I noticed some dot crawl in the Quick Facts section and went straight to the description section to see what that was about. It is indeed astounding how high quality the results are though, I would've assumed it was from the 80s or 90s.
Grateful to the Algorithm Gods for dropping this video in my feed! What a wonderful look at an incredible era of technology. These machines were true works of art.
Thank you. The VR-3000 was really top of the game in 1967, a real electromechanical work of art. It is good to experience venerable equipment to develop appreciation for where we are now in audiovisual production.
As an audio engineer I've had the chance to work with some fairly elaborate multitrack machines, but those Ampex Quad machines are a whole other level of complexity and engineering. Amazing stuff.
As a TV engineer starting in the days of DVCPRO, DVcam, etc mpeg-2 and NLE and mac g4s being cutting edge . THANK YOU! Ive heard all the stories from earlier folk from shouting "hair in the gate!" then to this with real time head clog removal, then I hear stories of the ACH,D2 and LMS and everything else of electromechanical marvels, it really is wild to see where we are now with cam robots, automation, and everything running through an RJ-45 or insanity muxing on a coax, these days, the times, they keep changing! Broadcast people are a different breed still these days. What a great video! Thanks!
Just wow! McMartin, Sparta, Fidelipac, Russco, QRK and the ubiquitous Ampex 440, along with period-appropriate music. That activated some dormant brain cells for sure.
That was a real blast from the past! I can’t count the number of days I sat in the back of a curtained Toyota Landcruiser with a VR3000 recording single camera location ‘shoots’. Camera was an Ikegami HL33… Fond memories from Australia.
If I didn't know any better I would have thought this was captured with a HI8 camcorder. It's amazing that a video recorder from 1967 can provide such high fidelity!
I worked on every Quad tape machine that AMPEX made since it was invented. The 3000 was a finiky machine as its tension arms were a capacitivie type and in humid environments would act up. The heads, unlike the studio models, had ball bearings, which introduced noise in the video signal due to its mechanical vibration. The larger models used air bearings.
Agree with all of your comments, but would add a couple of thoughts. Despite the issue you point out with the capacitive tension arms, they were a great improvement over the original resistive design. As for the ball bearings, the size, weight, noise and power consumption of an air compressor made it completely impractical for use in the VR-3000. The minimal impact of the bearings was far exceeded by the portability of the deck, and the resulting video quality was more than acceptable for the audience of the day.
@AmpexQuad I agree that lugging around an air compressor was impractical for the 3000. I have rejected some tapes made in the field because of bearing noise though. I totally understand that this was a record only machine with only a confidence playback. But it did require a person to pay attention to the various signals that were output to determine a quality recording. The AVR-1 could playback most anything you threw at it including a tape with missing control track!
At BBC VT in the basement at Television Centre we had a few 1200's but it was mostly 2000's. The 1200's operated in pairs for studio recording with one TBC between them.
I had picked up a couple of these decks way back in the early 90's, someone was tossing them out. They didn't work or only partially. eventually tossed them out. But thanks for letting me see how they should have worked. ohh the memories.
Cut my teeth on a VR1200, loaded 300 tapes every broadcast day at KEMO TV, Channel 20, in San Francisco in 1972-4. Ended up at ABC TV for 38 years after than. Loved the ACR25.
solid built gear and still works today fantastic, yes I know its big and heavy but it got the job done Now everything is Tiny and most people just throw it away trouble is we loosing people who have the skills to fix stuff today there are a few about still like MEND IT Mark and there many others but when there gone , well we are sh.....t that's all I can say Great video
@ I thought it was typically the other way around -- combine two 1/60 frames into a 1/30 progressive? 30i seems like it would flicker and twitter like crazy.
@@poofygoof You can combine fields if the content is progressive, in the 1980s many ads were shot on 16-mm film at 30 fps. Regular video was interlaced, you cannot combine fields. Instead, you convert each field into a separate frame.
IIRC those first "portable" quads wouldn't playback in color in the field. You'd have to get back to the studio and play the tape to see if there was anything wrong with chroma.
As a line technician at Ampex, I used to have to work on these machines - primarily testing and repairing the component circuit boards. We used to HATE to work on these things and their "miniaturized" circuits. They all worked, but getting them to work was a real struggle. As I recall there was no playback circuitry at all in these things. They were record only, which is how they got them this small. In the field you had no real idea if you were successfully recording images until you got to a playback machine. - One of the reasons for the multiple test points. That little gold 3.6 V supply in the upper portion of the chassis was a bear to work on!
@@AlfredKarge The machine had playback, but no time base correction, so playback in the field was essentially B&W. The chroma signal was present, but without a TBC, it was not stable.
@@AlfredKarge Yes, the viewfinder showed playback and there were remote controls on the camera for Rec, Play, Stop and Rewind, but no Fast Forward. The deck did a crude "assemble" edit. When the tape stopped during record, it was automatically rewound a short distance. Then when record was activated, it played the tape until the control track ended and then went into record.
They are turning in the same direction as a normal machine, but as explained in the video, the supply is on the right instead of the left. You can see that the reels are turning counterclockwise, just as they would on a standard machine.
This was probably a piece of equipment, used in radio 📻 stations 🚉. Like 👌 a reel to reel tape player, it housed all the broadcast recordings. Just came across your TH-cam channel and subscribed!! Best of 2025!! Your friend, Jeff!!
The SONY Betacam was huge and heavy capable of 500 horizontal resolution equivalent to DVD quality . The tape is Betacam used later to replace U-Matic broadcast eq. Thank you
There's something I don't understand about Ampex portable video. The cameras were B&W well into the color era. With the recorder, you weren't going live anyway, so why not use a 17-lb, $5000 CP-16 with color film, instead of this frightfully expensive, heavy, and presumably power-hungry rig? (I'm guessing it required external batteries).
Thought:- film took time to developed and then cut and splice or kinetiscope for editing. The Ampex, the media was quick and easy to handle and edits could be performed in the time it took to process and develop the film.
Looking at the video, on the lower right side of the machine and just below the test points in the back corner is the AC power supply. That supply slips out of the machive and the battery pack is inserted in its place, so the VTR is self-contained for battery operation. The batteries were silver-oxide, and used a charger that monitored each cell individually. Ampex provided a charger system in a case that was identical to the VR-3000 and could charge 2 batteries at the same time and also provided storage space for 2 reels of tape.
If you hadn't told me this was an analog domain recording, I would never have figured it out. This is amazing.
It's broadcast quality!
I noticed some dot crawl in the Quick Facts section and went straight to the description section to see what that was about. It is indeed astounding how high quality the results are though, I would've assumed it was from the 80s or 90s.
Grateful to the Algorithm Gods for dropping this video in my feed! What a wonderful look at an incredible era of technology. These machines were true works of art.
Thank you. The VR-3000 was really top of the game in 1967, a real electromechanical work of art. It is good to experience venerable equipment to develop appreciation for where we are now in audiovisual production.
Been there... Seen it... Done that... damn do I feel old..! Thanx for the stroll down memory lane. ...gotta grab my walker...
As an audio engineer I've had the chance to work with some fairly elaborate multitrack machines, but those Ampex Quad machines are a whole other level of complexity and engineering. Amazing stuff.
Ex BBC VT in the UK here (started mid 80s) . Wow, lovely to see all these beauties :)
As a TV engineer starting in the days of DVCPRO, DVcam, etc mpeg-2 and NLE and mac g4s being cutting edge . THANK YOU! Ive heard all the stories from earlier folk from shouting "hair in the gate!" then to this with real time head clog removal, then I hear stories of the ACH,D2 and LMS and everything else of electromechanical marvels, it really is wild to see where we are now with cam robots, automation, and everything running through an RJ-45 or insanity muxing on a coax, these days, the times, they keep changing! Broadcast people are a different breed still these days.
What a great video! Thanks!
Interesting - amazing - wonderful to see that interest still exists of this era of technology. Thank you!
Just wow! McMartin, Sparta, Fidelipac, Russco, QRK and the ubiquitous Ampex 440, along with period-appropriate music. That activated some dormant brain cells for sure.
Wonderful! Wonderful! The cart machine is my favorite. I still have a few carts with my news music intro.
That was a real blast from the past!
I can’t count the number of days I sat in the back of a curtained Toyota Landcruiser with a VR3000 recording single camera location ‘shoots’.
Camera was an Ikegami HL33…
Fond memories from Australia.
If I didn't know any better I would have thought this was captured with a HI8 camcorder. It's amazing that a video recorder from 1967 can provide such high fidelity!
Beautiful set up, couldn't see any banding at all on the video, nice job !!
I could only tell it was analog domain because of a hint of dot crawl on the graphics.
I worked on every Quad tape machine that AMPEX made since it was invented. The 3000 was a finiky machine as its tension arms were a capacitivie type and in humid environments would act up. The heads, unlike the studio models, had ball bearings, which introduced noise in the video signal due to its mechanical vibration. The larger models used air bearings.
Agree with all of your comments, but would add a couple of thoughts. Despite the issue you point out with the capacitive tension arms, they were a great improvement over the original resistive design. As for the ball bearings, the size, weight, noise and power consumption of an air compressor made it completely impractical for use in the VR-3000. The minimal impact of the bearings was far exceeded by the portability of the deck, and the resulting video quality was more than acceptable for the audience of the day.
@AmpexQuad I agree that lugging around an air compressor was impractical for the 3000. I have rejected some tapes made in the field because of bearing noise though. I totally understand that this was a record only machine with only a confidence playback. But it did require a person to pay attention to the various signals that were output to determine a quality recording. The AVR-1 could playback most anything you threw at it including a tape with missing control track!
Wow. Thank you for a great video. Very informative and enjoyable.
At BBC VT in the basement at Television Centre we had a few 1200's but it was mostly 2000's. The 1200's operated in pairs for studio recording with one TBC between them.
Nice old sets, looks like real quality 😎👌
I'd say the production values were pretty up there. And the AUDIO! Well, it *IS* Ampex!
I had picked up a couple of these decks way back in the early 90's, someone was tossing them out. They didn't work or only partially. eventually tossed them out. But thanks for letting me see how they should have worked. ohh the memories.
Wish we had higher res of the innards & the power usage. You needed a good reason to haul that around instead of 16mm.
“Film at 11” ✌️ video in a minute
Great video! Thanks!😀
Cut my teeth on a VR1200, loaded 300 tapes every broadcast day at KEMO TV, Channel 20, in San Francisco in 1972-4. Ended up at ABC TV for 38 years after than. Loved the ACR25.
Really cool! 👍😃
Adjusting for inflation, the VTR and camera combo in 1967 would be *$613,983* today, and the VTR itself in 1971 would be *$368,854* today!
Why would one choose low-band instead of hi-band? Did hi-band require better tape like Betacam SP or SVHS?
Compatibility. In 1967 when the machine was introduced, there were facilities that did not yet have hi-band machines. Tape stock was the same.
solid built gear and still works today fantastic, yes I know its big and heavy but it got the job done Now everything is Tiny and most people just throw it away trouble is we loosing people who have the skills to fix stuff today there are a few about still like MEND IT Mark and there many others but when there gone , well we are sh.....t that's all I can say Great video
This recorder was 10 average cars in 1971!
My father in law, rip, designed this.
Were the prices mentioned at the beginning adjusted for inflation?
No. Those were the prices listed in the Ampex catalogs for the years shown.
@@AmpexQuad Egads!
Why 30p instead of 60p?
deinterlacing?
@@poofygoof 30i must be deinterlaced into 60p.
@ I thought it was typically the other way around -- combine two 1/60 frames into a 1/30 progressive? 30i seems like it would flicker and twitter like crazy.
@@poofygoof You can combine fields if the content is progressive, in the 1980s many ads were shot on 16-mm film at 30 fps. Regular video was interlaced, you cannot combine fields. Instead, you convert each field into a separate frame.
I wonder how many of the viewers are hearing that Three Dog Night tune for the first time here.
I believe this is the same tape format that was used to record the moon landings.
IIRC those first "portable" quads wouldn't playback in color in the field. You'd have to get back to the studio and play the tape to see if there was anything wrong with chroma.
As a line technician at Ampex, I used to have to work on these machines - primarily testing and repairing the component circuit boards. We used to HATE to work on these things and their "miniaturized" circuits. They all worked, but getting them to work was a real struggle.
As I recall there was no playback circuitry at all in these things. They were record only, which is how they got them this small. In the field you had no real idea if you were successfully recording images until you got to a playback machine. - One of the reasons for the multiple test points.
That little gold 3.6 V supply in the upper portion of the chassis was a bear to work on!
@@AlfredKarge The machine had playback, but no time base correction, so playback in the field was essentially B&W. The chroma signal was present, but without a TBC, it was not stable.
@@AmpexQuad maybe that's why they never let me do final test on these things. Lol Could you view the playback through the viewfinder?
@@AlfredKarge Yes, the viewfinder showed playback and there were remote controls on the camera for Rec, Play, Stop and Rewind, but no Fast Forward. The deck did a crude "assemble" edit. When the tape stopped during record, it was automatically rewound a short distance. Then when record was activated, it played the tape until the control track ended and then went into record.
The reels on the portable is going different direction from the standard machine. Why?
They are turning in the same direction as a normal machine, but as explained in the video, the supply is on the right instead of the left. You can see that the reels are turning counterclockwise, just as they would on a standard machine.
This was probably a piece of equipment, used in radio 📻 stations 🚉. Like 👌 a reel to reel tape player, it housed all the broadcast recordings. Just came across your TH-cam channel and subscribed!! Best of 2025!! Your friend, Jeff!!
Great vid.
The SONY Betacam was huge and heavy capable of 500 horizontal resolution equivalent to DVD quality . The tape is Betacam used later to replace U-Matic broadcast eq. Thank you
In 2024 $65,000 would be $613,983
Noisy! Difficult to hear the speaker...
There's something I don't understand about Ampex portable video. The cameras were B&W well into the color era. With the recorder, you weren't going live anyway, so why not use a 17-lb, $5000 CP-16 with color film, instead of this frightfully expensive, heavy, and presumably power-hungry rig? (I'm guessing it required external batteries).
Thought:- film took time to developed and then cut and splice or kinetiscope for editing.
The Ampex, the media was quick and easy to handle and edits could be performed in the time it took to process and develop the film.
Looking at the video, on the lower right side of the machine and just below the test points in the back corner is the AC power supply. That supply slips out of the machive and the battery pack is inserted in its place, so the VTR is self-contained for battery operation. The batteries were silver-oxide, and used a charger that monitored each cell individually. Ampex provided a charger system in a case that was identical to the VR-3000 and could charge 2 batteries at the same time and also provided storage space for 2 reels of tape.
What did you do to your hair and beautiful appearance? Are you in a beauty contest with R. Maddow?
Narrator soinds loike Dioly Parton from tennesio