TV shows that were "filmed" on videotape ---Technical question

I know videotape for TV shows has been around for ages. I have a technical question.

When those videotaped TV shows were edited....

1. did they actually cut and splice videotape much like film, and audio tape?

OR

2. Did they have a master reel of tape that the scenes the editor wanted were just recorded onto (pause-record-pause)?

If number 2, how much image quality degradation would happen between the original vs final tape?

 

Video editing - Wikipedia

I found this overview helpful.

1. Yes it did happen as a standard.

2. more complicated

Keep in mind that yes you always lose quality when doing any dub, you are also still sampling from something that could be in the billions of data points because of being on 2 inch tape.

For instance there are foolish posts floating around that state that a film print having optical generations means that it is the equivalent of a consumer level cassette dubbing. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So many factors are involved into how much is lost. Is the reader head dirty, is it a splice cut, is it a speed issue etc...it really is hard to quantify. I have done dubs that looked like garbage, I had others that retained at least almost imperceptible changes. If I had to put a number on it, with a good reader head and a good scaler, you can improve the image massively and get at least 90% quality.

The main thing is that just like in Boogie Nights, video tape compared to film was extremely cheap so editing happened when they just kept rolling and rolling and not having complicated changes. Good planning alleviated dip in quality.

I hope this helped a little bit. Finding an exact number will just lead to a false hope in my opinion.

 

Dale:

Forum Video Expect Marc W. will know the exact answer, but I believe that they did do cut and splice editing at the beginning of videotape, but it was much harder to do than film. They soon got electronic videotape editors. In fact, master editor Artie Schneider wrote a book about the subject called "Jump Cut". Good book, basically, the early video editors had to stay hunkered down in a dark editing studio for weeks at a time when working on a big project. Certainly not *my* idea of fun!!!

The TV producers were thrilled when videotape came out because now they could see the product on the screen instantly instead of waiting for the rushes to be developed. Plus it was SO much cheaper than film, and they would often erase a show that had no syndication value (like the news) just so they could reuse the videotape for something else.

 

I shudder to think of all the local things taped that were erased, but yet were a unique part of history that is just gone forever.

 

Not local, but all of Johnny Carson's earlier shows. And boy was he pissed about it when he found out in the early 1970s. He used to rant about it quite a bit on his show.

 

That mistake was inexcusable. Makes me sick too. All in the name of the so called economy. For crying out loud, donate the contents to a college, a library, something!!! Space can't be that bad.

 

I don't think, in general, the future that saving the live shows would one day have. If the execs knew that a home video, streaming, etc market was on the horizon, those tapes would have been saved.

Was the Tonight show, in the early days, Kinescoped? One would think some of those would be still around

 

But they should have known those interviewed, like Carl Sandburg, would soon be dead.

 

Yeah, but remember that back in the day there really wasn't an incentive to save stuff like that because there was no cable, no home video/DVD/Blu-Ray market, no re-runs of talk shows, etc.

 

Laugh-In was recorded on 2-inch tape, and then manually spliced together. The stripes traced on the tape by each of the four heads of a "quadrature" recorder would be "exposed" with a liquid called magnar fluid (the same liquid is frequently used in large speakers filling the gap between the voice coil and the magnets). The editor would have to slice the tape with a razor blade.

 

At least splices don't lose quality like except at that point. A true art for sure.

 

Same comment I made above - they should have considered the value of the interviews apart from the economic value. That was Carson's beef. Not that he and/or NBC could have made money with (say) reruns, but that some of the interview footage was priceless. He used his Sandburg interview as an example. Carson only said (as far as I recall) that the shows could have (and should have) been donated to a university.

But I digress.

 

When they transferred them a few years ago did they have to remake all the spices remake all the splices? Hard to imagine splicing tape surviving that long.

 

It was just cheap late-night content. There really was no value in the interviews long-term to them at the time.

 

Carl Sandburg? I don't think he did a lot of TV. I think Carson spent an hour with him and even encouraged him dance (or so Carson said). Clearly the vast majority was late night fluff. But I think (but could be wrong) that when they were destroyed (long after the show aired) NBC would have had a better sense of what was cheap late-night content and what wasn't.

 

I think I remember reading an article about the transfer in Post magazine, but sadly their archives are useless.

I wasn't in video when 2 inch quad ruled the Earth, but I'm pretty sure they didn't have any time base correctors other than acoustic delay lines.

 

I don't think realizing the value of people enjoying art in the future has any end.

While it may not be the Mona Lisa preservation, it still shows how much some fools undervalued their audience.

 

Good point.

 

This thread led me to YouTube and checking out videos of these old machines.

 

Sadly it was common practice for the BBC to record over their "masters". Many Others were just discarded. Many classic "Dr. Who" episodes from the early years are missing as a result.