[QuadList] WRC B/W to Color Quad tape

[Don Norwood]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Charles Park Seward"
>
> I have a question about the early color recordings. I have some low band 
> color recordings from the middle 60s and I see a lot of herringbone 
> interference. Is that because of the frequencies they used? Is there a way 
> to clean that up?

Hi Park:

Will be interesting to see what Ken and others have to say.  The LBC
standard does exhibit moire which was one of the reasons for the move to
HBC.  As far as I know, there's no way to get rid of it, but there are
several things to evaluate in order to determine if what you are seeing is
"normal".  First of all, take a look at the video in EE mode with LBC
selected as your standard.  The moire that you see should be the "normal"
amount that would be expected from LBC.  It will be dependent on the content
of the video, and can be most easily evaluated with a steady signal such as
color bars.  As a further test, you can compare two different machines in EE
as a check to be certain that there's not a problem with the signal system
since they should produce the same results.

The second part of the problem relates to how the tapes that you have were
recorded.  If they are first generation, they should essentially look like
the EE signal (as far as moire is concerned).  But if they are second
generation or later, and if they were video dubs from LBC masters, then the
moire has been recorded into the video signal, and it will appear along with
any moire that is a product of the LBC demod, so that the amount of moire
will exceed the "normal" amount that you see in EE.

Another possibility if your tapes were recorded in the mid 60's and they are
dubs, is that they could still be first generation as far as the LBC
standard is concerned.  After HBC became available in '64, it was common to
have a HBC master that was then dubbed to LBC for distribution to stations
that were still largely equipped only for LBC.  That practice continued for
a number of years, so you can have a tape that is a dub but is only a single
generation of LBC.

Don