Oddity Archive: Episode 53 - U-Matic (or, How I Spent My Summer)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ย. 2024
- While everybody else was going on vacation and stuff, Ben (perhaps unsurprisingly) locked himself away and attempted to restore a vintage U-Matic 3/4" VCR (plus dealing with other technical hindrances). The feel-good episode of the year!
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I didn't watch all of this so you will have to excuse me if you mentioned this. U-Matic tapes were used as the first digital audio mastering format to make the first Compact Discs in the 80s. For you nerds: The reason why a Compact Disc has a sampling rate of 44.1khz is because that was the requirement of recording digital to a U-Matic Tape. In the 80s the recording studio would take the analog 2 track master reel to reel and dub it to a U-matic tape using what they call a PCM converter attached to the audio and video inputs of the U-Matic VCR. THey would then ship the U-matic tape to the Compact Disc production factory to use to make the Compact Discs with.
Nice pull! :) Glad someone brought this up.
Indeed, the U-Matic PCM was the required mastering format up until digital processes (DAT, CD-R) took their place. And the 44.1 kHz sampling rate was found to be the best fit for the medium. Other rates were possible, but 44.1 was the sweet spot for both mastering and playback. 29.4 kHz was below the Nyquist threshold and 58.8 was simply overkill and potentially technologically problematic on the D-to-A side.
How it was done: Take 525 NTSC lines, subtract the 35 blanked lines and that gives you 490 usable lines (2 fields with 245 lines each) to store samples. Three 60Hz samples are then stored per line. Divided the result by 2 and you get 44.1 kHz.
3 x 60 x 490 / 2 = 44100
Ben - We have got to get you a better U-Matic player! I passed up some good ones a while back and am now kicking myself. Especially as I've found some one-off tapes I'd like to digitize.
You, techmoan, LGR and weird Paul are some of my favorite TH-cam channels.
Weird paul is great! I met him a year or so ago and he’s the nicest guy
U-matic was also used for storing early digital audio recordings in the dawn of the CD (and pre-CD) era. There was a PCM adaptor available, which converted the digital audio to a black and white video signal, added some error checking and correction as well. The first of such devices was the Sony PCM-1600, introduced in 1978. Later on there were some models for the home audio market as well.
All started with the PCM F1 really then I had a PCM 700 to record digitally on both Umatic and Beta
@@avroflier I bought a PCM-501ES a few years ago, and I use it regularly. The main reason I bid on it on eBay was the SPDIF in/out mod it had. This way I can make bit perfect copies of the digital audio signal from the tape (although I would need to apply deemphasis in software later, or in case of burning an audio CD, making sure it has pre-emphasis turned on)
Benny Boy, you said that you can't record over a VHS tape once the tab has been pulled out, but the fact is you can. Just cover the empty tab hole with a piece of masking tape. I recorded over all of my aunt and uncles old tapes. I recorded every Three Stooges short. Larry; Curly; Moe; and Shemp forever!
I've wanted a U-matic since you posted this episode. I finally bought one, a Sony VP-5000, broken for under $100, and spent another $35 on a belt kit. Installed the belts and cleaned and oiled it, and it works perfectly! Bought a couple mystery tapes, one was blank, but the other is a couple hilarious student films from 1993.
Stereo TV was finalized in the US, stations in my area started using it in 1985. We had one of the first Hi-Fi VCRs with a stereo tuner, so I got to experience it when it was still new, and I have a few early stereo broadcasts recorded. Ironically the music video shows started to disappear from TV around the same time.
I actually have a U-Matic deck like the one presented in this video, although it's a slightly newer model (I'm guessing), a VO-2610 (rather than the 2600 featured). It's otherwise the same AFAIK, except it has BNC connectors for the video outputs as opposed to the 2600's PL-259 connectors (which were quite common on older pre-1975 video gear). And it works quite well for it's age--I'm its second owner (the first, to the best of my knowledge, was the state historical society where I live--I picked up the machine at the local state govt. surplus outlet about 7-8 years ago).
Great video--and I do have to say that The Oddity Archive is pure entertainment for an AV/media geek like myself (and quite accurate and factual, Ben's done his homework :) ). Keep up the good work, Ben!!!!
Only just skipped the matching Sony UHF TV tuner that came with one of my 2600's.
In the original Poltergeist (not the remake) the paranormal investigators used a U-matic to tape all the ghosts coming down the stairs in that house.
i work in a tv station (in Brazil) -1984 - 1990 - we use 3 UMATIC SONY VO-2600 in a ACP-82 (Automatic Carbridge Player) for play commercial tapes 30seg eatch.
I edit in UMATIC SONY equipments BVU-800 BVU-820 (slow motion capable w/ TBC (time base corrector) - CRK 2000 (chroma Keyer) and others vintage experiences!!! Good times! Congratulations!
Vc é o segundo brasileiro que encontro por aqui! Qual tv vc trabalhou?
But for all this time, only one question remains: *IS* HE filming us?
Yeah.
Very cool, thanks.
Those of us who used this format always called it "three quarter inch" or "three quarter."
Two-inch and one-inch video tape was before my time, but I bet that's why we called it "3/4" and never "U-Matic."
I had to carry a 20-lb 3/4 S deck connected to my 20-lb ENG camera by a thick cable for the first, like, 5 years of my career starting in 1989 at an Akron, OH ABC affiliate.
Those tape cases made great containers for tools, tackle, pistols, miniatures, etc.
Beautiful work never thought these units would still play at such good video quality
When I loaded stuff into the computer transferred from my older (now-dead) Philips DVD recorder, the sound would often go out of sync at tape dropouts. The way that thing worked was if the video sync went out, it would just stop recording until it got a usable video signal back again. The newer DVD recorders don't do that, at worst they just insert black video over any unusable video and keep the sound going, and don't have that problem when editing.
+eyeh8nbc Yes, I had a Magnavox DVD recorder that was an older unit (made in 2003, IIRC), that did a similar thing whenever there was any kind of sync glitch or dropout in the video signal from a transferred videotape--it would just drop the frame (or frames) of video during the glitch and basically skip over and not record said frames to the disc, making for some slightly choppy/truncated video. Quite annoying, and the only way to remedy it was to run the video through a timebase corrector first, which solved the problem.
And as you mentioned, the newer DVD recorders luckily don't have this issue (I'm guessing because the newer-generation DVD recorders actually have some basic timebase correction built-in).
+Ryan Schweitzer I'm always getting bootleg DVDs of old TV recordings people transfer from tapes, and a lot of them are ruined because the words "video calibration" keep popping up on the screen over the picture constantly. Is that from the DVD recorder or the VHS player? which VCR does that? if there's a tape glitch, my vcrs just keep playing, I never had one pop up words during bad parts of tapes.
@@kensims4086 it's from a VCR that doesn't have automatic tracking
U matic was the first video recorder used in my South Australian high school in 1979. I remember the cassette being bigger than some of the books we had on the shelves in the library. It was only ever used for recording over the air educational programs produced by a government broadcaster. These programs were recorded on cassettes and were stored for later use in classes. The whole unit including the television and automatic timer to turn it on for recording programs was on a large metal trolley. The unit had the manual buttons press down and the channel set to the correct station ready to record when the timer would turn on and supply power. The were no elevators in my High school so it only ever got used in the classrooms on the upper floors. Sometimes we would have to go to the library during classes to watch a video if we were in a classroom on the ground floor. It looked quite a bit like the 1600 in the video. I remember the completely separate timer had the time on the first-ever 7 section segmented LED screen that I have ever seen, it actually looked like something that was made by hand. Digital clocks still weren't a thing then.
The reason the tape runs the way it does is so you can use the small and large cassettes in the same machine with out moving the hubs like in the DV format tapes. In the 60 minute tapes, both reels overlap each other. the counter rotation during operation is so things don't bind up in the cassette.
I love the clunky sounds this huge piece of machinery makes. Another form of ASMR!
Thanks for this comforting post. Reminds me of my childhood and my. VO-1600
The best ! 😊👏🏻
Great video! Thanks for a new episode. I always get excited when I see you've posted a new vid. I like the new intro - a refreshing change. Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but darn it I enjoy your history lessons, so never feel like you're boring us. If I didn't want to learn about old tech, why click on the link in the first place, right? That U-matic sure looks bulky. With that and the huge ticket price, it's a wonder they sold any.
I’m an owner of a VO-1600u and let me tell you it’s BIG! I sent Ben some tweets recently showing this thing off. It makes a 1978 VHS machine look TINY in comparison!
This thing looks like it came straight out of one of Bethesda's Fallout series Vault-Tec Vaults! All the knobs, dials, the gigantic form factor. I'm glad the semi-conductor and transistor have shrunk considerably over the decades...
I remember this SONY U-matic VCR model used at my Junior high school in the late 70's
A lot of public schools often had these to tape PBS programs during the 70's and 80's when they used to show a lot of 15 minute programs during the morning hours. That's how I used to see these things in the early 80's!
You DO NOT USE ALCOHOL TO CLEAN RUBBER unless you want to replace the rubber fequently. You clean rubber pinch roller with typewriter roller cleaner or lacquer thinner. This removes the glazed sufrace revealing the more pliable rubber underneath.
Furthermore although I did not understand fully your comments about audio sync and how you arrived to that problem/conclusion, as I recall there is a difference in the audio head location on these units vs the BVU editor models. This head location difference would affect audio sync.
New intro slides - terrific! Again, nice to see the back of the butter stick!
5:30 The Galloping Gourmet, My mom loved that show.
Who in the right mind sells the pdf of a manual? Isn't that illegal too?
80s cheerleaders! I NEED MORE
***** and getting bitches is old...
love the feathered hair/blue eyeshadow/glossy lips....a great improvement on the pink-haired screaming babydykes of today's young women
The kid doesn't know it but he's a highly trained Anaolg Geek of America. I am from Wisconsin, the Badger State. I was shooting 3/4" Umatic for CBS news as a photojournalist, 1883 to 1985! I am 60 this year. I was 20 then when I got the job after an Associate of Applied Arts degree in Photography. I carried that portable BVW-110 field recorder/player. I was on 🔥 fire! I did it all and the only thing you didn't talk about was Moth Man and doing live RF transmissions from Live Truck with Anntenna and beaming back footage and being 😍 live, Franklin. I am kinda in a dream right now. I have only one word for you that comes to my mind ~ Genuis! P.S. I had a Thompson 2 piece video camera that was 16 or 26 pin coaxel cable to the deck. In 85 our senior cameraman received the 1st one piece Betcam/recorder. It was a huge moment in time. Original Genuis ➕ 👑
My current TV station still has a VO-5600 deck for archive tapes..
A previous workplace had a small box full of those U-matic R-buttons.
Been using them since college in the mid 90s.. VO and BVU models.
i have the BVU 300 editting version of this machine....
you can have it, if you want it....
This video is exactly 1 year old!
+Svetoslav Atanasov No one cares!
Really liked this video, I like the in-depth coverage of a single topic.
Weather or not u know this,
some D8 cameras have a simple time base corrector you have to turn on and it also helps to set the camera's audio mode to 16 bit instead of the default 12. This fixes allot of audio sync issues Ive had with bad tape.
Yeah, cannot imagine back in the day photojournalists covering news events having to lug around a 30lbs tape deck along with a big camera.
You should do a episode over the Analog to Digital TV switch considering it's the 5th anniversary of that event.
I used to own a very nice STUDIO U-MATIC VCR. Excellent picture. Best videotape picture I've ever seen! Apparently, "Sticky Shed Syndrome" was partly due to the move away from WHALE OIL as a TAPE LUBRICANT. Or so I heard. I used to collect SONY EIAJ VTRs, and I experienced sticky shed, and yes, BAKING TAPES did work. Although the tapes eventually became sticky again! Please note, due to EVIL SOCIAL MEDIA TROLLS, I no longer read replies to my comments, or reply. I just say what I want to say, and that's the end of it.
Sad to see the old intro go, no more butter (stick type)
And real 3DO, seriously ben, add it back in
I kinda liked the OLD old intro better than both of these.
Well, at least we have season 3/4 spoilers!
Xav Mashes this channel is suprisingly not utter shite.
Such broad topics. Stick butter.
An more effective temporary solution to sticky tape shed is to bake the tape at an exact temperature in a scientific oven.
Cute new intro, Ben. Glad to see some new stills and the same old theme song.
keep the oddities coming!
I love the new intro, and I'm so happy you have kept the hillbilly guy at the end.
That's Torgo from Manos, the Hands of Fate - by far one of the worst films ever made. It was excellently riffed by Joel & the bots of MST3K. Sad trivia - the guy who played Torgo, John Reynolds, committed suicide shortly after the completion of Manos. It's a shame cause he played the role so bizarrely he might have had a decent b-movie career.
That hillbilly guy is Torgo from the movie Manos the Hands of Fate. Look it up. Its possibly the worst movie made.
I have that movie on DVD haha. Shortly after I posted that comment, I saw that MST3K episode.
yayyyyyyyyyyyy i love your show. Entertaining, funny and factual, good work and liked.
Two words: HEAD CLOG!
had VP9000 high band.....i miss it so much ...best 30 min decks i ever had..full 1 mhz video bandwidth...with genlock!!!!
Plessy Plugs!!!
I hunted for over ten years for a lead that would take 'video out' of a JVC top loader VCR - via plessy sockets! - and connect it to a SCART plug. Suffice to say they are not common in England! In the end the unlamented Tandy ('Radio Shack' in America?) had an astronomically overpriced 'kit' for £40 with very close to those adapter plugs that connected to a fairly standard composite video lead and then eventually to a SCART plug.
Roll that beautiful B-roll footage.
I actually like your how-to vids the best.
Interesting enough, I used a U-matic for video production in 1996! It was a small station and I only worked their 11 months. We had one of the U-Matics offspring too, a Sony SVO, which I can only assume that it stood for Sony Video Office.
Thank you. I enjoyed that. It really took me back to the late '80s and early '90s when I collected TV's and video machines from the 50's, 60's and 70's in the UK. Now I just collect keep my last few mobile phones as museum pieces. Compare the ancient Samsung Galaxy S4 with a 128GB microSD card, which never requires the use of those foam tipped video head cleaners, fits in my other pocket, and replays hours of crisp 1080p50 video on a built in AMOLED screen. But I wonder if I'll ever get the same excitement your video elicited with your demo of the Sony 2600 U-Matic, in 25 years time if ever I look at a well preserved Galaxy S4. BTW, my 2600, which I bought in 1988 and had to dump in 2006, came with it's original plastic dust jacket!! I'd forgotten about that... Cheers, my geeky friend!
This is 'False' History. In reality U-matic was a huge advance over anything else available at the time. It was stable, reliable, reasonable quality and, compared to any other professional equipment, reasonably priced. I agree that it never took off as a domestic format but for around a decade it was the backbone of professional production and small tv stations. Vast amounts of ENG work was done with U-matics. This carried on into the H--band BVU series which were even more broadcast quality - certainly exceeding the quality which the average domestic TV displayed. Yes, compared to modern equipment a U-matic was big and heavy but compared to a 2" quad machine or even a 1" C format they were mere pygmies. However, they were built like tanks and could survive battle!
So far as dust was concerned, any decent production room had filtered air and the later models were all front loaders.
I really unironically love and admire this channel way too much and I’ve been deep into learning more about the Umatic even since it was turned into a vaporwave song
Also 11:50 THATS WHAT SHE SAID
Library’s loved them!
I found a U-matic tape in a storage room at work and only knew what it was because of Archive! Looked like a promotional company video that was 4 1/2 minutes long. Would have tried to watch it but there was no player.
The beast, haha. I named mine "Godzilla" :D
(Matsushita NV-2125 "U-Vision" VTR)
Makes me wish i had saved the one I found at my old employer a few years ago. it was a model nv-9300 according to the pictures i took, complete with dust cover. from what i remember, it wouldn't load or eject properly once we hooked it up. apparently i didn't keep the safety training tape that was with it either. :(
I don’t have one of these, but I do have an open reel Sony AV3600 recorder and I’m amazed that still works after 50 years.
I used to have to clean the heads of my 3-rack of BVU decks with straight toluene and a cotton cloth once a shift.
3/4 was easier to edit on than Hi8, Betacam or DVC Pro, I guess, because of its lower quality.
Yashica had to use the trademark within a certain timeframe to retain rights to it. Sony didn’t actually have to buy it if Yashica abandoned it.
Thank you for an interesting look at the u-matic. A bit of an odd question though; would a 3M archival case for U-matic (the ones with the little red slide clasp) be able to hold a standard VHS? (I realize it would be too big but please endulge me - Im thinking the little molded cog-wheel thingys would stop a VHS from fitting in there). And yes, I am aware that there are similar style 3M cases made for VHS but I would still like to know.
VHS cassettes won't fit in those Umatic hanger boxes. But did market a vhs version that was identical.
Ok am f. late but at 18:80 even better is the push and pull notch of a BETACAM SP tape.
its a beast
I heard in 1974, those dinosaur VCRs cost close to $13,000.
You heard wrong.
The Sony U-MATIC cost roughly $1,300 for a playback-only deck, equivalent to $7,000 today.
The for.st that saved the colour from a lot of Doctor who episodes from the early seventies
This is wrong. They were recorded on beta ax and transferred to professional umatic tapes in the late seventies. Still this is how I found the archive. Aloha.
18:40 they used those exact same modulators in their first Betamax units.
I love your show so much. You talk about all the stuff im interested in. And im 17
What about the picture search, doesn't it have the sped up audio with the video?
I'm only curious, as I can't find any VCR that has it, most are silent in picture search.
0:24 And here we have an old fossil.
I may be very late to this and someone may have already mentioned it but could the weird noise on the 2nd channel be SMPTE time code?
You should offer the oddity archive on u matic too, just for the fun of it.
Where did you get the national foods footage at. That was more or less a St Louis chain.
You could try to use audacity on the audio, ya know.
Search on youtube "Sony PCM-1630 + DMR-2000 Master Recorder" and you can see a U-matic deck record digital audio.
It's the Big Mystery Screw :) QC
The Betamax machine loads the same way in a u shape this put less tension on the tape than the VHS half rap the tapes lasted longer doing it this way.
If only Sony hadn't been idiots with licensing the Betamax product to other companies, things would have been very different.
You don't really sound very old. You must have been super hip as a kid.
Nice job explaining U-matic. You don't find much to do about it these days.
U-Matic was a pain in the arse.
The big mystery screw.......
Describes most of my college relationships.
Why do old VCRs have a light in the mechanism. Is it part of some sort of leader detection?
I think the lights are just so you can see what's going on inside. VHS tapes have clear leaders which a sensor detects, but it doesn't put out any light.
The have pilot lights so the machine can detect when the clear leader has been reached and stop playback or rewind/ff. It can be a bastard if the pilot light goes out. Some machine will happily yank the rewound tape off the spool. Some other will keep trying to play at normal speed until the tape stretches and breaks.
The pointless footage is great.
Was U-Matic broadcast-quality the way VHS wasn't?
3/4” is broadcast quality, most tv stations shot on 3/4” through the 70s into the 80s until many switched to Betacam in the mid 80s, then to newer digital formats from Panasonic and Sony . Now most shoot on Sony XDCAM.
VHS with higher end cameras and decks can produce very good quality images but was never considered a broadcast format, maybe S VHS to sone extent. Sure there were some smaller market stations or school campus departments where it was the more cost effective choice.
Most places would edit the 3/4 footage to 3/4 and many to 1 inch
Only BVU Broadcast video Umatic was used in Tv for news gathering. It wasn’t often used for normal programming. Standard Umatic was not much better than VHS and neither were broadcast quality.
@@ViewpointProd no it’s not
I'd imagine libraries were some of the earliest adopters.
4:10 do you have a source on this?
6:34 as well
Interview w/ Al Barnaby, 1966 by Fredrick Daniels
When will you do a show about the RadioShack VIS
I would love to sell my 2. As is but everything is on tact. Got them from a studio
There's an episode of Colombo where the murder is solved because Colombo figured out the the killer used a programmed Sony u-matic to give him an Alibi of watching "the game" with a friend that the killer druged so he wouldn't notice that the killer snuck out
300 lines of hi band asssss
You should release some episodes on VHS haha.
+Gregory Antoniou He actually does. He sells Beta tapes with episodes of the Oddity Archive. www.theoddityarchive.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html
Jeez Louise, $20 for a download of an old instruction manual? It seems cool but kind of a ripoff, don't you think? I wouldn't have paid more than $5 for it.
10:12 That was my nickname in college.
why do you stay behind a box?
put your tapes in the oven and bake thee moisture out.
Is he fliming us??
Is it just me, or does anyone get creeped out by the "Television Code" logo? Okay, maybe I'm weird.
Is the "pointless footage" from Umatic recordings.
Nope. It's just random stock footage.
Was that cheerleader footage recorded on umatic?
u can make a video out of everything. This Sony beast deserves better.
I hear ya. Maybe when I figure something better out for Time Base Correction.
I have 2 l want to get rid of
Of course you had a rough time you had one of the oldest and worst models of the U Matic
The filler footage I can almost smell the teen spirit, ie the inexperience with feminine hygiene and raging hormones.
When you edited the intro, you should have taken out the guy with the straw hat that has personal space issues. He pisses me off.
+William the Ignoramus That's Torgo from _Manos The Hands of Fate_, a legendary bad movie.
He's not really a bad guy, just really socially awkward. :)
Is the "pointless footage" from Umatic recordings.