[QuadList] Electronic Editing Notes

[Chill315 at aol.com]

We all have had our share of the trials and tribulations of editing.   I 
started doing the cutting of the tapes and ended using PCs and data with no  
tape.  The stories are wide spread.
 
I did some thinking about how did we get to the Electronic Editor.   
Splicer for the RCA folks.
 
As far as I know the first machine that you could edit on was the  VR-1000. 
 There was a 2 or 3 rack unit chassis that was installed with  square 
buttons on the front.
 
To get to this required a lot of changes.  First was the development  of 
the Intersync to get the machine to frame vertically and lock horizontally to  
the incoming video.  Second was the change to the master erase head.   It 
had to be split so that it only erased the Video tracks and the control track 
 in full record.  That had to be an interesting challenge as the strength 
of  the erase field could not lap over into the cue or audio track and cause 
any  erasure there.  Third was the sequencing of the control so that the 
turn on  times would be correct.  It had to be exact for the edit to occur at 
the  correct point.
 
I was thinking about AMPEX and the changes to the erase stack over the  
years.  First they had a front of tape full erase.  Then they went to  a 
moveable head.  That must have been a variable in terms of trying to  get the 
erase delay perfect every time.  Finally there was the back of tape  erase 
assembly.  Interesting the position with respect to the video record  head was 
shortened with the last head.  Thus the delay was changed by a few  frames.  
Note that the canoe was not changed and thus still met SMPTE  specs.  The 
erase assembly had to have a cue track head added so that the  EDITEC could 
read the cue tone early enough to do the edit.  
 
I never heard about RCA having an electronic splicer before the  TR-22.  I 
do think that they had an innovative way to check the timing of  the splice 
and set the capstan speed.  Much better than AMPEX in my  opinion.  If RCA 
had only the equivalent of an EDITEC in the early  days.  AMPEX did copy the 
splice timing procedure in the AVR-2.  
 
I was thinking about some of the stories that I went through as I was  
reading the posts.  I was glad that the only 7.5 IPS recordings that I did  were 
not edited.  Just think of the wait time of 30 or 36 frames from push  of 
button to start of edit.
 
I still remember the chief engineer of an unnamed place now out of business 
 that did a recording on 3/4 tape in the insert mode to edit as he went  
along.  The tape was blank and thus no control track.  We were able to  
salvage it by building a control track in another machine jumpering circuits  from 
one machine to another while the tape was playing and doing some return  
jumpers.  The recording was the president of a top 10 corporation giving an  
important address that could not be repeated.  Did we save their bacon on  
that one.
 
Late at night I once hit record on the wrong machine and wiped a bit of a  
master.  Fortunately we could reconstruct it very quickly.  Those all  
nighters were terrible.
 
I even sliced a dub at the wrong spot late at night.
 
We had editors that would hit the buttons on the RA-400 with a lot of force 
 and actually sent them through the bottom a few times.  Fortunately I  had 
spares after the first time.  I was able to steal an unused one the  first 
time and had enough the rest of the times.
 
Assemble vs Insert was not an issue with us.  We only did insert and  the 
machines other than for a couple of months were under a controller.   Either 
an AMPEX RA-4000 or a CMX control.  Thus the need for insert.   It was 
interesting that all edits were Video only inserts in the structure of  the CMX.  
The audio was run as an separate insert that controlled.   Thus the split 
edit capability.  The RA-4000 did not have that feature but  it was not that 
big a deal to us.  We did CMX editing with AVR-2's and  RA-4000 with VR-1200 
and AVR-2's.
 
The 1200 audio chassis did the audio editing.  It was hard to get a  really 
good clean no thump edit.  The audio turn on times were the  key.  Still it 
was never perfect.  The AVR-2 had better timing  circuits but CMX built 
their own piggy back board.  Who know why.
 
I do remember that he RA-4000 would let us start the show exactly at zero  
time code.  The CMX could not handle the transition through zero.  To  see 
the machines go crazy when we got our first CMX was nuts.  You had to  stop 
it fast.  The RA-4000 was a great edit controller but it did not have  any 
memory.  Paper was our savior.  Yet I could out pace a CMX  most days on 30 
sec drop in the product spots.  
 
That is just some of the things that come to mind.  I hope that we all  
look back and thank our lucky stars for being able to see the great leaps that  
were made.
 
Chris Hill
WA8IGN
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