[BC] Fun with Quad Videotape

[Tom Spencer]

Quads were always easier to do insert edits rather than assemble edits.  
When I was at the IU School of Nursing, we had a set of three RCA 
TR-600s and three U-Matic machines as edit sources and/or masters.  All 
edits were inserts; required a separate pass to lay down blackburst on 
whatever tape was going to be the master.  Usual sequence was :10 black, 
:30 Barzan Tone (Tarzan's cousin, IIRC...), then black to the end of the 
reel.  A (usually:15) slate was the first edit,  which allowed us to 
"lay black" ahead whenever the studio / control room wasn't in use.  The 
original U-Matics were 2800 series; they were replaced with two BVU-800s 
and a BVU-820 (one of the -800s was for master, the -820 gave us a 
slo-mo capability).  I don't recall the editor system, but it ran on a 
PDP-11, IIRC, and the interfaces to everything were called "I-Squared"s...

While I've heard of, and even seen, quad getting physically edited, it 
was always somewhat messy because of whatever that stuff was that would 
make the control track pulses visible.

It would have made more sense to do A/B/C/ rolls onto a master tape, I'd 
think... especially by 1970.

Tom Taggart wrote:
> Rowan & Martin edited using mechanical splices in 1970??
>
> Very strange.  In 1970, I was using an Editec on an Ampex
> quad machine (1200 series) at Channel 8, Cleveland. The
> Editec "knew" to do the inserts at the particular frame
> points where it would not be noted.
-- 
Tom Spencer