Apollo 11 Original Videotape Recordings to be Auctioned

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by rockclassics, Jul 1, 2019.

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  1. jtw

    jtw Forum Resident

    Then, he probably wanted to keep the bid price down, or had some other motivation for saying so. It's not a subtle difference.
     
  2. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Do you have a link to the video in question?
     
  3. jtw

    jtw Forum Resident

    No. The owner, negotiated with someone to make a documentary about it. We got a rough advanced copy, but the people doing the film were a joke, and it never got released.
     
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  4. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
  5. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I really don't think Ben Feist wanted to keep the price down, he just legitimately thought there was no chance that these tapes were any better than the CBS copies. The guy has spent a huge amount of time restoring the Johnson Space Flight Center Mission Control Room to the state it was in for Apollo 11.
     
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  6. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

  7. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Yes, a lot of tapes from that era have sticky-shed syndrome. This particular tape has already been baked and digitally restored, so all you get is the bragging rights to the physical media. The content is public domain, because it was made by the U.S. government.

    I know for sure Memorex and Fuji 2" quad tapes have terrible shedding problems. I didn't like Ampex 1" for sure in the 1980s. Sony was great, 3M was OK.
     
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  8. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    They keep using the term "analog scan converter" but I'm 99% sure that's a fancy term for "Plumbicon camera aimed at a slow-scan monitor equipped with long persistence phosphors."

    Back in the early 80s that's how we used to convert PAL Beta and VHS tapes to NTSC. All the decent converters cost far too much money.
     
  9. jtw

    jtw Forum Resident

    I'm not absolutely sure what you mean by this, but the tape sold at Sotheby's has never been viewed by the public. It's been a long time since my wife and I saw the side by side snipet of NASAs best digitally enhanced copy vs. Gary's copy, but I remember looking at each other, and saying "wow". It wasn't a subtle difference.
     
  10. longdist01

    longdist01 Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL USA
    So who bought them?
     
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  11. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    How? What source was this supposedly hooked up to? There was a pool video being supplied by NASA which was an NTSC conversion of the slow-scan video. Unless this is supposedly from a different camera aimed at another monitor, but I would presume they would say if that were the case. @Vidiot knows a lot more than I do about quadrature tapes, but I do know that they were only ever fed composite video. Looking at the 5 hours CBS video, I can see some ringing at the left edge, but honestly that would have been invisible due to the overscan of common monitors of the day.

    Did Sotheby's ever post any screen captures? Any still images in an auction catalog? Anything that we can judge this by?
     
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  12. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Okay I dug through the auction site and I found a still image:

    [​IMG]
     
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  13. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    probably make their investment back on just licensing alone...
     
  14. jtw

    jtw Forum Resident

    I guess y'all would have to tell me how the original tape made from the signal sent from the moon to earth can look so much better than a later generation tape.
     
  15. jtw

    jtw Forum Resident

    I seem to remember being able to see a stage hand in the background on his tape....just kidding, of course.


    [​IMG] [/QUOTE]
     
  16. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    My point is that there is no such thing as an "original." The moon landing wasn't tape delayed.

    Here's the Wikipedia article on it:
    Apollo 11 missing tapes - Wikipedia

    The original slow scan video was received at Parkes, Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek and sent to the Johnson Space Center, where was converted to NTSC. (Reading this article I learned something I didn't know, that they had an analog composite video disc recorder, an Ampex HS-100. I actually had to deal with one of these things once - it was the size of a freaking washing machine! It was used to duplicate fields.)

    That NTSC feed went through distribution amps to multiple recorders and every television network in the world.

    So when I say there was no "original" what I mean is that there were hundreds of originals, all getting the exact same signal.

    @Vidiot, the camera in the "scan converter" was an RCA TK22.
     
  17. longdist01

    longdist01 Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL USA
    Thanks Chris for posting that information!

     
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  18. jtw

    jtw Forum Resident

    NASA sure thinks there is one original copy. I guess you can't believe everything you read.
     
  19. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I'm sorry, but what are you talking about?

    I just read a PDF authored by Bill Wood it's the most complete exploration of television for the entire Apollo program. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the subject.

    https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-TVEssay.html

    I had one piece of information wrong. They had the scan converter located in Sydney, where they received the slow scan video, converted it and transmitted the NTSC television signal back to the Johnson Space Center.

    One other interesting thing was that the camera used in Apollo 11 had a gamma curve of 1.0, rather than the 2.2 used for standard NTSC television. Also the difference in brightness levels from the different Earth stations was due to some of those locations having a different set up level - some were set at 0 IRE rather than the 7.5 IRE broadcast standard.
     
    Last edited: Jul 21, 2019
  20. jtw

    jtw Forum Resident

    Just talked with my wife, who is currently out of town. We don't know any of the technical details. All we know is that NASA believed there was an original tape that would be of better quality than what they had, and they were actively looking for it. NASA believed that Gary's tape WAS the original that they were looking for. My wife and I are some of the few people who saw a comparison, and the difference was not subtle.

    The way we see it, any explanations have to match those facts. So on with the tech talk, but the explanation would pretty much have result in an original tape that is of better quality than anything else available.

    Her recollection is the same as mine: The signal was transmitted to a station in Australia, where it was recorded, and relayed to other stations around the world. Since NASA believed it would be better, and since that's what we all experienced, maybe someone here could come up with a technical explanation of how that could be so.
     
  21. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    What they were looking for wasn't an NTSC television tape at all, but a 1" wide, 10 track, 150 IPS data tape.

    The only possibility is that it was one of the 2 inch helical scan recordings rather than quadrature scan. Page 7 of the Wood PDF says:

    The NTSC output of the slow scan converter was recorded on Ampex VR-660B video recorders for later playback in the event of a microwave circuit failure between the station and Houston. The VR-660 was one of the first professional recorders using helical scan that was to become the standard scan method for Beta and VHS VCR’s used throughout the World in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The VR-660 recorder used two-inch wide tape and operated at a tape speed of 3.7 inches per second. The recorder was normally loaded with 5540 foot, 12.5 inch diameter, reels that could record up to five hours of NTSC television signals.​

    The broadcast standard of the time used 2" quad with four heads recording directly perpendicular to the path of the tape. Helical recording is at a much greater angle, nearly parallel to the path of the tape.

    The thing is, working Ampex VR-660 decks are even rarer than working Ampex VR-2000 decks.
     
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  22. the pope ondine

    the pope ondine Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia

    so does this look better than the current footage available ?
     
  23. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I'm in Chicago, I haven't set up my laptop yet. But when I do, I can download the publicly available current best NASA file, and find this exact frame and post a screenshot.
     
  24. jtw

    jtw Forum Resident

    YES. I've seen them side by side. If it doesn't look better, something is wrong with the way the Sothebys picture is being presented.
     
  25. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
    I think you're essentially correct with the information in your posts. There's a chance that this is a quad that was recorded locally where the scan converter was (Goldstone / Honeysuckle Creek / Parkes). Goldstone's scan converter was not set correctly, so the best video for the first 8 or 9 minutes from the moon was from Honeysuckle Creek (the Parkes antenna couldn't see the moon until a bit later). So, potentially, a quadruplex machine at Honeysuckle Creek (I don't think they had one though...) or at the ABC might have produced a marginally better recording than a stateside one made from the satellite feed. But it doesn't seem like there could be a significant improvement.
     
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