[QuadList] Ampex Head Lines newsletter--Here's a look back to 1959-Page 2

[Ted Langdell]

In 1959, Ampex began publishing a newsletter specifically about  
Videotape and the company's Videotape products.


Here's the second page of Volume 1 Number 3, published in December,  
1959, with type turned into editable text by OCR.  It includes the  
conclusion of "Humble Oil Scores Big With Football Tapes from Page 1.


Page 2
Let’s Talk About...


Ross Snyder
(Editor’s Note) HEAD LINES welcomes Ross Snyder as a regular  
contributor.
He will discuss a variety of technical topics concerned with  
television tape recording. Snyder’s experience fully qualifies him as  
an authority.
Before joining Ampex -in 1952-as an engineer, he was an announcer- 
producer for WOR, New York, and an audio engineer and newscaster for  
KJBS, San Francisco. Now manager of video products, Ampex Professional  
Products Company, Snyder supervises video product planning, systems  
engineering, industrial design and service engineering.
He is a member of the national board and a fellow of the Audio  
Engineering Society. He holds membership in the Society of Motion  
Picture and Television Engineers, the British Television Society and  
the Acoustical Society of America.

60 SPLICES IN FOOTBALL TAPES (continued)
series, has put together a team that moves with amazing speed and know- 
how. Most of the games are played on Saturday nights. The edited  
versions, complete with commentary by sportscaster Kern Tips and  
commercials, go-on the air at 5:30 p.m. the following day.
Briefly, here is the productionroutine. Depending on the origination  
point, the entire game is fed to an Ampex recorder in either KRLD,  
KPRC or WOAI.
Lyerly watches the live -feed and makes notes of the action. As soon  
as the game is over, he and his tape editor go to work reducing the  
approximately 2% hours of recording to 25 minutes of highlights. Open  
and close commercials (filmed) are superimposed on the tape. Then Tips  
views the completed tape and prepares his commentary. Tips goes on  
camera in the studio, and his lead-in is taped. Crowd noise, which has  
been held on a separate audio tape, is then mixed with Tips’  
commentary and dubbed onto the edited tape. A dub of the completed  
master is made for back-up. And the show is ready.
 From start of the game until completion of the dub of the edited  
master tape, around 10 hours of recorder operating time is logged for  
the complete job.
“These edited tapes are wonderful technical successes,” agency  
spokesmen said.
Until last year, Humble Oil used film for its football shows.
“Tape is a tremendous improvement,” the agency declared. “Not only is  
the picture quality far better.
But it would be impossible to put the show on the air before Monday  
with film. Tape gives us at least 24 hours’ advantage.”

INTERCHANGEABILITY OF TAPES
We’re impressed constantly with the fact that interchangeability is  
not a black-and-white affair. Interchangeability is a matter of  
degree. Monochrome tapes have been interchanged among Ampex’s  
VIDEOTAPE television recorders for years - and very satisfactorily  
whenever the operating engineer had a few minutes in which to make  
some playback readjustments. This has also been true of color tapes  
made on Ampex color-converted VR-1000 series recorders. Color tapes,  
recorded at the 1958 American Medical Association Convention in San  
Francisco, were played interchangeably on two different color  
recorders, before a public audience, on July 22, 1958. The most  
dramatic interchange of color tapes was the now-famous Nixon- 
Khrushchev debate, recorded on one Ampex color recorder at the  
American National Exhibition in Moscow and dubbed and played back in  
color by NBC, New York, on a different machine with a different  
recording head.
Interchangeability of black-and-white recordings among Ampex VR-1000  
series recorders is a longproved reality. Hundreds of commercials, and  
dozens of syndicated television programs, are exchanged every week.
But Ampex feels that the present degree of interchangeability is not  
enough. The television industry demands, and rightly so, that recorded  
television tapes ultimately become replayable on any television  
recorder, without readjustments of any kind, and that tapes made  
anywhere be interspliceable. We feel that television tape, While now  
interchangeable, must become as interspliceable as photographic motion  
picture film.
The attainment of universal interspliceability requires a high degree  
of business responsibility on the part of the recorder manufacturers.  
All must continue to improve machinery and to make it easier to use.
But the success or failure of the manufacturer’s efforts will lie  
ultimately with the operating engineers in the television industry.  
Monochrome tapes made on different Ampex recorders can be  
interspliced, with care in operation.
The care which is required is care which must be exercised during the  
recording process. Once the tape is recorded, there’s nothing we can  
do to change the mechanical and electrical settings which will be  
required for satisfactory playback of the tape. Only by universal  
observation of a single set of sensible operating standards, during  
every recording session, can universal interspliceability be achieved.
Ross Snyder Video Products Manager


Ted Langdell
Secretary
Skype: 	TedLangdell
e-mail:	ted at quadvideotapegroup.com

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