Never thought I'd see this day coming but, we've officially announced that as of January 1st, we are retiring our last two tape decks.
We have *some* archive that remains on old Beta, that we will send out for transfer to digital media. But as of January, there won't be a single tape machine in the building. (We will keep one on the shelf for that emergency video we may need).
We shut down our analog plant this past year and are about to shut down the SD-SDI world as well. (We only have maybe 5 SD-SDI sources left, and we'll just use AJA bricks for those to upconvert).
Hard to believe. I've only been in the TV biz for 20 years, I know others here have been a lot longer, but when I started, the only digital media was the graphics machine and a single AVID editor.
No more tape!
No more tape!
http://www.necrat.us
"Arguing with an engineer is like mud wrestling with a pig. After a couple of hours, you realize the pig likes it"
"Arguing with an engineer is like mud wrestling with a pig. After a couple of hours, you realize the pig likes it"
Re: No more tape!
No reels but still have cassette players (the record side isn't hooked up) and a DAT which hasn't been used in some time. One of the cassette players gets used a couple of weeks in the summer for a sports program broker.
Displayed in my office is an old metal 10" reel about 2/3 full of tape. No idea what's on it; nothing to play it on (friends have some Otaris that would), but the real reason it's there is because it has a date engraved on it that is exactly a week after my date of birth in 195x (pick a number between 0 & 5).
Reminds me I promised to fix a cassette problem for a friend (and make a digital recording of it) but the tape plays for about 3 minutes and then starts to slow way down. Pretty sure it wasn't recorded that way because the effect would have had to reversed, i.e.: would have sped up during recording. Have tried loading tape into a different case and also messing around with the cutout plastic sheets they use to keep the tape from touching the inside of the case but still no luck.
If anybody has any ideas I'd entertain them.
Displayed in my office is an old metal 10" reel about 2/3 full of tape. No idea what's on it; nothing to play it on (friends have some Otaris that would), but the real reason it's there is because it has a date engraved on it that is exactly a week after my date of birth in 195x (pick a number between 0 & 5).
Reminds me I promised to fix a cassette problem for a friend (and make a digital recording of it) but the tape plays for about 3 minutes and then starts to slow way down. Pretty sure it wasn't recorded that way because the effect would have had to reversed, i.e.: would have sped up during recording. Have tried loading tape into a different case and also messing around with the cutout plastic sheets they use to keep the tape from touching the inside of the case but still no luck.
If anybody has any ideas I'd entertain them.
-Mike Shane- -Omaha-
Re: No more tape!
We have a "dub rack" in our edit bay area containing a Beta SP machine, a 3/4" U-Matic, two DVD players. I think there may be a VHS deck. Yes, they all work. There's a 1" machine upstairs which works, albeit with a hum bar. We could fix it by replacing a bunch of dried-out capacitors but why?
There's a roomful of Beta archive material -- and another roomful of 3/4", 1", and 2". (I think there are even a couple of *low-band* 2" recordings.) Would love to see it dubbed to a digital format but who's got the manpower?
There's a roomful of Beta archive material -- and another roomful of 3/4", 1", and 2". (I think there are even a couple of *low-band* 2" recordings.) Would love to see it dubbed to a digital format but who's got the manpower?
--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View, TN EM66
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View, TN EM66
Re: No more tape!
Yeah, our TP66 and BVH-2000 don't get all that much use any more... but I really don't want to part with them, since we still have a lot of archived content on film and 1" tape. I'm just nostalgic enough that if I had a VR-2000 or -1200, I'd try to keep that going too.
-- Jeff
-- Jeff