[BC] Fun with Quad Videotape

[Xen Scott]

At 09:41 AM 12/03/2011 -0600, Alan Kline wrote:
>I wish I could provide a citation--it's been years--but I'm fairly
>certain that I've seen a published source that referenced the physical
>editing of "Laugh In". The show premiered in 1968--would NBC have been
>equipped with time code-capable VTR's that early?

It didn't take time code to do electronic editing on quad tape.  I did
a lot of editing, including music editing, in the late 1960s with just a
simple Ampex electronic editor with no time code or cue tones involved.
It was even possible to edit the audio separately from the video on the same
pass.  The procedure was to park the record machine and the source machine
five seconds or more back from the edit point and then play both
simultaneously.
The challenge was to push the record button 2/3rds of a second before the
video edit point so that the edit would happen where it was wanted.  My only
edit reference was the mechanical counter on a Ampex VR-2000.  An 
experienced editor could get pretty good at getting the edit correct the 
first time.

RCA had vtr's with electronic editing by 1967, so it's certainly possible
that NBC was doing much videotape editing electronically.  It is also
probable that they used a combination of physical splicing and electronic
editing.  Common practice for me was to edit Mike Douglas Show segments
electronically and then physically splice the excess tape out of the
following commercial break when the stations would be away on local
commercials.  This avoided having to re-record subsequent segments which
didn't require editing.  On some shows there might be only one or two
edits in the opening segment with the rest of the 90 min. show airing as
originally recorded.   Then there were other shows like the week with
John Lennon and Yoko Ono that were so out of control that I had to build
whole shows of edited segments and then make a protection copy of the edit
master.

>The source I read indicated that the audio track had the final mix done at 
>a Hollywood audio house on mag-track film, and then laid back to the 
>videotape. It's possible that the edits may have been one at a time with an
>Editec-equipped machine, but I thought I read that it was cut-and-splice
>editing.

It would have been relatively easy to build a segment by editing audio/video
dialog, either with simple electronic editing or even physical splices
and then add in music and sound effects as an audio lay-back.  How long
it takes is a function of the skill and experience of the people doing it
and the resources available.

>Also, since the original CMX editor was, in part, a CBS invention, would
>NBC's "Buy RCA only" policy come into play?

That policy was not always observed or sometimes special procedures were
employed.  Remember how NBC used Norelco PC-70 cameras but they were never
shown in promotional material or acknowledged in any way.  When WCAU in
Philadelphia was first owned by CBS, a lot of terminal gear was painted
CBS gray so as to mask the original manufacturer which in some cases was RCA.

There were other editing systems in use back then.  My first editing
system was a Datatron with proprietary time code because SMPTE standard
time code had not yet been established.

Xen Scott