from "out of house" and  
frequently were out of blanking spec (stuff from Chris Hill' shop,  
GTN, was _usually_ OK). The Quantel 5000 did the blow-ups, but at a  
cost of rather noticeable degradation of the original video. Since we  
were dubbing many national and regional automotive spots (surprise!)  
that had been shot on 35mm and telecined and edited on "the coast,"  
the agency clients were not very happy about having to correct their  
expensive masters for air. The Quantel also played havoc with their  
"mice type" disclaimers, rendering them as fuzzy mush. We frequently  
had to get a clean submaster (that usually had OK blanking), and redo  
the masters. It was a good marketing tools to convince the agency  
clients to do their transfers and post with us to ensure quality  
control and technical integrity.
When the ADO came along, the process was a bit cleaner, butt by that  
time, I believe that enforcement of blanking was relaxed a bit.
-- 
Chuck Reti
Detroit MI