[QuadList] JFK--Footage from Texas and Alaska archives online--

Thu Nov 21 20:56:07 CST 2013

Gee Ted. Looks like you forgot another AMIA thread regarding JFK footage.

Below is most of one thread titled: JFK footage on CNN program

Hello Scott,

Some of that "amazingly good" quality footage you speak of came from our archive. We are very honored to be involved in such a prestigious project. The two pieces they licensed from us were both from the Merv Griffin Show. The first was an interview with Mark Lane & David Susskind from 1966 and the other was Penn Jones Jr. from 1966. Both Mark & Penn were very early doubters of the Warren Commission report. The reason they look as good as good as they do is because we had David Crosthwait at DC Video handle our transfers. In the early 1980s Merv had his 2 Inch tapes done at some facility in Los Angeles and whoever did them knew nothing about transfers. The transfers looked very dark and the resolution was weak. To top it off they were transferred to Umatic. When I sent the initial screeners in to Mark Montgomery they came from those poor transfers. When Mark placed his master order we could have simply sent his clips from those transfers but because quality is VERY important to me I spent my own money to have David do these directly from the 2 Inch masters. I did that so that people such as yourself would notice how great our footagee can look. When I license a clip I look at things two ways (1) obviously how much am going to make from the deal but (2) the quality I give the producer is a form of advertising for my archive so I want to it to look the best it can. 

I can't thank David Crosthwait at DC Video enough for his attention to detail and his diligence in making sure these tapes get done right. I'm not putting anyone down here but I would never use anyone else but David to handle my transfers.

Once again I was very proud to have our footage included in this project which by the way I thought was brilliantly done. Kudos to Mark Montgomery researching skills and everyone else involved in this series. I actually showed it to my 8 year old daughter and of course when it ended she started asking me if I thought Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Needless to say that was not a short conversation.

All the best

David Peck
Reelin' In The Years Productions
www.reelinintheyears.com

At 10:53 AM 11/18/2013, Scott D. Smith wrote:
> Not meaning to hijack Ron's thread, but thought I'd make mention of the archival film and video footage used in the recent Kennedy assassination piece on CNN, some of which looked amazingly good (and some other segments-amazing bad!). It's interesting to note that the video from the local Dallas news outlets (mostly WFAA-TV, I presume) looked vastly superior to much of the network video coverage (my guess that the network tapes were likely recorded from AT&T longline remote feeds, not locally).
> 
> At any rate, much of the B & W video used in the program was unbelievably stable, nary a dropout to be seen. While the cameras in use at the time (image orthicons, I presume) left something to be desired, the recordings were just incredibly clean. Likewise, some of the color footage from the funeral in Washington was quite good (as were a few pieces of B & W newsfilm). Absolutely no mention in the credits of who did the transfers from the original video and film material, but they certainly deserve a degree of recognition.
> 
> --Scott
> 
> Scott D. Smith CAS
> Chicago Audio Works, Inc.   
>  
> On 11/15/2013 6:13 PM, Jeff Kreines wrote:
>> This was scanned by Movette Film Transfer on their Kinetta Archival Scanner.  Our Nixon, now Kennedy… (also LBJ and Truman) scanned on that same Kinetta!  Nice work, Buck and Jenny and Ron! 
>> 
>> 
>> On Nov 15, 2013, at 11:38 AM, Ron Merk <ron at INDIEPLEX.ORG> wrote:
>> 
>>> Dear AMIA members and film preservation colleagues,
>>> 
>>> I'm writing to follow up my message of yesterday to the AMIA listserv regarding the amazing footage that our company discovered and acquired recently, and the story on NBC this morning.
>>> 
>>> The segment was hosted by Andrea Mitchell and Historian Michael Beschloss.
>>> 
>>> It's important that those of us who care about the future of the past keep getting the message out to the public about the work we do.
>>> 
>>> If you missed the segment, it can be seen online at the URL:
>>> 
>>> http://www.today.com/news/new-footage-reveals-glimpses-jfk-campaign-funeral-2D11601956 
>>> 
>>> If anyone is interested in more information about the 38 minutes of newly discovered footage, either for study or commercial purposes, please contact me.
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> Ron Merk, President
>>> Premiere Pictures International, Inc.
>>> www.PremierePicturesInc.com
>>> Tel 415-829-8859
>>> ron at indieplex.org 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Jeff Kreines
>> Kinetta
>> jeff at kinetta.com
>> kinetta.com
>> kinettaarchival.com
>> 

I know that I did one transfer of that tape for NBC, I am not sure if David had the same original or whether they used what I had done a while ago. I can tell you that the tape I transferred was rock solid, they had a remote truck on site which explains it. There was quite a bit of material that is normally not seen including a wrap up of sorts done by a very shaken up reporter there immediately after the assignation of Oswald and a substantial amount of intro footage before he was shot. 

While there are plenty of poor quality tapes out there, my experience is that in the early days of Quad recording there were engineers who operated the stations  and equipment, and who had a great deal of expertise. You had to know what you were doing, and as a result most (not all) of the original source recordings like this one - BEFORE it got edited into a show, had very high quality video. Once edited and second or later generation all bets are off, but for the source tapes from remote trucks, there were broadcast engineers doing the work. Signal stability for original tapes usually was excellent, you would have issues at switching of course, but in terms of the baseline recording in most cases it is very good. Things started going downhill later. 

Jim Lindner

Email: jim at media-matters.net

  Media Matters LLC.
  450 West 31st Street 4th Floor
  New York, N.Y. 10001

eFax (646) 349-4475
Mobile: (917) 945-2662

www.media-matters.net
Media Matters LLC. is a technical consultancy specializing in archival audio and video material. We provide advice and analysis, to media archives that apply the beneficial advances in technology to collection management.

On Nov 20, 2013, at 12:04 PM, Scott D. Smith <lists at CHICAGOAUDIO.COM> wrote:

> David:
> 
> Did you also transfer the material from the local Dallas station? I was really struck by how stable it looked, even though the (orthicon?) camera image left something to be desired. 
> 
> I have to wonder about how many generations some of the other material went through before it hit the final show reel. As mentioned by others, I was also disappointed by the the Zupruder footage-I know I have seen better versions in the past. I'm sure that Michael and the staff at LOC did exhaustive job of duping the originals, so I'm not sure where things went astray. (Although I have to wonder what else might be able to be extracted with current scanner technology). 
> 
> Really wish they had not cropped the archival material for 16:9. I think audiences will accept the fact that this is historical footage, and doesn't need to be re-composed for the sake of current HD standards.
> 
> --Scott
> 
> Scott D. Smith CAS
> Chicago Audio Works, Inc.
> 
> 
>  
> On 11/20/2013 8:08 AM, David Crosthwait wrote:
>> Jeff,
>> 
>> David is right. The transfers went to Digital Betacam (SD) directly from the AVR-1. The video head design working in conjunction with the dropout compensator provides an unbeatable combination of performance for glitch-free recovery. 
>> 
>> Although we do have the capability for real time broadcast-quality up conversions to HD with either Teranex or Alchemist convertors, the order was to stay SD in this case. 
>> 
>> I will look into what the workflow was that the editor used for this CNN program.
>> 
>> David
>> 
>> 
>> On Nov 18, 2013, at 3:05 PM, David Peck wrote:
>> 
>>> David did the transfers directly to Digi beta I then struck the sections directly to another Digi beta and that's what I sent to the project. Honestly I was blown away by how great it looked in the cut. 
>>> 
>>> At 03:00 PM 11/18/2013, Jeff Kreines wrote:
>>>> Beautiful work — now we know why there were no dropouts!
>>>> 
>>>> Did DC do the up-rezz to HD?  (If not, whoever did at least had pristine images to work with.)
>>>> 

Best Regards,

David Crosthwait
DC Video
Transferring NTSC, PAL & SECAM quad and helical source tapes!

david at dcvideo.com
www.dcvideo.com

Follow DC Video on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dcvideo
Follow DC Video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/dcvideoonline

On Nov 21, 2013, at 1:14 PM, Ted Langdell wrote:

> 
> Over on the AMIA List, there is also a running thread about JFK and footage:
> 
> On Nov 20, 2013, at 2:17 PM, Madeline Moya wrote:
> 
>> The Texas Archive of the Moving Image 
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