Ian Collins – Page 20 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Videotape in the ’70s (part 4) Ray Lee

Still from Ian Collins, no reproduction without permission.

Peter Wood-Fisher’s electronic clock. Grab from Keith Brook

VT Clock

The countdown clock was initially a mechanical clock on a kind of blackboard in the studio, and was recorded at the beginning of each section of recording. It had sections for the programme title, tape number, take number, sequence title and other important identifying information. This was written on by the floor manager, (or assistant FM) prior to the recording. One of the difficulties was that when a tape was edited, the clock information could not be updated in VT to indicate this was an edited master, unless a separate clock had been recorded previously. The clock was generally started at around 30 seconds and allowed to count past 0, although in shows recorded as live the vision mixer would cut to black at 3. Where a series of clocks for editing purposes were recorded, the cut to black would be done in the edit by VT.

In the late 70’s Peter Wood-Fisher, a keen engineer built an electronic VT Countdown clock using a large quantity of integrated circuits, and housed it in a home made plywood box. It was around 18inch square with a full size keyboard at the front, then an up-stand housing the rest of the electronics, on which there was just room for a pair of 9inch monitors. This allowed VT to add clocks to edited items and recorded inserts without tying up studio time. This was the forerunner of using the BBC Micro as a VT Clock, which only became possible in the mid 80’s. (the BBC Model A was first produced in 1984). In those early days studio recordings often still recorded the clock from the studio, but the VT clock was used for subsequent edits. As there was only one VT Clock, various routing arrangements were made in order to make it available to the other VT areas. It sat on the back shelf in VTA cubicle.

Ray Lee

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook group:

Peter Poole: “BBC Norwich still used these VT clocks long after Pebble Mill changed to electronic. I went on attachment as a Tech Op. The studio looked like a museum of broadcast equipment!”

Eurwyn Jones: “Just read the article on the Pebble Mill site. I remember the clock well – on live shows like ‘Farming Today’ on Sunday mornings,the clock was used at the end of the show as well. It faced the presenter in the studio and on cue from the PA counting down to the end on the show we would start the clock and they would see how long they had left. Some would ignore it though!!”

Peter Poole: “Pebble Mill engineers had a great talent for building ingenious electronics.”

Ned Abell: “Its ironic this surfaced the day after Ceefax closed…now wheres my BBC B from September 1982?”

How many VT boys does it take to move a Quad?

Photos from Mike Bloore, no reproduction without permission.

These photos were taken at the switch off of the last Quad suite at Pebble Mill, circa 1984.

Pebble Mill’s Videotape Editors were a group of highly trained and skilled professionals – but there were some problems where even they had to resort to brute force! PAs sitting on top of 2″ Quad machine I suspect made the task to shifting it slightly harder, but a whole lot more enjoyable!

Included are: Mike Bloore, Nigel Evans, Ian Collins, Jim Gregory, Steve Critchlow, Chris Glover, John Burkill, Brian Comley, Jon Parker – and sitting atop – PA Sue Williams.

The following information was added on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Ray Lee: ‘It is an Ampex VR2000, VTB Cubicle and on the 6th photo you can just see through the marley door into VTC which is clearly equipped at this time.’

Sony BVE 9100 Keyboard

Photo by Ian Collins, no reproduction without permission.

VT editor Ian Collins took a number of photographs of outdated kit when BBC Pebble Mill was cleared, prior to being demolished in 2005.

This is the keyboard of a Sony BVE 9100 edit controller, used in linear tape editing.

It would have been used in one of the VT suites.

Ray Lee adds the following information about what the edit controller did:

‘The edit controller allows you to select ‘in’ and ‘out’ points during a VT edit, controls the ‘play in’ and ‘record’ machines, executes the edit and stores the edit points for if you need to go back again. It is a lot more involved than that, (like most things) but a more detailed explanation would probably be confusing. The edit controller could control several players at once, as well as audio sources, digital video effects machines, and the recorder, so it was possible to do quite complex edits including fades from one source to another, as a single pass, once you had identified the timecode points at which you wanted these things to happen.

Videotape in the ’70s (part 1) – Ray Lee

Ampex VR2000 Quad machine in VTB, photo by John Burkill (1976)

(Photo copyright John Burkill, no reproduction without permission – the photo must have been taken after lunch – well during VT’s standard liquid lunch!)

The Videotape area adjoined Telecine, so I got to know the VT staff, and something of the operation even before I had chance to actually work in the area. In 1974 there were just 2 VT machines, Ampex VR2000 2 inch. These were known as Quad machines as the recordings were made using 4 rotary heads across the width of the tape, quadruplex recording. VTA was optimised as a play in machine, and VTB as an edit machine. Both were capable of being used as stand alone recorders or players with the studios, and could be used for simple assemble editing, but more usually one was used as a master recorder and the other as a backup at that time, as there was no way of knowing until playing back, that the recording had been successful. There was no off tape monitoring, and a head-clog at the start could render the whole recording useless.

At that time John Lannin, and Tony Rayner were the senior editors, with Ian Collins, John Burkill, and Steve Critchlow making up the remaining VT team. What many people working in TV today fail to realise is that VT machines then needed careful alignment for every tape, and that they required a ten second run up in order to lock up fully synchronously. (Occasionally even 10 seconds was not long enough!). Although cut editing of tapes had been occasionally done in Black and White days, it was not accurate enough (normally) for colour recordings.

There were exceptions. I believe there was a unique recording that had somehow had tape damage that caused the tape to snap, (the transverse rotary heads were not unlike a circular saw if there was a nick in the tape) and John Burkill performed a cut edit to join the tape back together. This involved applying Edivue, a suspension of fine iron particles in solvent, to the tape to develop the tracks and the edit pulse, on each side of the damaged area. Then using a travelling microscope to locate the correct point and place it precisely in the edit block, cut the tape either side of the damage, and finally splice together using splicing tape. Normally a cut edit like this would not play without some glitching, but on this occasion it played almost as well as a standard electronic edit. Subsequently some months later I also had to repair a tape in this manner, and achieved a similar result!

VT was a noisy area. The rotary heads ran at 15,000RPM, and there being 4 heads on the drum a new head entered the tape past the edge 1000 times a second. Added to that the rotary heads were run on air bearings, which was supplied with compressed air, and created a vacuum for the vacuum guide to hold the 2 inch wide tape in a circular arc. The machines did have their own air compressor which could be used (adding even more noise), but generally used compressed air from a central compressor housed away from the area. The same compressor fed airlines to the Telecine cubicles to allow for blowing dust out of the film Gate. So what with whirring heads, hissing air and other general mechanical noise, the monitor loudspeaker was generally quite loud in order to hear the sound.

The VT machines needed careful looking after to get the best out of them, and tended to drift as they warmed up. So the normal course of action for the switch on man was to switch on the machines, check that the basic systems were working, then go and have a coffee while the machines warmed up. There was always a 1/2 hour line-up period scheduled before each booking, to allow time to make the fine adjustments required for the tape. In an edit session using several different source tapes, line up could take up quite a lot of the time. If the tapes came from the same recording session, a quick 2 to 5 minute adjustment may be all that was required, but where there were tapes from several different source machines, (often the case for Pebble Mill at One), 10 – 15 minutes or longer could be required if there was a particularly awkward tape.

Finding the required place on the tape could take a while also, as there were no pictures in shuttle. Tapes were logged on a card that was kept with the tape. The machines had a counter which was calibrated in minutes and seconds, and was surprisingly accurate considering it was a friction drive. On loading the tape, one had to remember to zero the counter, otherwise the times would not correspond to what was written on the card, or worse you could end up logging the incorrect times on the card for a new recording. Tapes were re-used quite a lot, as the tape was expensive, and in order to ensure a clean tape they were put into a bulk eraser (nicknamed the fish fryer on account of its height shape and the perforated roll lid.) It took about 20seconds to erase the tape, so you had to be certain that you had the right tape, and that it really was ok to wipe it, before pushing the button.

Some compilation tapes were reused without first erasing them, which could sometimes cause confusion when remnants of a previous recording were left in between two logged items.

Ray Lee

PAs Leaving Party & Rum Punch 1998

PAs Leaving Party 17 Dec 1998

PAs at Rum Punch 1998

VT at Rum Punch 1998

Photos from Jane Mclean, no reproduction without permission.

The photos were taken at the Leaving Party for the Pebble Mill Production Assistants, as they took redundancy in 1998, and at Rum Punch which took place a couple of days later.

The first photo includes: Andy Rutter, Paul Scholes, John Cooke, Jim Cleland.

Second photo includes: Anne Varley, Jane Mclean, Sylvia Lloyd, Sue Williams, Linda Flavell. (In the background: Dave James & Geoff Moore)

The third photos includes left to right: Ray Lee, Dave Rhodes, Mark Ray, Gurpi Saini (kneeling), James Allen, Nigel Evans, Mark Davies, Ian Collins, Keith Brown, Robin Szemeti, Adam Harvey.

Thanks to Dave Bushell, Paul Vanezis, Mark Ray, Ray Lee, Stuart Gandy and Jane Mclean for identifying those in the photos.