[BC] Fun with Quad Videotape

[Xen Scott]

At 11:50 AM 12/01/2011 -0600, Alan Kline wrote:

>And talking about cheap...the station where I worked in 1985-1990 was so
>cheap that instead of replacing worn 3/4" cassettes that we used for
>spot playback, we bought an eraser/cleaning unit, cleaned loose oxide
>off of the tape, and then cut out the worn portion and spliced the rest
>back together...
>
>ak

At KYW-TV Philadelphia, where I once worked, they spent big dollars on a
a special two-inch tape and 16mm film cleaning machine.  It was in a huge
cabinet out in the hallway next to the videotape area.  The only problem
was that many of the tapes and films that needed to be cleaned also had
splices, particularly the commercial film packages which were put together
with Scotch tape so as not to loose a frame in splicing.  Videotape, with or
without splices, often suffered edge damage when run through the machine,
probably due to the challenge of tape tension and guide alignment.

The cleaning machine went away right after it opened up all the splices in a
reel of 16mm film commercials that an editor had spent an hour putting 
together.

Xen