Photo by Paul Vanezis, no reproduction without permission
The photo shows an Ampex VPR6, 1″ videotape machine, in a stack with a Panasonic D3 machine. The VPR6 dates from the 1980s, whilst D3 machines came in during the early 1990s, and were used in editing and for transmission tapes, rather than for recording on. I wonder if this set up was for transferring 1″ tapes to D3.
Photo by Paul Vanezis, no reproduction without permission.
These Sony BVE 900 edit controllers were used extensively in tape edit suites in the 1990s at BBC Pebble Mill.
The following information was added by Ray Lee:
‘This was the standard edit controller control panel used in all the News Betacam edit suites. Normally it controlled 2 players and a recorder, although as can be seen from the picture there are 6 source select buttons on the top right and it could control the recorder, up to 3 betacam players, and 2 other sources. The numeric key pad could be used to enter specific time codes, and there were keys to enable the capture of timecodes as edit points on the fly, and also to trim them up or down. It allowed spilt edits where pictures and sound were edited in different places as a single operation, so for instance the outgoing sound could continue with the incoming picture and then switch to the incoming sound a few moments later. It enabled rather more complex editing than could be acheived with the Betacam front panel, and could use EDL’s (Edit decision lists).The control panel shown connected to a 4U rack controller that connected to the other equipment in the edit suite. In the late 80’s and through 90’s it was the workhorse of news and regional editing.’
The following comment was left on the Pebble Mill Facebook Page:
Gerry King: ‘A bit of kit I liked because it worked constantly, reliably and made editing that bit easier til computers took over.’
Photo by Ian Collins, no reproduction without permission.
The photo shows a Panasonic D3 machine, and an Ampex Betcam SP machine.
D3 was a 1/2 inch videotape format which lost very little information between generations, and was hailed as a great revolution. It was brought in, in the early 1990s. I remember how excited everyone in post production got about D3, because you didn’t lose picture quality in going down a generation – although some thought that it would make production staff even more lax in their editing, because it didn’t matter if you had to go round again! Ironically, the tapes did not stand the test of time well, meaning that much of the BBC archive had to be digitised. D3 tended to be an editing and delivery format, rather than a shooting format.
Beta SP was also a 1/2 inch videotape format, and was the standard tape used in the late 1980s, and early 1990s for recording portable single camera location pieces.
These machines were in post production – probably in the machine room between VTC and VTE.
The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook Page:
Paul Vanezis: ‘We had three D3’s in VTE but 2 machines everywhere else. We did totally mad pre-read edits on Top Gear and The Clothes Show. But the maddest was a Motor Show Special. It was 10 minutes before TX on a Sunday afternoon in 1992. Steve Neilson was editing and dropped out of record in the middle of a pre-read edit. The look of horror on his face was something to behold. I got him to redo the edit as audio only and pick the vision up later! We did make it on air and there were plenty of examples of that going on.’
Alan Miller: ‘I believe the D3 saga has an interesting ending in that the BBC has thousands of tapes to archive but there are not enough D3 head assemblies in the world to copy them to another format!’
Adam Trotman: ‘And you had to line them up properly or you would get a hop in the picture. …’
Russell Parker: ‘They retired there, but I think this photo is either VTE or Edit 17’s machine room.’
Photo by Paul Vanezis, no reproduction without permission.
This photo shows how spools from old VT tapes were reused as jacks’ lead storage in post production at Pebble Mill. You can see the spools screwed on to the end of this bay outside Dub 1 in post production
The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook Page:
Keith Brook (Scouse): ‘I think they were the 30 minute size of 2″ spools. They took both sides off the centre, screwed it to the wall, then put one side back on.’
Andy Marriott: ‘I would’ve assume timed video leads would make that an MFA area somewhere in post production. Any increase/decrease in cable lengths would’ve played havoc with timings between VT/studios, unless you can compensate for it. This is obviously in the days before you could just stick cheap frame synchronisers on each OS. ISTR that even by the end of Studio B’s life, only a handful of the OS’ had synchronisers on. The others relied on the sources being synchronous and ‘timed in’, like local VT machines etc.
I think the reason they’re ‘timed’ leads, is that basically they’re all the same length, so if you need to patch a component feed between two VT’s (three patch cables required), you’d need the cables to be all the same length to avoid messing up your picture if (for example) the colour difference signals arrive before your luminance signal.
If you were short of spools you can also chop them at 120 degree intervals have three cable hangers instead. You can label as 50Hz, 0-20kHz and >3MHz.’
Raymond Lee: ‘It may have been a JCB [John Burkill] idea, he was quite involved with the refurb.’
Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.
This article is from Garden Living magazine, Spring 2004. It features a very steep garden in Dartmouth, Devon, which was redesigned by garden designer, Mary Reynolds, as part of the third and final series of Small Town Gardens. The series was presented by James Alexander Sinclair. I was the series producer, and really enjoyed making this series. Paul Vanezis was the producer/director of this episode.
The garden was incredibly steep, and difficult to access, and it proved a real challenge to get the materials in and out. I remember that there was some friction between the contributors and the garden makeover team – which led to some interesting times on and off screen! It was a beautiful, and very natural looking garden when finished.
Vanessa Jackson