RE: OT - He's just fine, right?

["Tom Harris" <tom(at)mercuryfilmworks.com>]

You obviously have a great memory for detail, I remember most of the machines you mentioned. Apex HS100…”Do not lean on this machine, it is gyroscopic or something’….meaning, when it was spinning and you bumped it, the disk could defy the angle you put it on and fly off and decapitate you. I briefly ran one of those in the sports truck covering the Edmonton Oilers in their hay day…

Tom

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ds(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-ds(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of Tom Edwards
Sent: July 31, 2005 12:39 PM
To: DS(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: OT - He's just fine, right?

 

1974 - in college operated/maintained Ampex VR-1100 2" quad decks - had the onboard electronic editor, no Editec controller - built cue tone system to be able to preview edits! Cue Tone was laid down 18 frames prior to edit point (distance from cue record head and cue playback head - argghh) - had to get that "hit the button 18 frames prior to desired edit point timing down" worked pretty well.

1976 - Worked 18 months at CH5, CBS affiliate, in Nashville. Recorded "Hee Haw" (edited on west coast, machine to machine) and "Candid Camera" (pretty much live to tape show). CH5 had a VR-1200C and three VR-2000Bs for production - and they had "Editec" wahoo! They used RCA TR-3s (modified on site for high band color) for on-air.

1978 - Opryland Productions - CMX300 with VR2000B as the recorder, and two AVR-1 decks as playback systems, even had a CMX interface for our MM1100 16 track audio deck, and an Ampex HS-100 Slo-Mo disk system - now that was a piece of work. Had a one event edit buffer - all edits printed to a Western Electric teletype - to go back more than one edit - it was copy down in/outs for all machines and manually enter and start again - clean list?, match frame - HAH! This was back when men were men and sheep were afraid!
 
1979 - Modified MM1100 interface to un that new fangled Sony BVH-1000 (it wasn't even a "Type C" yet) and as far as we know, were the first computer controlled system that could use a 1" with the editor.

1980 - CMX340, late 1980s went to 3400A then CMX3600.

Around 1990 - Alpha site (one of 4) CMX OMNI 1000 v 0.0 - yep, they wouldn't even give it a number! Eventually was driving 30 decks for three suites, combinations of BVH1100As, BHV2000s, BVW-75s, DVW-A500s, Ampex Century switcher, and 48 GPIs!

1994 - Bought 4 Adcom "Nightsuite" NLEs - 2:1 compression highest quality NLE available and the only one with an SDI/AES I/O. All the "Dukes of Hazard" reformatting was done on these for TNN (The Nashville Network) and now still airing on CMT (Country Music Television). Used these until 2002 when we bought first four DS v 5.01 systems....

Tom Edwards
MTV Networks