Glad to see Tim Hunkin referenced! For anyone unaware, he's started posting remastered copies of The Secret Life of Machines to his youtube channel, along with a whole series on his knowledge on components for tinkerers from his viewpoint of making arcade machines. :)
As he began discussing the difference between linear recording and helical recording, my first thought was, "I wonder if he'll demonstrate how a video head works the same way Tim Hunkin did."
I came down to say the same thing. Been loving the better quality versions. I mean they are still 1980s BBC quality but still better than the ones I downloaded years ago!
Two real standout memories from my childhood are visiting the Secret Life of the Home exhibition in the basement of the Science Museum in London, and that weird arcade on Southwold Pier in Suffolk. Only realised a couple years ago that they were the work of the same person. As CRD was talking about the VCR heads I remembered the demo from the musem and was pleasantly surprised when he brought up Tim's TV version. It's absolutely criminal that this channel doesn't get more views :)
When you look at those old videos, Tim Hunkin was basically the first TH-camr before TH-cam. Demoing how things worked with semi-dangerous experiments.
In 1974, when I was 14-years-old, I spent a lot of time carrying around (lugging?) that model of Sony “Portapak”, and the matching Sony camera, for “Cable 10 Mississauga” (Ontario, Canada) Community Cable TV channel. At that time cable companies in Canada had to offer community access TV to get a licence to operate a cable TV system. The community channels were volunteer staffed; I was a volunteer. The Portapak was used to cover small events like a park gathering, speeches, school events, even gathering aerial views of Mississauga. I can still feel the action of pulling the record and play levers together ... and the metallic feel of securing the video connector. There was a strict rule to NOT point the Vidicon tube camera at light sources as it would burn in dots or lines ... or worse ... burn out! My grade six school also had that model of Portapak (that I volunteered to use ... my first experience shooting video!).
The “rods” on the hand grip were used to tilt the camera for capturing titles made on a4 paper with the lens in micro mode according to the manual This was common at the time even on local and some networks
In the Videorover II ad seen in the forgotten history of home video video, it looks like you would (also) use it to sit and review your recording on the camera's CRT viewfinder hands-free.
@@ScottGrammer 1. Video tape is not back coated. 2. SSS has nothing to do with back coating. SSS is connected with substrate material made using lubricants derived from whale blubber during the early 70s oil crisis (instead of oil derived). Some Sony tapes are affected including quad video tape but I've not come across any 1/2 inch helical scan tape that is affected.
@@absinthedude At least one manufacturer, namely BASF made back-coated VHS tapes, it was advertised on the case of the cassette. And now, 25 years later, they are deteriorating horribly. No SSS, 'just' the back coating peels off, covering the whole VCR with black crud, and creating a lot of dropouts when the pieces find their way in between the tape and the video heads. I have a prerecorded VHS (also on BASF tape, but I think it isn't back-coated), and it suffers from SSS, believe it or not. It doesn't contaminate the heads too badly, it just sticks to the different rollers in the tape path so badly that the transport cannot make enough torque to play it.
when you pulled out the camera and were like "this thing is probably close to working, it just needs a recap, which is way beyond my capabilities", i went "what, really? a recap is really not that difficult, just time consuming" ... and then you opened it, and i understood why you said that.
Was thinking exactly the same thing "Well honestly a recap can be fine, stick on a TV show and work away at it" But trying to tackle that thing... no....
no, it does not necessarily need a recap!! they dont always fail, they last much longer than many seem to think, and replacing is not a magic cure all or prevention of further failure!
My father went back to college in the mid 1970s for his masters program. I had to occupy myself in the Central Washington University library for 5 days a week. I think I was 7 or 8. I remember going through their catalog of lectures on this format. I was asking the Librarian so often to change the tape that she showed me how and left me to it. I dont know how many lectures I watched or even what they were about, but I had the power to choose a tape and start and stop it at will....... I think I spend as much time watching the reels spin as what was on the videos. Thanks for the memories.
I used to use this exact camera/recorder back in the early '70's at school. My social studies class allowed it to be used to make student "documentaries". They were laughably bad, but it was great fun. By far the biggest users of this equipment was the football team. The coaches had an obsessive desire to record and analyze games. I think a lot of the impetus to record games was that the other teams were doing it, so they had to as well.
We had some flavor of this kind of machine when I was in school in the late 70s, I remember using it to record drama club rehearsals so the actors could review their performances from the audience's perspective.
This thing is really significant, IMO, because it demonstrates bare-bones video recording without any complications. Show people this video and they’d instantly understand how VHS works, without all the extra moving parts and complications.
I may date myself, but I actually used one of these in high school. We had one in our high school television station and used it to do on location interviews and for making commercials for local businesses. Thanks for sharing, brought back some cool memories of running a small high school tv station using 1/2” open reel tape machines.
"The Secret Life of Machines" was one of the greatest series for someone who wanted to learn about basic engineering of household devices. It did not need any special production values and the host was so low key that you felt comfortable listening to him instead of being distracted by some bombastic loud-mouthed host. For those who honestly wanted to learn, the series was the greatest. Too bad there were so few episodes made. I especially enjoyed Hunkin's homemade contraptions.
For your Vidicon video: It’s very fun to consider that all of those glorious photos from the Voyager 1 and 2 missions (and I think photos from the Viking Orbiters) are from digital vidicon still cameras.
The Portapak was an incredibly important piece of equipment. It revolutionised the art world. Andy Warhol, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman and Nam June Paik were all Portapak users. It put video in the hands of artists like no other equipment before.
I had no idea this even existed. I figured they were using U-Matic. After all, that hit the market not too long after this, IIRC. With all its faults, the equipment was so robust. I took a video production course at a community college when I was like 11 or 12 (back in the land before time, like 1992), and that's what we used. I loved those decks; they were mighty. ;-)
Gravis is such a lovable, relatable, good humored human. I enjoy his commitment to the truth, personal honesty, and especially his sense of humor! Thanks for the dope videos that I rewatch on an embarrassingly regular basis ! Awesome content. Can’t get enough.
How about the Akai potable 1/4 inch VCRs? In early January 1973 I made history with my Akai VT110 quarter inch reel-to-reel video recorder (explained later). This Sony 1/2inch recorder was the forerunner of the Akai I had. Also, this TH-cam video was terrific and very educational even for someone who was 25 when the product was released and into video as a hobby. Great job Cathode Ray Dude!! Anyway, in January 1973 I was on a flight from Madrid Spain to New York City returning from a whirlwind trip to Europe. We were flying on a TWA 747. About an hour and a half out of Madrid, the captain made an announcement that our flight was the target of a terrorist bomb threat. It seemed if the Basque Separatists ransom demands were not met, the bomb on the plane would explode when the flight went below 3,000 ft. This was regarded as a valid threat by the authorities and we went through many scenarios including flying to Denver Colorado, altitude about 7,000 feet. Obviously, the threat proved benign but not without some tension on board. As I said earlier, I was returning from a pleasure trip that included Landon, Paris, Rome and Madrid over a two week period. For that trip, I had my newly purchase Akai "portable" VCR with me that I used to document the trip on board as my carry on. The TH-cam (link below) is edited footage taken on that flight including interviews with several of the passengers on the plane. Interestingly, when I got interviewed on WCBS and WNET TV, my father recorded those interviews on a TV VCR that was part of a console TV in the appliance store he worked in. Later that week, I transferred those interview to my Akai machine to preserve them. My machine was stolen in 1974 but I have had the original tape in my garage until 2006. I found a service provider in Maine who had a working Akai VT110 who transferred that tape to an MP4 file for me. I then edited the file into the TH-cam video you can view here ( th-cam.com/video/DYgAfYtplHw/w-d-xo.html ). As a postscript, Akai also sold a color version of the machine about a year later but that was too expensive for me at the time.
You're a great presenter, I love watching your detailed takes on obscure video and camera stuff no one but you and apparently me, and the rest of your audience seem to care about. Really look forward to your future productions. Those little flip out rods on the pistol grip are only to be used when the camera is off. Its so you can set the camera down in an upright position so you don't accidently damage or dislodge many of the haphazardly designed circuits and tubes inside if you were to just lop it on its side. If you were using this camera in situ you had to be very gentle, lol.
Based on ads from the time, the rods were also used so that you could watch back recorded footage on the viewfinder - that's why the ocular can be flipped up.
I remember using one of these when I was in grade school I ran the thing (so much fun). Its called simply "Video Tape Recorder" or VTR for short. Great video, never thought I would see one of these again.
I used this exact cam & recorder in high school in the 70's and at the time it was the most used device in our school's TV studio. The original equipment was installed in the early '60s and it used those giant AMPEX 2" machines and giant studio cameras. This was portable and we could record anywhere and that's what made it so popular. were slowly changing over to U-Matic decks for recording off-air and broadcasting, but when there was a game or concert this was small enough to drag with you anywhere! You might find it useless but we thought it was awesome! Thanks for showing it, I had fun watching it!
I'm from the era of this camera and recorder setup. Our high school A/V department made the one at Hawkins School in Stranger Things seem feeble. We had two of these cameras and decks and a switcher setup. We did a school news show that we would feature in the cafeteria on Fridays, (shown on an a 25" monitor in BW) and we had a video yearbook for 1978, so if you had Beta or The Great Time Machine by Quasar (VX format), we could maybe dub a copy for you. 1978 was just when the first RCA Select-A-Vision VHS decks came out but it was a little late for me, as I graduated that year. Our setup worked well as the school acquired ours around 1975, It didn’t hurt that my A/V teacher was married to a broadcast engineer at the local NBC affiliate, so if the decks or cameras needed service, he was ready to assist. The thing you failed to mention was the price. $1,650 MSRP in 1972. Pretty steep. The first Betamax in the console with a Trinitron TV, the LV-1901 was $2,495, and the first standalone Betamax, the SL-7200 was $1,295. This was in 1975-76 money. I think The Great Time Machine (also ‘75) was $1,299 but I can’t find confirmation of that. Very interesting video.
Well done CRD, I have worked in the television industry in Australia for 30 years, starting with two inch tape and the transition to one inch, three quarter inch and half inch broadcast tape formats. I never knew Sony developed a half inch open reel tape format. Also impressed by your descriptions of how helical video is recorded. Fabulous production and a detailed demonstration of both recorder and camera. Keep up the great work dude. Im now a subscriber.
@@CathodeRayDude as long as you don’t burn a whole pile of TVs at the end of one of your videos lol. (He actually did a video on his channel I think where he reflected on that moment)
I've never seen one that was personally, owned. But it was used by schools. Yeah, it may be horrible, but compared to what? Super 8mm didn't get sound until 1973, and you still had to send it out for developing. Short of going to a real TV studio, this was the only way you could see yourself or something you were involved in. The whole idea of the portapak was to go out to the action. I've used later versions of that model. As I recall, the 5" reels were good for 30 minutes. 20 minutes if you used the self-threading version. There was an optional adapter that would allow it to record in color. To playback in color, you needed a docking station. I'd say this created the start of what later became the community channel on cable. Allowing induvial and small groups to bring their work to a wider community.
The description and animated demonstration of helical recording was so cool. I had no idea that's how video was stored on magnetic tape. It really is genius. Also I'm glad you decided to record youtube poop on a 1960s camera. You're probably the first, last, and only person who will ever do that.
Love that TEAC! Great machines those are. The early 80s models are super cool because the have the SYNC mode for recording, meaning you can actually record new material in real time with something previously recorded on a different day! Great video btw, I learn so much about things when i watch these because of how well researched they are. I think these 30 min to an hour long videos hit the sweet spot of information vs pacing, so i'd stick to that format. Would love some more PC Mag streams as well because those were so much fun!
It is said that Bob Crane used equipment like this to capture some of his private tapes in the early 1970's, the twin legs on the pistol grip for the camera would come in handy to help give good camera placement for such videos.
I can't tell you how happy it makes me that you went to all the trouble of hooking up a bulky 1960s camcorder and the first video you played on it was Hank of the Hill.
You are such a great talent, very intelligent and interesting. You deserve way more subs than you have now, but I’m sure you will get there in no time at all.
Tone and delivery so natural, Unlike so many of the recent croup of youtubers who try too hard to fit a mould instead just being themselves. Thanks for reminding us of how natural sounds.
I'm sure I remember seeing a camera with that sort of look in the film, Apollo 13 both for the press on the ground and for the astronauts to do their broadcasts during the flight. It'll be interesting to see how these first examples of small video cameras worked at the time!
The Apollo TV cameras were speciality designed by RCA and Westinghouse for the Apollo missions. I think their similarities come from the similar need to be low power and light weight. The Wikipedia article on them is fascinating though.
Used this camcorder a lot in high school in 1973-76. The school library had 2 porta paks which students could sign out for the weekends. After making a few shows we were allowed to use the 1/2 inch editing studio in the the board of education basement. We ended doing a modern day remake of Hamlet as a english class project. We had the music teacher doing a piano soundtrack, stuntmen diving through open windows and a dirty harry detective character driving his customized 1960's chevy impala. We made a camera dolly with one guy running the porta pak and another pushing (running) behind the dolly. Had so much fun with this equipment. How it stayed in one piece I have no idea!
I just noticed. "Bandwidth" means " Bandbreite" in German. The German word "Band" can be translated as "Ribbon" or "Tape". So "bandwidth" in German literally means the width of a tape.
This video is fantastic buddy, you really make great content and it gives us a look into where we have been and how far we have come. Please keep up the awesome work and thank you for your effort!
I was part of an engineering club at university and we were located in the basement next to the dumpster area. We lived off of the discarded office furniture and computer supplies. I graduated in 2016, and most of the stuff there was pretty uninteresting; your typical filing cabinets, broken chairs, and dividers from the '90s and early 2000s, actual garbage, and discarded construction materials. But, every now and then, there'd be seriously interesting items such as old Apple computers and peripherals from the '80s to '90s, recorded media, and both consumer and professional A/V equipment from the '60s-'70s. At some point, the administration caught on to students taking this stuff and using it in clubs or bringing it home, and erected a cage around the entire area with a locking door. Right as the cage was being built, there was a stack of professional-grade equipment using the tape format in this video over in the e-waste section. I was seriously tempted to take one of the machines, but couldn't reasonably get away with it. I regret not having at least tried, BUT, I was able to get a tape reel, sealed in box. It's yours if you want it.
the story at 1:45 has everything, a hope, a tragedy, a new rise.... all that in 15 seconds is just amazing but in reality, the video is great and I hope to see much more old video content from you, and hope to see you become much bigger as a channel
I used one of these in college and it seemed pretty revolutionary to me. I made and edited my first experimental videos on two of these. I still have a few reels of tape somewhere.
From what I remember, the tubes in vintage studio cameras were huge, whereas by necessity, the portable cameras had much smaller tubes. And I think I'm right in saying studio colour tube systems had a tube each for red, green and blue, which again, you couldn't replicate on a portable - just a single tube mushing all the colours together, doing the work of three tubes, and getting a much lower quality image, on a lower bandwidth tape.
The tube were bigger for MUCH better quality. The lens was also huge to gather as much light as possible for a high depth of field. Some portable color cameras used only 2 tubes, but pro cameras used 3 tubes but they were smaller because the lens was a barrel type lens and wasnt thay great of quality. Professional portable cameras DID use 3 tubes like the Norelco PCP-90
@@rty1955 Yup, the studio cameras had three tubes, about an inch across each sensor pickup, for the red, green and blue. The dynamic rage was far superior to what you see in these videos by Cathode Ray Dude and his older B/W tube cameras. You would be hard pressed to discern them from the early CCD studio cameras in quality, unless you pointed them at some studio lights or a very bright object, then you would get trailing streaks that were typical of tube cameras. The longer the streaks, generally indicated older, more used tubes, i.e. more hours on the tube. The CCU or Camera Control Unit would allow you to color balance the studio cameras to each other, so skin tones matched, etc. This was usually done once a day, and sometimes before each show, especially with older cameras. But once CCD came along, the stability of the solid state pickup generally meant you only had to color balance them occasionally, and a white and back balance was enough to get them close.
@@marcusdamberger until the advent of Plumbicons tubes in professional cameras which Norelco used on the PC60, PC70 and the portable PCP-90, most of the pickup tubes were the RCA design. CBS and ABC quickly adopted Norelco cameras. The Carol Burnett show was shot at CBS using these cameras. Since NBC was owned by RCA you had to use thier cameras. And the RCA design would go out of balance & registration during a show! Plumbicons were much more stable and you had way more control of each tube than a CCD. When you set up the cameras you had to set up each camera, not only for registration but for color linearity as each tube responded differently to different colors. Inside there was dicroic filters to split the image into each primary colors then each color had a separate path to each tube. To setup each camera you would have the camera pointed at a "chip" chart, which are two a b&w scales that ran opposite each other on an 18% gray card. You placed the green channel on a waveform monitor and adjusted it to give a perfect "X" On the scope with the center of the "x" being in the center of the scope. You then turned on the red channel and overplayed it with the green one and adjusted the controls (gamma, blk, & gain) to match the green one. U shut off the red and did the same fir the blue channel. You then had to adjust ALL the camera to be the same. This is why color drift was a major PITA during a show. Often you would see in a studio a "chip" chart odd to the side so during commercial breaks and even during a shown you would see a camera swing icer to the chart to correct it. Plumbicons also had a warmth to them which the RCA tubes didnt I restore Ampex 2' Quad video tape machines
Tons of schools, cable TV local access channels, and corporations used Porta-Paks. I used them all those ways, and never thought of them as a home format.
Sony marketed 'em as a home format in every ad that I've ever found; they *wanted* this thing to be the Betamovie, but yes, I think almost nobody actually bought one outside of institutions who had needs that made the quality and convenience factors moot.
@@CathodeRayDude I found ads and numerous editorial mentions of the Porta-Pak in a quick search (at www.worldradiohistory.com) in Broadcasting Magazine, from 1967 on. Note that a Porta-Pak cost $10-12000 in today's dollars, not really affordable by average consumers of the time. Sony may have wanted them to catch on for home recording, but the market was schools, new media creators and corporate AV. Later, there was considerable excitement in TV broadcast circles when a primitive timebase corrector was developed that allowed its EIAJ tapes to be broadcast in compliance with FCC Regulations. It was part of an important movement to democratize media creation and put it into the hands of individuals, small groups, and schools, cable TV and documentarians. The Porta-Pak was truly a revolution that with a bit more research, would be revealed to you.
Enjoyed it man. I love vintage tech. I have subscribed to your channel. Great seeing a 1969 video recorder. I was surprised it had a microchip board in it. I didn't think that technology was being used then I thought it was the late 70s. Makes me wonder how many other machines had it in as they transitioned over from cathode ray tube metal monsters to the micro tech/nano tech mini devices we have today. It blows my mind how I can film a HD+ video on my phone?!?-and upload it onto the Internet in minutes now over the internet. How advanced technology is now and how it's changed. I remember the big clunky consumer tech from the 80s where it was a novelty if someone had a video camera at a family gathering, otherwise people just didn't own one or use them. It was a company thing not a consumer thing back then. 😉😊😎😍
As I said before, this is like LGR Oddware but even better. Outstanding presentation, insanely interesting and enjoyable to watch. Thanks for the video!
I think it was 1974 when my video direction and technics school bought one of these. Prior to this, we had been using the Akai 1/4" B/W video tape recorder, don't remember the model. It was fun, learning the intricacies of video signals, recording, etc...Carrying it around was something for strong people, but we were young. Nice video
25:26 I guess the angle of the bipod is set like that to protect the tube inside the camera. It could be easily burned by shooting a light source for multiple seconds, so they made it like that to avoid the lens unintentionally pointed at the sun.
Omg, PLEASE make that video about those reverse CRT recorder doohickeys! My smooth little brain can’t even begin to try to imagine how that technology works but I am fascinated and I need to know more but I don’t want to look it up myself because I’d rather hear you explain it to me first lol. No rush tho, I know you’re busy and I love all the content you’ve been coming out with 😌
When I went to high school we had our own tv studio and we did a daily news show. We had this Sony mini cam and it was the coolest thing ever. Your looking at it from today back and you know everything that came after it. No matter where we went to video record this device always attracted a crowd. Even the local tv channels that would show up to get video on a high school football game we had to always spend time showing them our Sony min cam. As a kid in high school having the respect from the professionals and they took time to review the video we captured and gave us ideas about how to capture video the perspective to make your video more interesting and took time to invite us to their stations editing room, just because we had this equipment. Looking back this may not thrill you but if you were there in 1967 and seeing this come out in 1968 it was huge and damn impressive. The best thing was it was cool.
That size lead batteries were still used in buglar alarms around the turn of the millennium. Well stocked parts resellers should still be able to supply them.
23:50 - beefy lens mount: Is there any chance that there were longer-range zoom lenses available for the camera? That might explain the overbuilt lens mount. In 1980, I was working for the Audio-Visual department for the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee, and one of the videographers dropped his video camera, and I got to see firsthand just how much damage a long, heavy lens being basically wrenched out of the socket could do. I'm talking about pro video equipment, so the accident didn't utterly destroy the camera, but it did have to be sent out for major repair.
I just subbed man, this is the second time I've stumbled on your content and it has greatly improved. You have a great ability to convey information without droning. Keep it up with the great content in an underserved genre.
I saw a video of David Bowie in the early 70s walking along the beach with one of these over his shoulder singing Drive In Saturday. I wrote to the BBC who ran the video on a show called Top of the Pops and asked what the device was and how much it cost. I was a child at the time so almost any price would have been beyond me. They said they didn't know as it was made by a third party producer. I knew as soon as I saw it that it was the future. I have owned many camcorders since and recently got the A7s iii. A camera a light year away from this but your video was a real trip down memory lane for something I wanted so much at the time. Excellent video.
A lot of the forerunner formats to the ones that reach mass adoption are Friggin weird. I love that it is open reel, which sort of seems like a bridge to the cartridged formats that made it big. I hope to one day need a spool like this from Thingiverse.
I always see these things and want to run out and buy one then I think to myself - I would never have a purpose for this. I have a 90s Canon Point and shoot that takes amazing pictures for a point and shoot from that era - it was $600 when it was new so I guess. But even then I rarely use that. :/ At least I can live vicariously through you.
Excellent presentation, and for me a pretty heavy dose of personal nostalgia: The high school I attended had one of these portables, plus an AV-3650. Purportedly, the football team used it for analyzing practice, but I don't remember seeing any such footage. Oddly enough, many years later a friend somehow ended up with the very same portable and camera (I had ways of being sure), then he eventually gave it to me. By the time it arrived in my possession it was rapidly going from barely functional to useless. The one thing I was able to do experimentally was prove it would pass a colour signal. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to move the tape to try to record anything in colour. After that it only gathered dust until I lost it along with a lot of other things when I couldn't pay for all of my storage. The tape speed is 7.5 IPS, which with the 5" reel provided half an hour of recording time. The AV-3650 accommodated 7" reels, so it could provide an hour. Of course, that speed made the linear audio quite good. Also, the tape path is much more like that of Beta or U-Matic than VHS.
@@graealex I shot hundreds of dissections for the University Anatomy Department in the 80s. There's a high-tech solution called turning the lights on! It did make the studio rather smelly but the ventilation cleared it fairly quickly. I'll never forget one day we finished shooting a dissection pretty late and rather than taking the body back down to the Dissection Lab we stowed it in the workshop off the studio (as it was always quite cold in there). We were shooting part 2 the next morning. First thing the next day, one of my technicians wandered into the workshop without turning the lights on to collect something or other, tripped over the corpse and landed flat out on top of it. I always thought you had to be dead to turn the colour he was for the next hour or two! It's very strange, but he always turned the lights on after that. Happy Days!
Yeah, but the strange thing is, you would get a LOT of things that many people these days start nagging about their 'videocamera' does not have (read: photocamera that happens to be able to take videos as well). What really strikes me is how many youngsters just don't even know how to use a real camcorder these days (and no, I'm not talking about the old ones working with a cassette, but modern ones that just record on SD-cards). They don't know how to start recording, even though that record-button is at the most logical spot you can imagine if you were born in the eighties as EVERY camcorder had that button at the same spot, just like the zoom-rocker: every camcorder has had the zoom-rocker in the same place for decades, but they just don't know it. Even a friend of mine, who is 5 years younger, could not figure it out, not even when I said 'do you feel that seesaw kind of thing under your middle- and index finger? That controls your zoom.' We didn't know better back then and people who have had their days as a kid (or adult of course) recorded with devices back then and managed to preserve those recordings, should just cherish what they have. We tend to look back on old technology and only look at their drawbacks, while basically they enabled us to do something we couldn't before. And to put this into perspective: many people with a smartphone still record videos that are just videos as being taken with a plastic brick with buttons. 4K or not, it's just as un-interesting to watch most of the time as when back in the days many families had camcorders.
Wow ... I really had thought, that Betamax, Video 2000 and VHS where the first ... which in fact they were, if you look at the number of sales, but not at all from a technical standpoint. You really filled a gap there! The expanation of the tilted drums and why it was sodesperately needed is the first I ever understood! I also didn't know about the Vidocon. I thought later Camcorders just had the advantege of having the recording mechanism inside. But it was obviously more about the image capturing method. Outstanding work!
Maybe, maybe not. The spinning drum had little grooves on it that let air in between the drum and the tape and reduced friction - it sorta floated on air. My guess is the tape scraping over that much fixed drum actually caused more friction, and that the heads smacking into it might have had more impact on the fixed drum design.
When I was in high school they had just purchased this same system. I was in charge of it during one of the class periods. It was really cool. Thanks for letting me see it again.
In Jr high (early 80s) - I used to run one of these (same camera, later, larger tape deck) for taping basketball games in a dimly lit, 30s era gym with incandescent lights. You can imagine what those looked like. The cable would frequently flake out and need repair.
We had one of the portable units in our High School film-studies class. One neat feature was 'in-camera' editing: You put the machine in PLAY + PAUSE, then jog to the exact frame where you want the cut. Engage RECORD, and take it out of PAUSE to start recording. Perfect cuts, just about every time. Visually, it worked fine, but there was always a 'pop' in the audio. We found out you can't splice these tapes using audio-tape techniques.
It’s not often that I’m thankful for TH-cam recommendations… but i love the fact that I got recommended this video of yours! Have subscribed, and look forward to seeing your future videos!
We had one of these exact systems in my middle school. When I was in 7th grade, in 1981, I was allowed to take ours home for the summer to use, so I spent a summer making TV shows and small movies. The camera that you have has a Vidicon tube, so it is much slower than the Saticon camera you utilized to shoot your footage. With the Vidicon, you got a lot of lag, flaring, and ghost images, particularly on bright objects. If you had a bright object moving across the screen, it left a trail that persisted for a second or two. Look at old BBC shows shot on video from the 1960's and you'll see what I mean. The system also came with a very strong aluminum Sony-branded tripod, which I still have and use to this day! You can still find these tripods for sale on eBay. Lastly, the audio problem you're having is not caused by too high a signal as you suspect. The VTR expects normal line-level audio. The problem is likely old capacitors in the VTR.
If it has not already been said, the reason that this machine doesn't have a large spinning drum is because of Gyroscopic errors. If you think about it, you have a large metal drum spinning at high speed, this drum is moved around and indeed carried sideways over the shoulder. A normal head drum couldn't cope with being moved around, so you have a spinning disc with the heads mounted on it, with no actual moving drum as such. I have had this problem with a U-matic portable that was being carried and not held still enough (swung around) recordings are useless. BTW I used this machine for many years for location recordings. Tapes suffer from sticky shed syndrome , so may need to be baked.
What a great video! I've wondered what sort of home/amateur video equipment existed back in the pre-cartridge days, especially since I discovered Terry Ork's 1974 video footage of the band Television rehearsing, I imagine he was using a later version of this very same machine! Media preservation is one of my greatest passions, and it's equally as important to highlight the hardware that made it all possible. It would be a dream for me to one day be able to restore one of these machines to getting it working as good as new, though I suspect most remaining tape is all flawed.
i remember each of these versions of video, i never really thought about what machines were capturing the images to begin with and just felt like our tvs and vcrs were getting better. super cool to see the rest of the story. i was engrossed in the video lol it was quite interesting well done
I have no knowledge of the detailed workings of this machine (other than what I learned from this awesome video) but as an amateur astronomer I can say that the three pairs of screws under the lens mount sure do look like the sort of push-pull system used for optical alignment in certain types of telescope.
Spectacular! It comes to mind to me that being made mostly for scientific purposes mostly, being able to expose the cathode tube was a way of making it more adaptable to scientific experiments, whether it is connecting it to a telescope, microscopy or who knows what without going into C mount. Also since its such a shinny metal, reducing reflections could be a plus. Congrats on your great channel.
Wow, haven't seen one of these in probably 40 years, my high school had one of those along with the tape deck version that was color and used cassettes as opposed to the reel to reel of the portable model from this video. My guess is this thing was overbuilt to be durable since it was portable, plus in my case, it was used by teenagers who would drop & treat it badly. My high school used our portable mainly for sporting event recording such as track meets, basketball & football game evaluation of plays and athlete performance. Great video, brought back lots of memories watching myself and friends goofing on our mistakes while getting feedback from our coaches.
Having used this system in the past. It was considered "semi pro" grade. The setup I used consisted of 4 cameras a mixer a time sync device, local intercom to talk to the camera operators 4 preview monitors. and a similar desktop version of the tape recorder. Even TV stations used this setup for smaller soccer games. The only alternative was 16mm film. Although the system was obsolete when I got it in the late 70ies. It had a wow factor and although the b/w the cameras we used were fairly good. They resolved (if my memory is correct) between 300-350 lines. All the stuff except the recorder was mounted on 19" racks and could be used for broadcast and archival recording. We had a lot of fun with this system, tons of cable, basic video mixing functions (even picture in picture). A fairly similar "portable" system was included in the package but the quality was vastly inferiour. Perhaps time to reanimate the system somewhere in my attic....
The tripod stand on the pistol grip wasn't for positioning the camera while recording. The camera had playback capability as well, displaying the image on that teeny, tiny crt in the viewfinder. You could open up the tripod legs, place the camera on a desk at the perfect viewing angle, flip up the viewfinder, and check out your recorded footage without the need to hook the deck up to a monitor.
Our elementary school bought one of these Sony open-reel video decks in the early 70s. I distinctly remember the reels being offset; that differed from Dad's reel-to-reel audio deck. In 1974 my teacher took the Sony home, recorded the pilot episode of Little House on the Prairie (trying to remember to pause during commercials and unpause before the show started again, not very reliably), and played it for our class.
Nice video! P.S, you can use the same cable you used to get video into the VTR to get a clean video signal out of it. There is a switch between "CAMERA" and "TV" right next to the EIAJ plug, and when it's TV mode it will send a video signal on the same pin that's used to input video. This was so you could review your footage on the camera's built in CRT viewfinder, or hook it up to a TV using an adapter cable that adapts the 10-pin EIAJ plug to an 8-pin multi connector that would plug into a TV (If I'm correct, the TV would use it's own internal tuner and send video from the tuner to the VTR using the same 8-pin to 10-pin cable and use the trigger pin to time recordings) Of course, tapping into the baseband signal before it's sent to the RF modulator is another way to do it, and the signals should be the same. I don't own a EIAJ VTR to test this, but I have do have a Panasonic portable VHS recorder and it uses the same EIAJ plug, and it sends composite video to the camera to be reviewed on the camera's CRT viewfinder. I also owned a General Electric (made by Panasonic) TV tuner/timer unit from 1981 and it actually uses the same EIAJ plug to connect to the VCR. I would assume you can use the EIAJ plug with a tuner,.
Our school had one of these back in the 70s and I remember usin' it for some sort of 'TV commercial' project we did. Playback was on one of those school TVs on a high stand with wheels and cabinet doors - might've been B&W back then, can't recall. The mock 'TV commercial' we shot was kinda cool, tho. A fictional product called 'Disappear All' - a spray you could use to make things invisible. We briefly demonstrated it on-camera - spraying it on a pencil on a desk. After spraying it we stopped tape - took away the pencil without moving the camera...and rolled tape again. Seemed impressive to a bunch of sixth graders, lol. Spielberg never hired us.
Glad to see Tim Hunkin referenced! For anyone unaware, he's started posting remastered copies of The Secret Life of Machines to his youtube channel, along with a whole series on his knowledge on components for tinkerers from his viewpoint of making arcade machines. :)
As he began discussing the difference between linear recording and helical recording, my first thought was, "I wonder if he'll demonstrate how a video head works the same way Tim Hunkin did."
I came down to say the same thing. Been loving the better quality versions. I mean they are still 1980s BBC quality but still better than the ones I downloaded years ago!
Seconded! Really pleased to see Tim and the show mentioned here. - I was watching that particular episode only the other day.
Two real standout memories from my childhood are visiting the Secret Life of the Home exhibition in the basement of the Science Museum in London, and that weird arcade on Southwold Pier in Suffolk. Only realised a couple years ago that they were the work of the same person. As CRD was talking about the VCR heads I remembered the demo from the musem and was pleasantly surprised when he brought up Tim's TV version. It's absolutely criminal that this channel doesn't get more views :)
When you look at those old videos, Tim Hunkin was basically the first TH-camr before TH-cam. Demoing how things worked with semi-dangerous experiments.
The "It sounds like this" when you played the crunchy tape audio killed me lmao, amazing vid!
IT DID
I want more of the this that it sounds like to be honest.
analog YTP voice
I liked it he sound. It was like the daleks from 1960s Dr who tv show lol maybe that's what they used? It would be a cool effect. 😊😉
Same here. Immediate thought: this could be fixed with some resistors, as soon as you'd know how many volts the reduction need be.
In 1974, when I was 14-years-old, I spent a lot of time carrying around (lugging?) that model of Sony “Portapak”, and the matching Sony camera, for “Cable 10 Mississauga” (Ontario, Canada) Community Cable TV channel. At that time cable companies in Canada had to offer community access TV to get a licence to operate a cable TV system. The community channels were volunteer staffed; I was a volunteer. The Portapak was used to cover small events like a park gathering, speeches, school events, even gathering aerial views of Mississauga. I can still feel the action of pulling the record and play levers together ... and the metallic feel of securing the video connector. There was a strict rule to NOT point the Vidicon tube camera at light sources as it would burn in dots or lines ... or worse ... burn out! My grade six school also had that model of Portapak (that I volunteered to use ... my first experience shooting video!).
The “rods” on the hand grip were used to tilt the camera for capturing titles made on a4 paper with the lens in micro mode according to the manual
This was common at the time even on local and some networks
In the Videorover II ad seen in the forgotten history of home video video, it looks like you would (also) use it to sit and review your recording on the camera's CRT viewfinder hands-free.
it also looked like a bracket on the grip would flip open and you cold rest it back on that to change the angle some.
Does open reel video tape of this age suffer from "sticky shed syndrome"?
@@ScottGrammer 1. Video tape is not back coated. 2. SSS has nothing to do with back coating. SSS is connected with substrate material made using lubricants derived from whale blubber during the early 70s oil crisis (instead of oil derived). Some Sony tapes are affected including quad video tape but I've not come across any 1/2 inch helical scan tape that is affected.
@@absinthedude At least one manufacturer, namely BASF made back-coated VHS tapes, it was advertised on the case of the cassette. And now, 25 years later, they are deteriorating horribly. No SSS, 'just' the back coating peels off, covering the whole VCR with black crud, and creating a lot of dropouts when the pieces find their way in between the tape and the video heads.
I have a prerecorded VHS (also on BASF tape, but I think it isn't back-coated), and it suffers from SSS, believe it or not. It doesn't contaminate the heads too badly, it just sticks to the different rollers in the tape path so badly that the transport cannot make enough torque to play it.
when you pulled out the camera and were like "this thing is probably close to working, it just needs a recap, which is way beyond my capabilities", i went "what, really? a recap is really not that difficult, just time consuming"
... and then you opened it, and i understood why you said that.
Was thinking exactly the same thing "Well honestly a recap can be fine, stick on a TV show and work away at it" But trying to tackle that thing... no....
the same series of thoughts passed through my head as when i opened an old ham radio for repair... like what the FUCK is happening in this magic box
its not so bad once you have it apart though.
@@jhoughjr1 It's the getting it back together that's fun. :)
no, it does not necessarily need a recap!! they dont always fail, they last much longer than many seem to think, and replacing is not a magic cure all or prevention of further failure!
My father went back to college in the mid 1970s for his masters program. I had to occupy myself in the Central Washington University library for 5 days a week. I think I was 7 or 8. I remember going through their catalog of lectures on this format. I was asking the Librarian so often to change the tape that she showed me how and left me to it. I dont know how many lectures I watched or even what they were about, but I had the power to choose a tape and start and stop it at will....... I think I spend as much time watching the reels spin as what was on the videos. Thanks for the memories.
I used to use this exact camera/recorder back in the early '70's at school. My social studies class allowed it to be used to make student "documentaries". They were laughably bad, but it was great fun.
By far the biggest users of this equipment was the football team. The coaches had an obsessive desire to record and analyze games. I think a lot of the impetus to record games was that the other teams were doing it, so they had to as well.
Me too in college!
We had some flavor of this kind of machine when I was in school in the late 70s, I remember using it to record drama club rehearsals so the actors could review their performances from the audience's perspective.
I want this guy and LGR do an episode together, they would complement each other so much.
Imagining turning CRD loose on LGRs collections like a machine that only knows how to contextualize the shit out of everything
Or Technology Connections. Top 10 anime crossovers
And 8-Bit Guy, and Techmoan, and Nostalgia Nerd, and This Does Not Compute...
techmoan is a nice niche as well
I don't
This thing is really significant, IMO, because it demonstrates bare-bones video recording without any complications. Show people this video and they’d instantly understand how VHS works, without all the extra moving parts and complications.
nothing could've possibly prepared me for how literal "pistol grip" was
i was deadass serious, there is no better name
@@CathodeRayDude I bet they wanted the cable to go in it as some sort of lame strain relief. Or it was designed by 2 different divisions at Sony.
@@ntsecrets It looks like the plastic strain relief ring is doing double-duty and stopping the pistol part from rotating.
i was expecting some sort of joke after he revealed it, but no he was serious
This was common before, specially with super 8mm cameras
I may date myself, but I actually used one of these in high school. We had one in our high school television station and used it to do on location interviews and for making commercials for local businesses. Thanks for sharing, brought back some cool memories of running a small high school tv station using 1/2” open reel tape machines.
"The Secret Life of Machines" was one of the greatest series for someone who wanted to learn about basic engineering of household devices. It did not need any special production values and the host was so low key that you felt comfortable listening to him instead of being distracted by some bombastic loud-mouthed host. For those who honestly wanted to learn, the series was the greatest. Too bad there were so few episodes made. I especially enjoyed Hunkin's homemade contraptions.
For your Vidicon video: It’s very fun to consider that all of those glorious photos from the Voyager 1 and 2 missions (and I think photos from the Viking Orbiters) are from digital vidicon still cameras.
ooooo, good thinking, I'll try to remember that when I do a deeper dive on these.
Its from iphone
The Portapak was an incredibly important piece of equipment. It revolutionised the art world. Andy Warhol, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman and Nam June Paik were all Portapak users. It put video in the hands of artists like no other equipment before.
I was about to say, Portapak was a huge innovation for video art, and early independent TV.
Ringo Starr had one at the end of the 60's, as seen in the new Get Back film. There is footage of them in India 😁 in colour 😁
I had no idea this even existed. I figured they were using U-Matic. After all, that hit the market not too long after this, IIRC. With all its faults, the equipment was so robust. I took a video production course at a community college when I was like 11 or 12 (back in the land before time, like 1992), and that's what we used. I loved those decks; they were mighty. ;-)
Gravis is such a lovable, relatable, good humored human. I enjoy his commitment to the truth, personal honesty, and especially his sense of humor! Thanks for the dope videos that I rewatch on an embarrassingly regular basis ! Awesome content. Can’t get enough.
How about the Akai potable 1/4 inch VCRs?
In early January 1973 I made history with my Akai VT110 quarter inch reel-to-reel video recorder (explained later). This Sony 1/2inch recorder was the forerunner of the Akai I had. Also, this TH-cam video was terrific and very educational even for someone who was 25 when the product was released and into video as a hobby. Great job Cathode Ray Dude!!
Anyway, in January 1973 I was on a flight from Madrid Spain to New York City returning from a whirlwind trip to Europe. We were flying on a TWA 747. About an hour and a half out of Madrid, the captain made an announcement that our flight was the target of a terrorist bomb threat. It seemed if the Basque Separatists ransom demands were not met, the bomb on the plane would explode when the flight went below 3,000 ft. This was regarded as a valid threat by the authorities and we went through many scenarios including flying to Denver Colorado, altitude about 7,000 feet. Obviously, the threat proved benign but not without some tension on board.
As I said earlier, I was returning from a pleasure trip that included Landon, Paris, Rome and Madrid over a two week period. For that trip, I had my newly purchase Akai "portable" VCR with me that I used to document the trip on board as my carry on. The TH-cam (link below) is edited footage taken on that flight including interviews with several of the passengers on the plane.
Interestingly, when I got interviewed on WCBS and WNET TV, my father recorded those interviews on a TV VCR that was part of a console TV in the appliance store he worked in. Later that week, I transferred those interview to my Akai machine to preserve them. My machine was stolen in 1974 but I have had the original tape in my garage until 2006. I found a service provider in Maine who had a working Akai VT110 who transferred that tape to an MP4 file for me. I then edited the file into the TH-cam video you can view here ( th-cam.com/video/DYgAfYtplHw/w-d-xo.html ).
As a postscript, Akai also sold a color version of the machine about a year later but that was too expensive for me at the time.
You're a great presenter, I love watching your detailed takes on obscure video and camera stuff no one but you and apparently me, and the rest of your audience seem to care about. Really look forward to your future productions. Those little flip out rods on the pistol grip are only to be used when the camera is off. Its so you can set the camera down in an upright position so you don't accidently damage or dislodge many of the haphazardly designed circuits and tubes inside if you were to just lop it on its side. If you were using this camera in situ you had to be very gentle, lol.
Based on ads from the time, the rods were also used so that you could watch back recorded footage on the viewfinder - that's why the ocular can be flipped up.
I remember using one of these when I was in grade school I ran the thing (so much fun). Its called simply "Video Tape Recorder" or VTR for short. Great video, never thought I would see one of these again.
New Cathode Ray Dude video is always a pleasant surprise.
I used this exact cam & recorder in high school in the 70's and at the time it was the most used device in our school's TV studio. The original equipment was installed in the early '60s and it used those giant AMPEX 2" machines and giant studio cameras. This was portable and we could record anywhere and that's what made it so popular. were slowly changing over to U-Matic decks for recording off-air and broadcasting, but when there was a game or concert this was small enough to drag with you anywhere! You might find it useless but we thought it was awesome! Thanks for showing it, I had fun watching it!
I'm from the era of this camera and recorder setup. Our high school A/V department made the one at Hawkins School in Stranger Things seem feeble. We had two of these cameras and decks and a switcher setup. We did a school news show that we would feature in the cafeteria on Fridays, (shown on an a 25" monitor in BW) and we had a video yearbook for 1978, so if you had Beta or The Great Time Machine by Quasar (VX format), we could maybe dub a copy for you.
1978 was just when the first RCA Select-A-Vision VHS decks came out but it was a little late for me, as I graduated that year. Our setup worked well as the school acquired ours around 1975, It didn’t hurt that my A/V teacher was married to a broadcast engineer at the local NBC affiliate, so if the decks or cameras needed service, he was ready to assist.
The thing you failed to mention was the price. $1,650 MSRP in 1972. Pretty steep. The first Betamax in the console with a Trinitron TV, the LV-1901 was $2,495, and the first standalone Betamax, the SL-7200 was $1,295. This was in 1975-76 money. I think The Great Time Machine (also ‘75) was $1,299 but I can’t find confirmation of that. Very interesting video.
Well done CRD, I have worked in the television industry in Australia for 30 years, starting with two inch tape and the transition to one inch, three quarter inch and half inch broadcast tape formats. I never knew Sony developed a half inch open reel tape format. Also impressed by your descriptions of how helical video is recorded. Fabulous production and a detailed demonstration of both recorder and camera. Keep up the great work dude. Im now a subscriber.
34 dense-packed minutes, unlike other *ejem* youtubes, cannot take my eyes off it, great, funny. So much work to make this. Thanks!
Crazy that for a lot of things, Tim Hunkin still rules at the best visual demonstration of how something works.
Tim Hunkin was an absolute genius. I aspire to his level of somewhat-un-self-aware but incredibly effective and down to earth teaching.
@@CathodeRayDude Still is, for anyone who hasn't check out his TH-cam channel and new series "The Secret Life of Components".
@@CathodeRayDude as long as you don’t burn a whole pile of TVs at the end of one of your videos lol. (He actually did a video on his channel I think where he reflected on that moment)
I've never seen one that was personally, owned. But it was used by schools. Yeah, it may be horrible, but compared to what? Super 8mm didn't get sound until 1973, and you still had to send it out for developing. Short of going to a real TV studio, this was the only way you could see yourself or something you were involved in. The whole idea of the portapak was to go out to the action. I've used later versions of that model. As I recall, the 5" reels were good for 30 minutes. 20 minutes if you used the self-threading version. There was an optional adapter that would allow it to record in color. To playback in color, you needed a docking station. I'd say this created the start of what later became the community channel on cable. Allowing induvial and small groups to bring their work to a wider community.
The description and animated demonstration of helical recording was so cool. I had no idea that's how video was stored on magnetic tape. It really is genius.
Also I'm glad you decided to record youtube poop on a 1960s camera. You're probably the first, last, and only person who will ever do that.
Love that TEAC! Great machines those are. The early 80s models are super cool because the have the SYNC mode for recording, meaning you can actually record new material in real time with something previously recorded on a different day! Great video btw, I learn so much about things when i watch these because of how well researched they are. I think these 30 min to an hour long videos hit the sweet spot of information vs pacing, so i'd stick to that format. Would love some more PC Mag streams as well because those were so much fun!
It is said that Bob Crane used equipment like this to capture some of his private tapes in the early 1970's, the twin legs on the pistol grip for the camera would come in handy to help give good camera placement for such videos.
The audio reminded me of the bad guys on the original Half Life.
pickup that can
21:30 That angle is great and that audio gig really cracked me up, keep up the good content man.
I can't tell you how happy it makes me that you went to all the trouble of hooking up a bulky 1960s camcorder and the first video you played on it was Hank of the Hill.
DALLAS
@@CathodeRayDude SALLAD
if that was what was before Beta, then this is the one and only true Alpha from SONY :D
Isn’t Sony Alpha that interchangeable lens camera series?
Nah, you're thinking about Sony's U-Matic system, which beta was heavily based from.
You are such a great talent, very intelligent and interesting. You deserve way more subs than you have now, but I’m sure you will get there in no time at all.
Tone and delivery so natural, Unlike so many of the recent croup of youtubers who try too hard to fit a mould instead just being themselves. Thanks for reminding us of how natural sounds.
21:31, that magical moment where suddenly, bam, *it becomes the ‘90s out of nowhere*
I'm sure I remember seeing a camera with that sort of look in the film, Apollo 13 both for the press on the ground and for the astronauts to do their broadcasts during the flight. It'll be interesting to see how these first examples of small video cameras worked at the time!
The Apollo TV cameras were speciality designed by RCA and Westinghouse for the Apollo missions. I think their similarities come from the similar need to be low power and light weight. The Wikipedia article on them is fascinating though.
@21:30 this cut to Low-angle shot, simply amazing!
32:57 At least now you have an easy way to get a late 90s/early 2000s first person shooter radio chatter filter.
Used this camcorder a lot in high school in 1973-76. The school library had 2 porta paks which students could sign out for the weekends. After making a few shows we were allowed to use the 1/2 inch editing studio in the the board of education basement. We ended doing a modern day remake of Hamlet as a english class project. We had the music teacher doing a piano soundtrack, stuntmen diving through open windows and a dirty harry detective character driving his customized 1960's chevy impala. We made a camera dolly with one guy running the porta pak and another pushing (running) behind the dolly. Had so much fun with this equipment. How it stayed in one piece I have no idea!
The first shows I made in 1971 were made on these. The editing was caveman tech. Thanks NFB. Retired now (on paper)
I just noticed.
"Bandwidth" means " Bandbreite" in German.
The German word "Band" can be translated as "Ribbon" or "Tape".
So "bandwidth" in German literally means the width of a tape.
This video is fantastic buddy, you really make great content and it gives us a look into where we have been and how far we have come. Please keep up the awesome work and thank you for your effort!
I was part of an engineering club at university and we were located in the basement next to the dumpster area. We lived off of the discarded office furniture and computer supplies. I graduated in 2016, and most of the stuff there was pretty uninteresting; your typical filing cabinets, broken chairs, and dividers from the '90s and early 2000s, actual garbage, and discarded construction materials. But, every now and then, there'd be seriously interesting items such as old Apple computers and peripherals from the '80s to '90s, recorded media, and both consumer and professional A/V equipment from the '60s-'70s. At some point, the administration caught on to students taking this stuff and using it in clubs or bringing it home, and erected a cage around the entire area with a locking door. Right as the cage was being built, there was a stack of professional-grade equipment using the tape format in this video over in the e-waste section. I was seriously tempted to take one of the machines, but couldn't reasonably get away with it. I regret not having at least tried, BUT, I was able to get a tape reel, sealed in box. It's yours if you want it.
21:30 Woah, that camera angle took me back to Zoom or Bill Nye the Science Guy.
(And I mean the PBS show, not the video-conferencing software)
the story at 1:45 has everything, a hope, a tragedy, a new rise.... all that in 15 seconds is just amazing
but in reality, the video is great and I hope to see much more old video content from you, and hope to see you become much bigger as a channel
I used one of these in college and it seemed pretty revolutionary to me. I made and edited my first experimental videos on two of these. I still have a few reels of tape somewhere.
A thoroughly researched and well-edited video, with the original equipment to boot. Great channel.
From what I remember, the tubes in vintage studio cameras were huge, whereas by necessity, the portable cameras had much smaller tubes. And I think I'm right in saying studio colour tube systems had a tube each for red, green and blue, which again, you couldn't replicate on a portable - just a single tube mushing all the colours together, doing the work of three tubes, and getting a much lower quality image, on a lower bandwidth tape.
The tube were bigger for MUCH better quality. The lens was also huge to gather as much light as possible for a high depth of field. Some portable color cameras used only 2 tubes, but pro cameras used 3 tubes but they were smaller because the lens was a barrel type lens and wasnt thay great of quality.
Professional portable cameras DID use 3 tubes like the Norelco PCP-90
@@rty1955 Yup, the studio cameras had three tubes, about an inch across each sensor pickup, for the red, green and blue. The dynamic rage was far superior to what you see in these videos by Cathode Ray Dude and his older B/W tube cameras. You would be hard pressed to discern them from the early CCD studio cameras in quality, unless you pointed them at some studio lights or a very bright object, then you would get trailing streaks that were typical of tube cameras. The longer the streaks, generally indicated older, more used tubes, i.e. more hours on the tube. The CCU or Camera Control Unit would allow you to color balance the studio cameras to each other, so skin tones matched, etc. This was usually done once a day, and sometimes before each show, especially with older cameras. But once CCD came along, the stability of the solid state pickup generally meant you only had to color balance them occasionally, and a white and back balance was enough to get them close.
@@marcusdamberger until the advent of Plumbicons tubes in professional cameras which Norelco used on the PC60, PC70 and the portable PCP-90, most of the pickup tubes were the RCA design. CBS and ABC quickly adopted Norelco cameras. The Carol Burnett show was shot at CBS using these cameras. Since NBC was owned by RCA you had to use thier cameras.
And the RCA design would go out of balance & registration during a show! Plumbicons were much more stable and you had way more control of each tube than a CCD.
When you set up the cameras you had to set up each camera, not only for registration but for color linearity as each tube responded differently to different colors. Inside there was dicroic filters to split the image into each primary colors then each color had a separate path to each tube.
To setup each camera you would have the camera pointed at a "chip" chart, which are two a b&w scales that ran opposite each other on an 18% gray card. You placed the green channel on a waveform monitor and adjusted it to give a perfect "X" On the scope with the center of the "x" being in the center of the scope. You then turned on the red channel and overplayed it with the green one and adjusted the controls (gamma, blk, & gain) to match the green one. U shut off the red and did the same fir the blue channel. You then had to adjust ALL the camera to be the same. This is why color drift was a major PITA during a show. Often you would see in a studio a "chip" chart odd to the side so during commercial breaks and even during a shown you would see a camera swing icer to the chart to correct it.
Plumbicons also had a warmth to them which the RCA tubes didnt
I restore Ampex 2' Quad video tape machines
Your videos are SO GOOD. Thank you for keeping this stuff from being completely forgotten.
Tons of schools, cable TV local access channels, and corporations used Porta-Paks. I used them all those ways, and never thought of them as a home format.
Sony marketed 'em as a home format in every ad that I've ever found; they *wanted* this thing to be the Betamovie, but yes, I think almost nobody actually bought one outside of institutions who had needs that made the quality and convenience factors moot.
@@CathodeRayDude I found ads and numerous editorial mentions of the Porta-Pak in a quick search (at www.worldradiohistory.com) in Broadcasting Magazine, from 1967 on. Note that a Porta-Pak cost $10-12000 in today's dollars, not really affordable by average consumers of the time. Sony may have wanted them to catch on for home recording, but the market was schools, new media creators and corporate AV. Later, there was considerable excitement in TV broadcast circles when a primitive timebase corrector was developed that allowed its EIAJ tapes to be broadcast in compliance with FCC Regulations. It was part of an important movement to democratize media creation and put it into the hands of individuals, small groups, and schools, cable TV and documentarians. The Porta-Pak was truly a revolution that with a bit more research, would be revealed to you.
Enjoyed it man. I love vintage tech. I have subscribed to your channel. Great seeing a 1969 video recorder. I was surprised it had a microchip board in it. I didn't think that technology was being used then I thought it was the late 70s. Makes me wonder how many other machines had it in as they transitioned over from cathode ray tube metal monsters to the micro tech/nano tech mini devices we have today. It blows my mind how I can film a HD+ video on my phone?!?-and upload it onto the Internet in minutes now over the internet. How advanced technology is now and how it's changed. I remember the big clunky consumer tech from the 80s where it was a novelty if someone had a video camera at a family gathering, otherwise people just didn't own one or use them. It was a company thing not a consumer thing back then. 😉😊😎😍
As I said before, this is like LGR Oddware but even better. Outstanding presentation, insanely interesting and enjoyable to watch. Thanks for the video!
I think it was 1974 when my video direction and technics school bought one of these. Prior to this, we had been using the Akai 1/4" B/W video tape recorder, don't remember the model. It was fun, learning the intricacies of video signals, recording, etc...Carrying it around was something for strong people, but we were young. Nice video
For best results, read EIAJ in the E A SPORTS voice
It's really refreshing to see videos really well created like that. Thank you for your efforts in making a really good script !
I did watch your documentary, and it was bloody brilliant.
25:26 I guess the angle of the bipod is set like that to protect the tube inside the camera. It could be easily burned by shooting a light source for multiple seconds, so they made it like that to avoid the lens unintentionally pointed at the sun.
Omg, PLEASE make that video about those reverse CRT recorder doohickeys! My smooth little brain can’t even begin to try to imagine how that technology works but I am fascinated and I need to know more but I don’t want to look it up myself because I’d rather hear you explain it to me first lol. No rush tho, I know you’re busy and I love all the content you’ve been coming out with 😌
it's REMARKABLY simple, like upsettingly so. I'll get started on a script.
ur the bomb dot com, thank u so much 🙏
When I went to high school we had our own tv studio and we did a daily news show. We had this Sony mini cam and it was the coolest thing ever. Your looking at it from today back and you know everything that came after it. No matter where we went to video record this device always attracted a crowd. Even the local tv channels that would show up to get video on a high school football game we had to always spend time showing them our Sony min cam. As a kid in high school having the respect from the professionals and they took time to review the video we captured and gave us ideas about how to capture video the perspective to make your video more interesting and took time to invite us to their stations editing room, just because we had this equipment. Looking back this may not thrill you but if you were there in 1967 and seeing this come out in 1968 it was huge and damn impressive. The best thing was it was cool.
That size lead batteries were still used in buglar alarms around the turn of the millennium. Well stocked parts resellers should still be able to supply them.
23:50 - beefy lens mount: Is there any chance that there were longer-range zoom lenses available for the camera? That might explain the overbuilt lens mount. In 1980, I was working for the Audio-Visual department for the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee, and one of the videographers dropped his video camera, and I got to see firsthand just how much damage a long, heavy lens being basically wrenched out of the socket could do. I'm talking about pro video equipment, so the accident didn't utterly destroy the camera, but it did have to be sent out for major repair.
Pro tip: reverse one set of connectors so that it is impossible to connect with the wrong polarity.
I just subbed man, this is the second time I've stumbled on your content and it has greatly improved. You have a great ability to convey information without droning. Keep it up with the great content in an underserved genre.
New CRD! I'm here for IT!!!!
I saw a video of David Bowie in the early 70s walking along the beach with one of these over his shoulder singing Drive In Saturday. I wrote to the BBC who ran the video on a show called Top of the Pops and asked what the device was and how much it cost. I was a child at the time so almost any price would have been beyond me. They said they didn't know as it was made by a third party producer. I knew as soon as I saw it that it was the future. I have owned many camcorders since and recently got the A7s iii. A camera a light year away from this but your video was a real trip down memory lane for something I wanted so much at the time. Excellent video.
A lot of the forerunner formats to the ones that reach mass adoption are Friggin weird. I love that it is open reel, which sort of seems like a bridge to the cartridged formats that made it big. I hope to one day need a spool like this from Thingiverse.
This is so well written and engaging! You can really hold my attention well, I will try and share it around.
I always see these things and want to run out and buy one then I think to myself - I would never have a purpose for this. I have a 90s Canon Point and shoot that takes amazing pictures for a point and shoot from that era - it was $600 when it was new so I guess. But even then I rarely use that. :/ At least I can live vicariously through you.
Excellent presentation, and for me a pretty heavy dose of personal nostalgia:
The high school I attended had one of these portables, plus an AV-3650.
Purportedly, the football team used it for analyzing practice, but I don't remember seeing any such footage.
Oddly enough, many years later a friend somehow ended up with the very same portable and camera
(I had ways of being sure), then he eventually gave it to me.
By the time it arrived in my possession it was rapidly going from barely functional to useless.
The one thing I was able to do experimentally was prove it would pass a colour signal.
Unfortunately I couldn't get it to move the tape to try to record anything in colour.
After that it only gathered dust until I lost it along with a lot of other things when I couldn't pay for all of my storage.
The tape speed is 7.5 IPS, which with the 5" reel provided half an hour of recording time.
The AV-3650 accommodated 7" reels, so it could provide an hour.
Of course, that speed made the linear audio quite good.
Also, the tape path is much more like that of Beta or U-Matic than VHS.
The bipod kinda makes sense in the context of health science use. Maybe they filmed dissections or something else needing tabletop macro 🤔
@@graealex Not if you had good lighting.
@@graealex Well, if a university bought the camera, they very likely bought the lighting system to go with. j/s.
@@graealex 🤷🏻 See prior point. They didn't buy it to not use it. To use it, and properly, we can gather that the lighting was on hand. Lmao stop.
@@graealex I shot hundreds of dissections for the University Anatomy Department in the 80s. There's a high-tech solution called turning the lights on! It did make the studio rather smelly but the ventilation cleared it fairly quickly. I'll never forget one day we finished shooting a dissection pretty late and rather than taking the body back down to the Dissection Lab we stowed it in the workshop off the studio (as it was always quite cold in there). We were shooting part 2 the next morning. First thing the next day, one of my technicians wandered into the workshop without turning the lights on to collect something or other, tripped over the corpse and landed flat out on top of it. I always thought you had to be dead to turn the colour he was for the next hour or two! It's very strange, but he always turned the lights on after that. Happy Days!
19:23 "I'm surprised it doesn't have Zerk fittings" LMAO!🤣
I always love seeing this early stuff. I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s and camcorders were fun, but they were just plastic bricks with buttons.
Yeah, but the strange thing is, you would get a LOT of things that many people these days start nagging about their 'videocamera' does not have (read: photocamera that happens to be able to take videos as well).
What really strikes me is how many youngsters just don't even know how to use a real camcorder these days (and no, I'm not talking about the old ones working with a cassette, but modern ones that just record on SD-cards).
They don't know how to start recording, even though that record-button is at the most logical spot you can imagine if you were born in the eighties as EVERY camcorder had that button at the same spot, just like the zoom-rocker: every camcorder has had the zoom-rocker in the same place for decades, but they just don't know it. Even a friend of mine, who is 5 years younger, could not figure it out, not even when I said 'do you feel that seesaw kind of thing under your middle- and index finger? That controls your zoom.'
We didn't know better back then and people who have had their days as a kid (or adult of course) recorded with devices back then and managed to preserve those recordings, should just cherish what they have. We tend to look back on old technology and only look at their drawbacks, while basically they enabled us to do something we couldn't before.
And to put this into perspective: many people with a smartphone still record videos that are just videos as being taken with a plastic brick with buttons. 4K or not, it's just as un-interesting to watch most of the time as when back in the days many families had camcorders.
Wow ... I really had thought, that Betamax, Video 2000 and VHS where the first ... which in fact they were, if you look at the number of sales, but not at all from a technical standpoint. You really filled a gap there! The expanation of the tilted drums and why it was sodesperately needed is the first I ever understood! I also didn't know about the Vidocon. I thought later Camcorders just had the advantege of having the recording mechanism inside. But it was obviously more about the image capturing method. Outstanding work!
I kindof like this design better than a spinning head: it probably means less wear on the tape.
Maybe, maybe not. The spinning drum had little grooves on it that let air in between the drum and the tape and reduced friction - it sorta floated on air. My guess is the tape scraping over that much fixed drum actually caused more friction, and that the heads smacking into it might have had more impact on the fixed drum design.
But you also have to touch the tape with your hands, meaning considerably more risk
When I was in high school they had just purchased this same system. I was in charge of it during one of the class periods. It was really cool. Thanks for letting me see it again.
This dude is doing Techmoan better than Techmoan and VWestlife better than VWestlife, step it up youtube algorithm
Very nice video! It seems really neat, and I want one even though I don't even have the slightest use. Reel-to-reel video just looks so cool.
"I'm surprised it doesn't have zerk fittings" - now that's an idea... Shame it's a collector's item...
In Jr high (early 80s) - I used to run one of these (same camera, later, larger tape deck) for taping basketball games in a dimly lit, 30s era gym with incandescent lights. You can imagine what those looked like. The cable would frequently flake out and need repair.
It’s utterly useless but it’s exactly the sort of thing I want
We had one of the portable units in our High School film-studies class.
One neat feature was 'in-camera' editing:
You put the machine in PLAY + PAUSE, then jog to the exact frame where you want the cut.
Engage RECORD, and take it out of PAUSE to start recording.
Perfect cuts, just about every time.
Visually, it worked fine, but there was always a 'pop' in the audio.
We found out you can't splice these tapes using audio-tape techniques.
your're one of the few yt channels that makes videos that I enjoy watching from the beginning to the end
It’s not often that I’m thankful for TH-cam recommendations… but i love the fact that I got recommended this video of yours! Have subscribed, and look forward to seeing your future videos!
We had one of these exact systems in my middle school. When I was in 7th grade, in 1981, I was allowed to take ours home for the summer to use, so I spent a summer making TV shows and small movies.
The camera that you have has a Vidicon tube, so it is much slower than the Saticon camera you utilized to shoot your footage. With the Vidicon, you got a lot of lag, flaring, and ghost images, particularly on bright objects. If you had a bright object moving across the screen, it left a trail that persisted for a second or two. Look at old BBC shows shot on video from the 1960's and you'll see what I mean.
The system also came with a very strong aluminum Sony-branded tripod, which I still have and use to this day! You can still find these tripods for sale on eBay.
Lastly, the audio problem you're having is not caused by too high a signal as you suspect. The VTR expects normal line-level audio. The problem is likely old capacitors in the VTR.
If it has not already been said, the reason that this machine doesn't have a large spinning drum is because of Gyroscopic errors. If you think about it, you have a large metal drum spinning at high speed, this drum is moved around and indeed carried sideways over the shoulder. A normal head drum couldn't cope with being moved around, so you have a spinning disc with the heads mounted on it, with no actual moving drum as such. I have had this problem with a U-matic portable that was being carried and not held still enough (swung around) recordings are useless. BTW I used this machine for many years for location recordings. Tapes suffer from sticky shed syndrome , so may need to be baked.
This video was raaaaaad! 🔥 I’m sure the animated graphics take a lot more work, but they’re so worth it. They look freaking great my friend! 😎
Thank you so much! Yeah, I almost didn't do the motion graphics but decided they were essential, glad to see they're appreciated!
What a great video! I've wondered what sort of home/amateur video equipment existed back in the pre-cartridge days, especially since I discovered Terry Ork's 1974 video footage of the band Television rehearsing, I imagine he was using a later version of this very same machine! Media preservation is one of my greatest passions, and it's equally as important to highlight the hardware that made it all possible. It would be a dream for me to one day be able to restore one of these machines to getting it working as good as new, though I suspect most remaining tape is all flawed.
i remember each of these versions of video, i never really thought about what machines were capturing the images to begin with and just felt like our tvs and vcrs were getting better. super cool to see the rest of the story. i was engrossed in the video lol it was quite interesting well done
I have no knowledge of the detailed workings of this machine (other than what I learned from this awesome video) but as an amateur astronomer I can say that the three pairs of screws under the lens mount sure do look like the sort of push-pull system used for optical alignment in certain types of telescope.
Spectacular! It comes to mind to me that being made mostly for scientific purposes mostly, being able to expose the cathode tube was a way of making it more adaptable to scientific experiments, whether it is connecting it to a telescope, microscopy or who knows what without going into C mount. Also since its such a shinny metal, reducing reflections could be a plus. Congrats on your great channel.
Wow, haven't seen one of these in probably 40 years, my high school had one of those along with the tape deck version that was color and used cassettes as opposed to the reel to reel of the portable model from this video. My guess is this thing was overbuilt to be durable since it was portable, plus in my case, it was used by teenagers who would drop & treat it badly. My high school used our portable mainly for sporting event recording such as track meets, basketball & football game evaluation of plays and athlete performance. Great video, brought back lots of memories watching myself and friends goofing on our mistakes while getting feedback from our coaches.
I came from Technology Connections' tweet, and I found an amazing channel. Great job!
Having used this system in the past. It was considered "semi pro" grade. The setup I used consisted of 4 cameras a mixer a time sync device, local intercom to talk to the camera operators 4 preview monitors. and a similar desktop version of the tape recorder. Even TV stations used this setup for smaller soccer games. The only alternative was 16mm film. Although the system was obsolete when I got it in the late 70ies. It had a wow factor and although the b/w the cameras we used were fairly good. They resolved (if my memory is correct) between 300-350 lines. All the stuff except the recorder was mounted on 19" racks and could be used for broadcast and archival recording.
We had a lot of fun with this system, tons of cable, basic video mixing functions (even picture in picture). A fairly similar "portable" system was included in the package but the quality was vastly inferiour. Perhaps time to reanimate the system somewhere in my attic....
The tripod stand on the pistol grip wasn't for positioning the camera while recording. The camera had playback capability as well, displaying the image on that teeny, tiny crt in the viewfinder. You could open up the tripod legs, place the camera on a desk at the perfect viewing angle, flip up the viewfinder, and check out your recorded footage without the need to hook the deck up to a monitor.
Our elementary school bought one of these Sony open-reel video decks in the early 70s. I distinctly remember the reels being offset; that differed from Dad's reel-to-reel audio deck. In 1974 my teacher took the Sony home, recorded the pilot episode of Little House on the Prairie (trying to remember to pause during commercials and unpause before the show started again, not very reliably), and played it for our class.
This is absolutely great. Paused at 17 minutes just to type this and subscribe. Thanks for this!
I seriously dig that dbl-decker spool arrangement; very clever!
Video-Whisperer, you've done it again!
Nice video! P.S, you can use the same cable you used to get video into the VTR to get a clean video signal out of it. There is a switch between "CAMERA" and "TV" right next to the EIAJ plug, and when it's TV mode it will send a video signal on the same pin that's used to input video. This was so you could review your footage on the camera's built in CRT viewfinder, or hook it up to a TV using an adapter cable that adapts the 10-pin EIAJ plug to an 8-pin multi connector that would plug into a TV (If I'm correct, the TV would use it's own internal tuner and send video from the tuner to the VTR using the same 8-pin to 10-pin cable and use the trigger pin to time recordings) Of course, tapping into the baseband signal before it's sent to the RF modulator is another way to do it, and the signals should be the same.
I don't own a EIAJ VTR to test this, but I have do have a Panasonic portable VHS recorder and it uses the same EIAJ plug, and it sends composite video to the camera to be reviewed on the camera's CRT viewfinder. I also owned a General Electric (made by Panasonic) TV tuner/timer unit from 1981 and it actually uses the same EIAJ plug to connect to the VCR. I would assume you can use the EIAJ plug with a tuner,.
amazing rig!! I had no idea these existed! its almost a wonder that the camcorders we got later weren't more like this!
Our school had one of these back in the 70s and I remember usin' it for some sort of 'TV commercial' project we did. Playback was on one of those school TVs on a high stand with wheels and cabinet doors - might've been B&W back then, can't recall. The mock 'TV commercial' we shot was kinda cool, tho. A fictional product called 'Disappear All' - a spray you could use to make things invisible. We briefly demonstrated it on-camera - spraying it on a pencil on a desk. After spraying it we stopped tape - took away the pencil without moving the camera...and rolled tape again. Seemed impressive to a bunch of sixth graders, lol. Spielberg never hired us.
Great video man.
Can't believe this is the same channel.
Well done.