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 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 Ian Collins, no reproduction without permission.
This is a Panasonic D3, D350 VCR. D3 was introduced as a new 1/2″ tape format in 1991. The format was not used on location as far as I remember, but was used extensively in VT editing suites, because the beauty of it was that it did not degrade if you went down a generation. It was also used for master copies of programmes for transmission.
Unfortunately D3 does not seem to have withstood the tests of time very effectively, and many D3 tapes in the BBC archives have deteriorated badly.
Mike Skipper added the following information on the Pebble Mill Facebook group, ‘one of the disadvantages of D3 is that the recorded signal is digitised composite PAL. The format rapidly went out of favour when productions started to shoot and archive material in 16:9 widescreen format. Digital Betacam, being a component recording standard, rapidly took over from D3. Digital Betacam machines require an option board to be fitted to allow them to play back analogue Betacam SP tapes.’
Ray Lee added the following information on the Facebook group: ‘from a maintenance point of view the D3’s needed a lot of expensive equipment for rotary head replacement, so all machines were dealt with in London, whereas the Digital Betacam were much more straightforward, didn’t need so much equipment and we replaced the heads locally at Pebble Mill. One reason digital Betacam was shunned initially is that the system employed a kind of signal compression. Although few real signals would ever trigger the compression, it was felt better to use a non compressed format. However as standard betacam gained widespread use in News, and the component editing was already gaining acceptance, Digital Betacam was a natural extension, and the machines could even play the analogue tapes. In fact it was a simple matter to substitute Digital Betacam machines into an analogue edit suite, as most of the existing wiring could serve for both.’
These photos show the VT area at Pebble Mill over the years. They were taken by different people in post production, including Mike Blore, Tim Savage, Jim Gregory, Paul Vanezis and Ian Collins, and show the changes in technology from the days of 2″, through 1″ to D3 and Digibeta.
Copyright resides with the individual photographers, no reproduction without permission.
