Thread: Betamax Devices

Nice format(s), engineering and quality, typical of Sony broadcast, beta had its genesis in the earlier U-matic 3/4" format, but thats another story.

I know where there a U-matic player sitting on a cupboard. (Probably 78-79 vintage)


Martyn

Sorry adm333, I cant read, i'll blame the typeface, LOL.

A player, a recorder and the editor for a grand, high price,

$400 as they're not offering any monitors (and you'll need two).

Head hours on the machines is the killer, but apart from the historical value, what could we use umatic for these days??? Apart from maybe moving archival 3/4" stuff to a digital store - and they're only lowband vtrs not BVU, which in itself is not great...

Cheers, GQ

Too bad I am in Canada for you. I still have my original NEC beta machine. Yes beta was better (in terms of pic quality over vhs) but just didn't garner enough marketshare.

If you are travelling in Canada you can have it for free!

Originally Posted by Quiggers

Sorry adm333, I cant read, i'll blame the typeface, LOL.

A player, a recorder and the editor for a grand, high price,

$400 as they're not offering any monitors (and you'll need two).

Head hours on the machines is the killer, but apart from the historical value, what could we use umatic for these days??? Apart from maybe moving archival 3/4" stuff to a digital store - and they're only lowband vtrs not BVU, which in itself is not great...

Cheers, GQ

Purely nostalgic reasons - no practical sense at all. I did training in the late eighties and qualified (if there is such a qualification) as a tape editor. I proceeded to get a job in an unrelated field and I am now an IT manager. A few months ago I had an opportunity to start a few training projects which I did as small video productions and was very surprised at how easy it was to use these new PC edit packages.

The "black art" as you described it can only really be appreciated using the clunky old edit suite where you get an instinct for timing.

If my son ever becomes interested in this stuff, I would love to be able to teach him the black art ( to the extent that I know it). My father taught me on cinie 8 - cutting and splicing film reels.

Thats really the only use as I see it.

Dave

You're 100% right there, Dave. The current bunch of 'broadcast engineers' haha, have very little idea of what its like to do the job properly. Nothing wrong with basic training.

Now if anyone has an Ampex AVR-1 (or similar) in their shed let me know.

Cheers, GQ

I used to have a telecine machine for Super 8.

It ran the film at 25 frames per second but scanned one frame twice and the next frame once to bring the apparent speed of the film back to 16-2/3 frames per second - close enough to 18 fps.

This allowed Super 8 film to play at almost the correct speed for TV without looking like Keystone Cops stuff or having bars running through the video. We hired the unit out a few times to TV stations when they had amateur filmed stuff for news items.

In fact, we could play old films from the Twenties like the Keystone Cops and have them move at normal speed not the usual fast movement.

Hmm, how long ago was that? Must have been the early 70s 'cos our home VTRs were National 1/2" open reel colour units.

Ron

Crikey! That's going back a while Ron, probably still be a handy gadget these days, as here's so much 8mm sitting in closets but people just don't know what to do with it. I still have people asking me about doing the transfer......

GQ

Note for timberwolf:

As I run a local paper over here and have a similar interest, if put a 'wanted' ad in the paper, we might find some intersting old gear.

If you're interested, let me know specifically what your after, never know
what might turn up....


cheers, GQ