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Looks boring yet difficult.

Got in TV in 2002 at 19, DVCpro and file/tapeless were new, seeing this and coworker’s stories shows what I missed out on, especially in engineering, what a mad house TV used to be. It’s still wild, just with less staff and more automation. There needs to be a good movie/sitcom about working in TV, the stuff you cannot make up!

I built an edit suite with three one-inch Ampex VPR3s in 1986. Quad was being phased out by then for sure but they were fine for local stations.

2" Quadruplex... in 1991!? That is IMPOSSIBLE! I thought 2" Quadruplex videotape reels were dropped out in the 1980s in favor of either 1" type C videotape reels or more compact Betacam SP videocassettes! How can TV stations like KIMA-TV use 2" Quad as late as the 1990s!?

One highly experienced tape operator. I'm impressed with the speed he threads each tape. I note these Ampex VR-1200 machines are running without their head boxes. Very noisy working in close confines with up to FOUR headwheels spinning at once! I do, however, cringe at two observations: 1. Rewinding the tapes and letting the tails flip past the heads at full rewind speed; 2. Stacking the 'spent' tapes on the console, not back in their boxes. Must have been fun correctly re-boxing later unless one threads each tape up again to indentify it? Thanks for uploading this.

I’m seeking an Ampex AVR-2 if anybody is looking to sell one for a reasonable cost or looking to rehome one. I Will travel anywhere in Canada/USA to pick it up. Thanks.

Appreciate your skills...spent midnights cutting hundreds of dubs for distribution on those beasts!

Ретро студия! В те года уже кассеты были Sony Betacam SP! И студийное монтажное оборудование.

Even U-Matic 3/4” was beginning to be phased out in ‘91.

That dude is definitely high on something.... amphetamine would be my guess...

I remember at WMBD we used 2 machines, looped the tape through a mic stand and had a 10 second tape delay for talk shows. Record on one machine playback 10 seconds later on another machine.

Wow, you're smooth.. I've never seen anybody manipulate a 2" tape machine so quickly. btw WTF was that psychotic outburst at 3:42?

We retired our Ampex VR-1200s as uneconomical to operate in 1987. Switched to 1" and 3/4" machines.

Your station was still NTSC (non-digital) in 1991??? I have two "retired" 2" AMPEX's from a local Tulsa station that work, but I don't have NEARLY the "support electronics" to use them with ATSC. I have a (SONY) Nakamichi 1" digital R-T-R deck and a half-dozen D-BETA and D-"VHS" decks and a Mini-DV Canon (three sensor) camcorder that all work. Mini-DV decks that work well are almost impossible to buy now, except D-PAL units. At 70, I'm still making RV dealer's and mobile/modular dealer's TV commercials with the Canon. I take a couple of hours, while the "production companies" take three or four DAYS to shoot a 59 second commercial for 200 times what I charge. I could do that 7 days a week if I wanted to make a half-dozen states a week.

Would have to love this look awesome but very stressful and little room for error.

He's amazing. He's like DJ with videotape. I used to be a DJ that worked with VHS tapes in 1990-91. Forward, rewind, cue, pause, but not too long cuz it only pauses for like 20 seconds and then stops and loses the cue and then recue.....oooops, wrong tape.... it happens. This guy is a pro.

What's interesting about this is that it was ancient equipment even in 1991. I thought most professional VT was one inch tape by the early to mid 80s. I'm curious to know if you could still buy new 2 inch tape reels in 1991 ?

My dream job!

I didn't start working for a TV station until 1995. We had it easy compared to this. We were using 3/4-inch cassettes and formatting them for playback on an Alamar 6-deck playback computer. Head clogs were notorious. Then we got our first digital player for our commercial breaks. It really helped.

You're insane, I love it!

I used the RCA TR70 at the station I worked at and we stopped using them sometime in 1991. Not the easiest format to work with and I'm not criticizing at all, I just remember having to equalize the heads for every tape for playback because they all seemed different. I was never that fast at threading them and setting them up. I never did editing on them other than add tone to the second track during a phone number for the 700 Club and there was a 25 Hz tone recorded on the tape that really wasn't detected on old TVs but when it was rewinding or fast forwarding, you could hear a solid but varying tone where you were supposed to put the tone on the tape to activate our phone tone generator. Anyway, thank you for posting this.

I can't believe they were still using quad in '91. I was fixing U-matics then.

Ed Boone is the name of the creator of Mortal Kombat...years after this movie was made!

The guy is looking like Marty McFly using his Time machine

Great video!

I did this for 2 years before the station bought an ACR25 to play back the spots. Now THAT was a cool machine.

Thanks 4 posting. I'm headed on the same ship n intenirary next week. Looks like u had a great time any suggestions on things to do or not in ports? Thanks

Thank you for taking me along on your adventure I am taking my grandkids on the Vista in September and I'm looking forward to it and you look like you had a great time

Hey guys! New to the channel and love the video! We absolutely love the Vista.

Please CANCEL your CARNIVAL VISTA trip right away! You make an excellent point about how guests deserve to be treated with honesty and transparency. Carnival Vista has been operating a broken ship incapable of reaching cruising speeds for months and months. Each sailing they send out a message from the VP Guest Services Colleen Oliverio claiming that an issue with cruising speeds has been discovered and that embarkation will be delayed. How dishonest and greedy is that for any Corporation. Then on the return they literally throw everyone out of the rooms at 8am to start cleaning the rooms and have 4000 people standing, squatting, etc. in the hallways and stairs for hours waiting for the ship to arrive back to Galveston and to start disembarking. It is about time the US Coast Guard took action against such unethical practices by Carnival.

Lord this brings back memories. Did this same job back in 1976. . Doing all these gyrations plus keeping transmitter logs/normal control room duties.... $3/hour. Went to Georgia Tech and got an EE degree and got the hell out of that world. Retired now and this brought back flashbacks and not good ones. Rotating head and air cleaner noise was horrible....loud and very high pitched. After I left another control room engineer at the same station had a mental breakdown. First Class FCC license and $3 bucks an hour....screw that. Stay clear of broadcast work....technical people at TV/radio stations have about the same social status/respect as the janitor....and not paid much more.

Szaleństwo

Wow! What have we gottin ourselves into? Wildin Out. He Actually running the whole setup Solo😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣

Great video! May I suggest record a "commented" version of the video? With you narrating what is going on?

this brings back memories, we used these machines up to 1994 !!

He Got Serious Skills !!!!

WoW Perfect skill

Imagine....in the day, over a million dollars to make this room work...wow!

I worked on quad machines. in a controlled environment, if all the recordings were made on the same machine & all the other decks lined up properly, & with modern materials used to refiurb the head tips, the way this guy is tom cruising around with his g-spools would be perfectly acceptable, & nothing wrong technically. he seems slightly over caffeinated, but I can't see what else he's doing wrong, really. yes, he takes a few shortcuts, but if the decks have been properly aligned (with interoperability being the best test of that, as it always was & always will be), no harm. so get off his back. until you've assemble-edited a hundred commercials from single-spot tapes on your night-shift, stfu.

Being from Yakima....some of these advertisers are familiar....

Wow I hope he didn't lose hearing from those noisy heads.

Mr Yung: As a broadcast engineer of 40+ years, working local/network air operations and co-authored a book on station operations, I highly resent your insulting attitude to the tape engineer shown building a break tape. Yes, you damn fool, given the time, you'd take a good minute or so to set up an average quad for each tape. At my first station, we had 4 quads: 2 were taken up with o'nite movie "bits" the other with a mini-dub reel of overnight spots. the 3rd machine played back spots; the 4th you edited on. I started editing at 12mid and had to be done by 6a. Dub reel went from 730a-1am. You tell me how YOU'D get that workload done? BTW, this was an independent, running breaks roughly every 6-8 minutes. Unless you kept your break structure identical from day to day with an occasional insert edit here or there (which we did do when I first started), it's impossible. And I might add a GOOD tape operator can make his playback tapes look good if they are truly pros. Clearly, you have NEVER done this kind of work and been under this kind of pressure. Regards, Nick Grbac

This guy is a great drummer! :)

Making spot reels was my first full time TV job. I had worked weekend Master Control prior. We had two RCA TR-50 quads. Playback on one, insert edits on the other. We later had a bank of six IVC one inch machines for spots and shows. It still kept a projectionist busy. True relief came with the Ampex ACR-25B and later a Sony Betacart.

Making spot reels. Those were the days. Made you appreciate the TCR OR ACR.

Human ACR 25, my hat's off to you!

Quite the tape slinger, excellent work with the quads!

I was out of college by 91. I bet the colleges had moved on to beta by then. 2 inch in 1991? Wow, pure profit for the local station.

I worked on (Engineering) VR-1100, 1200B and VR-2000B, as well as TR-70. Later VPR1/2 & 3.

That must have been costly to keep those old machines in working conditions. At that time it was surely around 2000USD to refurbish the head assembly. At that time we already used (here in former Czechoslovakia) the Pioneer magnetooptical disc for commercials and newsreels.