From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

(UTB added.)
On 2026/4/5 12:10:15, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 05/04/2026 00:08, Richmond wrote:

David Woolley <david@ex.djwhome.demon.invalid> writes:

On 02/04/2026 10:13, Richmond wrote:

So really the question is, with the right SIP/VOIP telephone equipment, >>>> and a VOIP to VOIP connection, can I achieve this full frequency?

There is no point in having the low frequencies; they don't contribute
to voice intelligibility

There is no point if all you want is to understand the speech, but it
does change the sound and make it more real and immediate, and I
appreciate that, I think it is worth doing, especially as we now have
band width coming out of our ears with fibre.

Low frequencies take up no bandwidth at all, really.
So many people talking through their backsides here.

Telephones have always been able to carry low frequencies but the old
carbon mics couldn't generate them and nor could the primitive earpieces reproduce them.

A long tome ago simple tests revealed that provided you could send 300Hz-3kHz adequately, speech was intelligible and clear.

Mostly true, though I bet those doing the tests were mostly male, and
also western (oriental voices/languages _are_ slightly higher, though
only slightly).

People who have actually pursued audio engineering fir a living know
that above 3kHz is just the hisses and clicks of the sound, and the fundamentals of voice do not go below 200Hz, That range is reserved for
bass (guitars) and drums, organs and the odd large woodwind.

Still nice to have though, and as someone else has said they cost
virtually nothing in bits: it's more the physical problems of making
speakers that actually reproduce them! (Though amazing things have been
done in the last three or four decades, both with small speakers and
with headphones.)

Cassette recorders were very hard to get above 5kHz and many people
still think they were 'hifi'

I don't think many audiophiles in the era when cassettes were at their
height would consider them hifi, though 10 or even 15 kHz was
obtainable; it was easy to lose top with even slight head angle error,
though. (FM radio didn't go much above 15 kHz, especially after stereo
came in and you had to have a cutoff, and I think most audiophiles _did_ consider that reasonably hi-fi.)
As others have said, you lose top with age anyway - I was startled to
discover mine now rolls off below 8 kHz (I'm in my 60s), as I wasn't
aware of any loss (and I've never been into either loud discos, night
clubs etc., nor noisy work environments). I guess I've retained good sensitivity, just not frequency range.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
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From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 05/04/2026 17:21, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

I don't think many audiophiles in the era when cassettes were at their
height would consider them hifi, though 10 or even 15 kHz was
obtainable;

No, it wasn't I had a top of the range unit - Nakajima? to set up and it
was utter crap.
But them people still think vinyl is actually a faithful reproduductive
media.
--
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have
guns, why should we let them have ideas?

Josef Stalin

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From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 05/04/2026 17:21, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

(FM radio didn't go much above 15 kHz, especially after stereo
came in and you had to have a cutoff

Exactly. You were very lucky to get even that AND if you had an IF strip
that rejected adjacent channels in Europe your HF stereo was distinctly 'weird' compared with a UK usable wideband IF. I spent a year of my life listening to all that shit and putting it on test meters, and my
conclusion is that so called 'hifi buffs'; are total idiots who respond
to marketing, not the actual audio,

After two years...

- Valves are shit
- Quad transistor amps were shit
- Most loudspeakers are shit - Quad ELS were not, but have no bass
- Vinyl is shit
- AM radio is shit
- FM radio is nearly OK but compromised by channel spacing..
- Cassette tapes are total shit.
- most recoding engineers so called are total shit

But CDs played through transistor amps with active crossovers and 3 or 4
drive units per side were actually quite exciting.

In particular HF/MF horns and bullet tweeters (JBL style) were very
very good indeed

Having finally got my studio monitors back working I am now in the sad position that when I went to hear a real live orchestra, I realised my
ears now have intermodulation distortion. :0-(
--
rCLwhen things get difficult you just have to lierCY

rCo Jean Claud J|+ncker

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On 05/04/2026 21:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

- most recoding engineers so called are total shit

The recording engineers are responding to the demands of their clients.

Having finally got my studio monitors back working I am now in the sad position that when I went to hear a real live orchestra, I realised my
ears now have intermodulation distortion. :0-(

Getting old is no fun.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.
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The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

[...]

- Valves are shit

Properly designed valve amplifiers are just as good as properly designed transistor amplifiers if they are used within their ratings.

- Quad transistor amps were shit
- Most loudspeakers are shit

The real cause of the problem came to light when Quad made the current
limiting of their output stages less effective and found it made a big difference. The crossover networks in a lot of loudspeakers present
very low impedances to the amplifiers, in some cases almost a
short-circuit, for parts of a cycle.

The audble differences are quite real and are caused by differences in
the extent of the current limiting and the recovery transients of
different types of amplifier. They do not show up on conventional
measurements because the amplifiers on test are working into the
recommended load impedance, not the real one they find in practice.

This also accounts for the difference in the 'sound' of different types
of loudspeaker cables, as small differences in impedance make a big
difference to the short-circuit current and the amplifier's response to
it. With good loudspeakers and a correctly-designed crossover network,
a bit of mains flex or a length of 2.5mm twin-and-earth should sound
just the same as a super oxygen-free gold-plated cable woven by virgins
under the full moon.

- Quad ELS were not, but have no bass

They are very sensitive to the vertical position of the listener. Sit
at the right height and they sound fine, stand up and they sound
dreadful - the stereo image falls apart.

- Vinyl is shit

It doesn't have to be - but it often is. Sometimes 78s sound better.

[...]

- most recoding engineers so called are total shit

Certainly I have heard some dreadful stuff comig out of studios in
recent years but the 'old school' engineer who knew his (or her) trade,
and the constraints of the medium they were working in, produced some remarkable results. Even now I can be listening to a 90-year-old
recording and wondering how on earth they did it.

But CDs played through transistor amps with active crossovers and 3 or 4 drive units per side were actually quite exciting.

Active crossovers are probably the most significant improvement. If
they could have been applied to valve amplifers, a lot of your
criticisms would have been addressed. (Not that they couldn't have been
used with valve amplifiers, Compton organs used them, but the exonomics
and heat output would have been unacceptable.)

[...]

Having finally got my studio monitors back working I am now in the sad position that when I went to hear a real live orchestra, I realised my
ears now have intermodulation distortion. :0-(

Very sad - and just as you were getting things right.
--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk
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On 05/04/2026 17:21, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

As others have said, you lose top with age anyway - I was startled to discover mine now rolls off below 8 kHz (I'm in my 60s), as I wasn't
aware of any loss (and I've never been into either loud discos, night
clubs etc., nor noisy work environments). I guess I've retained good sensitivity, just not frequency range.

You're lucky to get as high as 8 kHz. I'm 63 and when I last had my
hearing tested at around 60, it was fairly flat up to about 5 kHz and
fell after that - though the diagram I was given didn't label the Y axis
so I've no idea where the -3 dB point was - or even whether it was
logarithmic or linear.

My hearing has started doing weird things - it seems to emphasis a
narrow band towards the upper end which makes reproduced sound (speakers
or headphones or earbuds) have a very scratchy sound on some speech, but
not on music. Live sound (someone speaking next to me) is fine. I've set
VLC player on my laptop (where I watch a lot of TV) to have a notch
around 3 kHz to avoid that.
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On 05/04/2026 21:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

- Vinyl is shit

I marginally prefer vinyl sound to CD sound (*), where I have something
on both media for comparison, but this a *far* outweighed by the fact
that CDs have a lot more dynamic range because most LPs suffer very
badly from background noise (constant "sandpaper" noise, random dust
crackle and regular 33 times/second clicks from scratches etc) even
after very little playing. And many records have horrendous distortion
on some types of music: I was trying to copy some old LPs of Christmas
carols for my father=in-law and the combination of church organ and choristers' voice was deeply unpleasant. That's probably due to dirt
embedded in the grooves.

Given a choice between LP and cassette, I'd go for cassette every time
because its background noise and its artefacts are less objectionable
than those for vinyl, even though the frequency response, dynamic range
and background hiss may be worse than for vinyl.

CDs are great for listening in a quiet environment (speakers/headphones
in a quiet living room) but don't fare as well in a noisy car where compression is needed so you aren't deafened on the loud parts while you
can still hear the quiet parts over the engine/road noise. But that's
not exclusively a shortcoming of CDs, because even FM radio can be more difficult to listen to than AM radio which I imagine is more compressed.


(*) Though I would never say that vinyl sound is more faithful: it is
its shortcomings that I prefer. CD players could benefit from a
switchable filter that introduces the shortcomings of the RIAA emphasis/de-emphasis process that vinyl involves.
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On 2026/4/6 0:54:23, NY wrote:

On 05/04/2026 21:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

- Vinyl is shit

I marginally prefer vinyl sound to CD sound (*), where I have something
on both media for comparison, but this a *far* outweighed by the fact
that CDs have a lot more dynamic range because most LPs suffer very
badly from background noise (constant "sandpaper" noise, random dust
crackle and regular 33 times/second clicks from scratches etc) even
after very little playing. And many records have horrendous distortion
on some types of music: I was trying to copy some old LPs of Christmas carols for my father=in-law and the combination of church organ and choristers' voice was deeply unpleasant. That's probably due to dirt embedded in the grooves.

Yes. I _could_ just about accept that vinyl _might_ be superior in many hard-to-measure ways - but _only_ if always used in clean-room
conditions, probably using a non-contact player method (e. g. laser;
there _were_ such players produced - I think they cost about 7000 and
that was in the '80s [and they are worse if dust _does_ get in, as they
can't tell it from intentional groove shape, whereas dragging a stylus
through does tell]). And if you have to go through all that palaver, the process takes more of your attention than the actual listening does. And
in the matter of dynamic range, CDs have a significant advantage.

This is not to say that the clunk-crackle of needle hitting record then
some surface noise doesn't make some things feel more _right_ - but
that's nostalgia, not fidelity! (Some recordings I first heard via that
medium don't feel right without those faults!)

Given a choice between LP and cassette, I'd go for cassette every time because its background noise and its artefacts are less objectionable
than those for vinyl, even though the frequency response, dynamic range
and background hiss may be worse than for vinyl.

Interesting! When I had both to an acceptable degree, I tended to prefer
LP, but more on convenience grounds than quality: random-access, and
cassettes _did_ have a tendency to have mechanical problems (stretch,
snap, tangle).

CDs are great for listening in a quiet environment (speakers/headphones
in a quiet living room) but don't fare as well in a noisy car where compression is needed so you aren't deafened on the loud parts while you
can still hear the quiet parts over the engine/road noise. But that's

One of the (car kit) manufacturers - I'm pretty sure it was Blaupunkt -
did produce a system (probably radio/cassette at that time) with
compression (I think user-controllable) _in the set_; I never understood
why it disappeared without trace, as I'd have thought it was an
excellent idea. (I think one of the options might even have been to vary
it with engine speed.)

not exclusively a shortcoming of CDs, because even FM radio can be more difficult to listen to than AM radio which I imagine is more compressed.

Interesting thought; you're probably right.

(*) Though I would never say that vinyl sound is more faithful: it is
its shortcomings that I prefer. CD players could benefit from a

Same for "valve sound" - which was _mainly_ that it didn't hard-clip
when overdriven; of course, you shouldn't be driving _any_ amplifier
beyond its sweet spot. (Yes, I do accept there is a secondary effect to
do with even vs. odd harmonics, but I submit that's more that valve
circuitry tended to be more class A than AB/B, whereas transistor more
the latter; class A transistor kit was rare, for heat/stress reasons if
nothing else.)

switchable filter that introduces the shortcomings of the RIAA emphasis/de-emphasis process that vinyl involves.

Then get Tuddenham on the other such curves used by the shellac
companies ... :-)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
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From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 2026/4/6 0:38:12, NY wrote:

On 05/04/2026 17:21, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

As others have said, you lose top with age anyway - I was startled to
discover mine now rolls off below 8 kHz (I'm in my 60s), as I wasn't
aware of any loss (and I've never been into either loud discos, night
clubs etc., nor noisy work environments). I guess I've retained good
sensitivity, just not frequency range.

You're lucky to get as high as 8 kHz. I'm 63 and when I last had my
hearing tested at around 60, it was fairly flat up to about 5 kHz and
fell after that - though the diagram I was given didn't label the Y axis
so I've no idea where the -3 dB point was - or even whether it was logarithmic or linear.

I don't think I've had mine professionally tested since I was about 20,
or earlier; I based my <8kHz cutoff on using several of the "tests"
available on YouTube. Obviously all such things are affected by the
response of the speakers in your laptop/headphones, but I think even
grotty ones should manage up to well beyond 8 kHz. (Actually some of the
best price/performance ones I've had were some headphones I saw for 50p
- new! - in one of the poundshop-type chains. I bought some just because
I was amazed at the price, thinking I wonder how bad they really are;
but when I tried them out, I was actually impressed enough that I went
back and bought up their stock. Unfortunately it was build quality that
let them down: they were fine, but anything but careful handling soon
led to intermittent contacts.)

My hearing has started doing weird things - it seems to emphasis a
narrow band towards the upper end which makes reproduced sound (speakers
or headphones or earbuds) have a very scratchy sound on some speech, but
not on music. Live sound (someone speaking next to me) is fine. I've set
VLC player on my laptop (where I watch a lot of TV) to have a notch
around 3 kHz to avoid that.

All now well above where I can hear anyway, but it intrigues me that
much material I get from YouTube has a low-level spike around 15 kHz - obviously there on ex-TV stuff, but often whatever the source - and it's
not always one of the two line-scan frequencies either, though usually
_around_ there; I can only assume that in many cases a computer monitor
or similar was nearby at some point in the clip's history. I don't think
I've ever come across one at the ~10 kHz of system A ("405 lines"),
though - maybe most material from that era that has survived into the
YouTube era had a much lower cutoff anyway.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things
as they were. - Marcel Proust
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NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:

On 05/04/2026 21:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

- Vinyl is shit

...many records have horrendous distortion
on some types of music: I was trying to copy some old LPs of Christmas
carols for my father=in-law and the combination of church organ and choristers' voice was deeply unpleasant. That's probably due to dirt embedded in the grooves.

Mixed choirs often sound as though they are distorted, even when heard
live - but there shouldn't be any intermodulation between a soloist and
the lower organ notes. If you were playing the records with a radial
arm, a lot of the distortion could be from misaligned geometry.

Forget all the mathematical mumbo-jumbo and alignment protractors, they
will never overcome the basic flaw in the design. Just get (or make) a parallel-tracker and hear the record how it really sounds when played
properly. The difference is quite noticeable on mono 78s, and the
improvement on stereo LPs is even more worthwhile.

Another cause of distortion is the damage done to the grooves if the
record has been played on unsuitable equipment in the past. There are sometimes ways around that but they are difficult, expensive and not
always successful - just look for another copy in better condition.

[...]

(*) Though I would never say that vinyl sound is more faithful: it is
its shortcomings that I prefer. CD players could benefit from a
switchable filter that introduces the shortcomings of the RIAA emphasis/de-emphasis process that vinyl involves.

What are the shortcomings? If the pre-emphasis and de-emphasis are complementary and accurate, there should be no difference between the
input and output frequency responses. There will be a difference in the high-frequency overload distortion but the RIAA characteristic was
chosen so that the distribution of musical sound power rarely strays
into that region.

Any record made before 1954 is unlikely to have been recorded to the
RIAA standard, there were dozens of different characteristics and you
need an adjustable pre-amp to make the appropriate corrections.
--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk
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NY wrote:

LPs suffer very badly from [...] regular 33 times/second clicks

Maybe you shouldn't play them at 1980 rpm!
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Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

NY wrote:

LPs suffer very badly from [...] regular 33 times/second clicks

Maybe you shouldn't play them at 1980 rpm!

But it says 1980 on the label - just below where it says "Copyright".
--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk
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From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

If you have speech to text at one end, and text to speech at the other,
does it improve sound quality?
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On 06/04/2026 15:51, Richmond wrote:

If you have speech to text at one end, and text to speech at the other,
does it improve sound quality?

Interesting question

My satnav is Jane, who speaks perfect Southern English very clearly and
at a pitch which cuts through most car nose.
And she never answers back...
--
"It is an established fact to 97% confidence limits that left wing conspirators see right wing conspiracies everywhere"

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On 06/04/2026 10:59, Andy Burns wrote:

NY wrote:

LPs suffer very badly from [...] regular 33 times/second clicks

Maybe you shouldn't play them at 1980 rpm!

Ha-bloody-ha. I did of course mean 33 times/minute ;-)

Reminds me of fast tape duplication machines which play a master at many
times normal speed (with corresponding pitch shift, needing much better head/amplifier design) and record the copies at that same high speed.

I wonder what VERA (BBC's attempt at making a video tape recorder)
looked like in action - the tape ran at "5.08 metres per second (16.7
ft/s)"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Electronic_Recording_Apparatus)
which is 11 mph. I'm sure I've heard a speed of about 60 mph mentioned,
but that must be wrong...
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On 06/04/2026 20:22, NY wrote:

On 06/04/2026 10:59, Andy Burns wrote:

NY wrote:

LPs suffer very badly from [...] regular 33 times/second clicks

Maybe you shouldn't play them at 1980 rpm!

Ha-bloody-ha. I did of course mean 33 times/minute ;-)

Reminds me of fast tape duplication machines which play a master at many times normal speed (with corresponding pitch shift, needing much better head/amplifier design) and record the copies at that same high speed.

I wonder what VERA (BBC's attempt at making a video tape recorder)
looked like in action - the tape ran at "5.08 metres per second (16.7
ft/s)"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Electronic_Recording_Apparatus)
which is 11 mph. I'm sure I've heard a speed of about 60 mph mentioned,
but that must be wrong...

Short clip starting at bout 26 seconds in.

Scary....

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=363128574296809
--
Tciao for Now!

John.
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On 06/04/2026 21:17, John Williamson wrote:

On 06/04/2026 20:22, NY wrote:

I wonder what VERA (BBC's attempt at making a video tape recorder)
looked like in action - the tape ran at "5.08 metres per second (16.7
ft/s)"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Electronic_Recording_Apparatus)
which is 11 mph. I'm sure I've heard a speed of about 60 mph mentioned,
but that must be wrong...

Short clip starting at bout 26 seconds in.

Scary....

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=363128574296809

Ah, I'd forgotten that the famous Richard Dimbleby demo on Panorama
included shots of VERA in action. It's difficult to get a feeling for
how fast those reels are spinning. The friction between the tape and the
head must warm things up nicely ;-)

Mind you, Quad spins the head at an incredible 15,000 rpm which is a
serious head-to-tape speed (1,500 ips or 38 metres/sec), though am I
right that the head does not quite touch the surface of the tape?
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On 2026/4/6 23:0:27, NY wrote:

On 06/04/2026 21:17, John Williamson wrote:

On 06/04/2026 20:22, NY wrote:

I wonder what VERA (BBC's attempt at making a video tape recorder)
looked like in action - the tape ran at "5.08 metres per second (16.7
ft/s)"

None of your metric ... it was 200 IPS. :-) [Yes, that _is_ 5.08 m/s.)
Quite why a round 200 rather than a binary multiple of the standard
speeds, which would have given 240, I don't know: probably it was
sufficiently different that it made sense to use a new speed (and that
gave you slightly longer recording time - I think it might have been
half an hour a reel).

I remember reading somewhere that VERA used much of the mechanics - and
the reels - from the old steel-strip sound recorder the Beeb had. (But
with conventional plastic recording tape, as shown by Dimbleby, not
steel strip.)

I don't know what speed the old steel strip recorder ran at; I do know
it had to be in a room by itself for safety reasons, because if the tape snapped there was a sharp end scything around at a fair speed ... and of
course splicing was a welding job!

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Electronic_Recording_Apparatus)
which is 11 mph. I'm sure I've heard a speed of about 60 mph mentioned,
but that must be wrong...

Yes, my memory of 200 IPS matches the above mention of 5.08 m/s.

Short clip starting at bout 26 seconds in.

Scary....

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=363128574296809

Ah, I'd forgotten that the famous Richard Dimbleby demo on Panorama
included shots of VERA in action. It's difficult to get a feeling for

Better quality than I remembered.

Was it only system A ("405 line")?

how fast those reels are spinning. The friction between the tape and the head must warm things up nicely ;-)

I do remember seeing - on some magazine-type prog., like "Nationwide" or similar, so no technical details were given - of someone who'd used an
ordinary domestic reel-to-reel transport (screwed to the top of his TV
set IIRR); last time I mentioned this here people mentioned one or two commercial products that basically did the same thing, but this was
definitely a home enthusiast (just 7" reels, IIRR).

Mind you, Quad spins the head at an incredible 15,000 rpm which is a
serious head-to-tape speed (1,500 ips or 38 metres/sec), though am I
right that the head does not quite touch the surface of the tape?

Indeed; if it does, it is likely to kill the heads. Same with helical
recorders - certainly the Philips reel-to-reel one I had, and I think
the home formats: a very thin film of air designed into the system.
That's why splicing (actually joining the tape) was so rarely done with
any format videotape - too much danger of the splice hitting the heads.

You can work out the head-to-tape speed of quad, roughly: if you know
how many passes per field (and you can see that from old quad material
that was recorded, or transferred, with slightly worn/maladjusted kit so
there are fairly static spots in the video), multiplied by the field
rate and by two inches. (Slightly more than two as the tape was moving
so you get a slightly diagonal track, though the angle was a lot less
than with helical wraps.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more
justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power -
would be justified in silencing mankind.
-John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)
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J. P. Gilliver wrote:

I don't know what speed the old steel strip recorder ran at; I do know
it had to be in a room by itself for safety reasons, because if the tape >snapped there was a sharp end scything around at a fair speed ... and of >course splicing was a welding job!

In the late 60s, I was on a visit to the BBC regional radio
studio in Leeds, and the guy showing us round remembered using
metal tape recorders. He described them as having enormous reels,
and ran at high speed, with lots of zig-zag tension rollers to
cope with the inertia.

They once had a tape break on the take-up side, during a
broadcast. They had to spend the rest of the programme running
down the corridor trying to keep up with the tape as it continued
to spew forth.

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK
chris@cdixon.me.uk @ChrisJDixon1

Plant amazing Acers.
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On Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:17:44 +0100, John Williamson wrote:

On 06/04/2026 20:22, NY wrote:

On 06/04/2026 10:59, Andy Burns wrote:

NY wrote:

LPs suffer very badly from [...] regular 33 times/second clicks

Maybe you shouldn't play them at 1980 rpm!

Ha-bloody-ha. I did of course mean 33 times/minute ;-)

Reminds me of fast tape duplication machines which play a master at
many times normal speed (with corresponding pitch shift, needing much
better head/amplifier design) and record the copies at that same high
speed.

I wonder what VERA (BBC's attempt at making a video tape recorder)
looked like in action - the tape ran at "5.08 metres per second (16.7
ft/s)"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Electronic_Recording_Apparatus)
which is 11 mph. I'm sure I've heard a speed of about 60 mph mentioned,
but that must be wrong...

Short clip starting at bout 26 seconds in.

Scary....

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=363128574296809

Bloody old Cossor scope, used one of those in 1958
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On Mon, 6 Apr 2026 23:00:27 +0100, NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=363128574296809

Ah, I'd forgotten that the famous Richard Dimbleby demo on Panorama
included shots of VERA in action. It's difficult to get a feeling for
how fast those reels are spinning. The friction between the tape and the >head must warm things up nicely ;-)

Mind you, Quad spins the head at an incredible 15,000 rpm which is a
serious head-to-tape speed (1,500 ips or 38 metres/sec), though am I
right that the head does not quite touch the surface of the tape?

It does touch the tape. One of the adjustments that had to be made
during playback alignment was called "tip projection", which adjusted
the amount that the heads pressed into the tape. This distorted the
tape ever so slightly, not by an amount that would be a problem with
sound, but with the positions of picture elements on the screen being
dependent on very short time intervals in the video signal, it was
critical that playback geometry twixt head and tape exactly matched
the recording geometry, despite any variations in temperature,
humidity or head wear.

But there were four heads, so each head was only in contact with the
tape for about a quarter of the time, which probably helped to reduce
the effect of heat from friction.

Rod.
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 2026/4/7 8:38:23, Chris J Dixon wrote:

J. P. Gilliver wrote:

I don't know what speed the old steel strip recorder ran at; I do know
it had to be in a room by itself for safety reasons, because if the tape
snapped there was a sharp end scything around at a fair speed ... and of
course splicing was a welding job!

In the late 60s, I was on a visit to the BBC regional radio
studio in Leeds, and the guy showing us round remembered using
metal tape recorders. He described them as having enormous reels,
and ran at high speed, with lots of zig-zag tension rollers to
cope with the inertia.

As I said, I read somewhere that VERA used a lot of the transport
mechanism from one of those machines; certainly, if you watch the
Dimbleby clip, it showed the huge reels and lots of rollers.

They once had a tape break on the take-up side, during a
broadcast. They had to spend the rest of the programme running
down the corridor trying to keep up with the tape as it continued
to spew forth.

Sort of Delia Derbyshire on steroids!

Chris

John
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. And I'm not
getting out of the kitchen for a long time yet.
- Petula Clark (at 83), RT 2016/10/22-28
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 2026/4/7 9:22:43, jon wrote:

On Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:17:44 +0100, John Williamson wrote:

[]

Short clip starting at bout 26 seconds in.

Scary....

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=363128574296809

Bloody old Cossor scope, used one of those in 1958

We were still using the trolleys - supported Tektronix 545 series and
similar - in the '80s. (I think we had an old transistor curve tracer of
that family, which worked and was used infrequently enough that it
wasn't seen necessary to replace it. And one old two-beam 'scope with
genuinely two timebases - not diddled between channels as was the later fashion, I think it had a two-neck tube; most disconcerting to observe
two traces sweeping at different speeds!)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

On 2026/4/7 9:22:43, jon wrote:

On Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:17:44 +0100, John Williamson wrote:

[]

Short clip starting at bout 26 seconds in.

Scary....

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=363128574296809

Bloody old Cossor scope, used one of those in 1958

We were still using the trolleys - supported Tektronix 545 series and
similar - in the '80s. (I think we had an old transistor curve tracer of
that family, which worked and was used infrequently enough that it
wasn't seen necessary to replace it. And one old two-beam 'scope with genuinely two timebases - not diddled between channels as was the later fashion, I think it had a two-neck tube; most disconcerting to observe
two traces sweeping at different speeds!)

I worked (as an apprentice) in the Marconi Instruments internal repair
and maintenance department back in the 1960s. A Tektronix 545 was a
very modern rarity there! :-) Our 'bread and butter' 'scopes were MI
TF1330 and TF1331 with the occasional TF2200 to make things more
exciting. I think there were still a few of the old Cossor 'scopes
around too.
--
Chris Green
-+
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 2026/4/7 12:30:23, Chris Green wrote:
[]

I worked (as an apprentice) in the Marconi Instruments internal repair
and maintenance department back in the 1960s. A Tektronix 545 was a
very modern rarity there! :-) Our 'bread and butter' 'scopes were MI
TF1330 and TF1331 with the occasional TF2200 to make things more
exciting. I think there were still a few of the old Cossor 'scopes
around too.

(I _was_ the test equipment department at Marconi Research Centre for
the brief period between it being given an excellent rating by an
external auditor and it being outsourced. [Beware: being highly-rated
does not protect you!])

IIRR, the 545 series was the first with plugins. Yes, plugins with
valves in!
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Who wants a theremin? IrCOm selling mine it hasnrCOt been touched.
- @mizu1153 ~2020
I will swap you for my 2nd hand parachute. Never opened.
- @adenmac2810 ~2025/3
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

On 2026/4/7 12:30:23, Chris Green wrote:
[]

I worked (as an apprentice) in the Marconi Instruments internal repair
and maintenance department back in the 1960s. A Tektronix 545 was a
very modern rarity there! :-) Our 'bread and butter' 'scopes were MI TF1330 and TF1331 with the occasional TF2200 to make things more
exciting. I think there were still a few of the old Cossor 'scopes
around too.

(I _was_ the test equipment department at Marconi Research Centre for
the brief period between it being given an excellent rating by an
external auditor and it being outsourced. [Beware: being highly-rated
does not protect you!])

IIRR, the 545 series was the first with plugins. Yes, plugins with
valves in!

Yes, that's right, or at least the first really successful 'scope with
plugins. The MI TF2200 was modelled on it in many ways.
--
Chris Green
-+
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

J. P. Gilliver wrote:

(I _was_ the test equipment department at Marconi Research Centre for
the brief period between it being given an excellent rating by an
external auditor and it being outsourced. [Beware: being highly-rated
does not protect you!])

IIRR, the 545 series was the first with plugins. Yes, plugins with
valves in!

Once upon a time, back in the mid 70s, we were doing test runs on
a prototype train, which had little, if any, heating. We were
thankful that the ancient, and non-digital, storage oscilloscope
used nearly a kilowatt, most of which it blew out as hot air.

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK
chris@cdixon.me.uk @ChrisJDixon1

Plant amazing Acers.
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:

J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

On 2026/4/7 9:22:43, jon wrote:

On Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:17:44 +0100, John Williamson wrote:

[]

Short clip starting at bout 26 seconds in.

Scary....

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=363128574296809

Bloody old Cossor scope, used one of those in 1958

We were still using the trolleys - supported Tektronix 545 series and similar - in the '80s. (I think we had an old transistor curve tracer of that family, which worked and was used infrequently enough that it
wasn't seen necessary to replace it. And one old two-beam 'scope with genuinely two timebases - not diddled between channels as was the later fashion, I think it had a two-neck tube; most disconcerting to observe
two traces sweeping at different speeds!)

I worked (as an apprentice) in the Marconi Instruments internal repair
and maintenance department back in the 1960s. A Tektronix 545 was a
very modern rarity there! :-) Our 'bread and butter' 'scopes were MI
TF1330 and TF1331 with the occasional TF2200 to make things more
exciting. I think there were still a few of the old Cossor 'scopes
around too.

When I worked at Eddystone Radio in the late 1960s we had a Marconi oscilloscope which had a Mean Time Between Failures that was very
similar to the timing of the delay switch in the HT of the mercury arc rectifier. You only got a few minutes use out of it before the trace
vanished and it had to be switched off and back on again.

I don't know which model it was but I do remember it had a wooden
cooling fan.

Shortly after that I acquired an EMI WM2 'scope with a chain of
capacitors in the mains-derived EHT supply. It was terrifying to work
on and I enlisted the help of a friend with electronics and First Aid
knowledge whenever I had to do anything to it.

I believe it was based on a design by Blumlein, which used calibrated DC
offset to measure the peaks of a waveform against a fixed graticule
line. The measurement was independeent of the gain and drift of the Y amplifier, which wasn't particularly well stabilised.

The construction was similar to some of the early EMI television
cameras, with sub-chassis in the form of tilted rails running fore and
aft so that the components were accessible on the outside and the valves
were canted inwards where they benefitted from the air flowing in from
the gaps between the rails.
--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 07/04/2026 02:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

On 2026/4/6 23:0:27, NY wrote:

On 06/04/2026 21:17, John Williamson wrote:

On 06/04/2026 20:22, NY wrote:

I wonder what VERA (BBC's attempt at making a video tape recorder)
looked like in action - the tape ran at "5.08 metres per second (16.7
ft/s)"

None of your metric ... it was 200 IPS. :-) [Yes, that _is_ 5.08 m/s.)
Quite why a round 200 rather than a binary multiple of the standard
speeds, which would have given 240, I don't know: probably it was sufficiently different that it made sense to use a new speed (and that
gave you slightly longer recording time - I think it might have been
half an hour a reel).

Numerical values of standards always intrigue me. Why 24 rather than 25
frames per second for sound film (and 16 or 18 for silent film, rather
than 15)? Persistence of vision gives the minimum frame rate that will
"work" but why not divide a second into either a power of two or else
round to the nearest 5 fps? Why make floppy disks 5 1/4" and 3 1/2"
rather than 5", 6" or 3"? Why make a standard terminal have a width of
80 rather than 100 characters? Why did records run at 33 1/3, 45 and 78
rpm, rather than round numbers like 30 or 35, 50 and 80 rpm?

Are we being unreasonable in expecting that where there is a free
choice, people would choose a nice round number?

I realise the some "weird" numbers have a very logical reason - the PAL
and NTSC sub-carrier frequencies are chosen (n+1)/2 time line frequency,
to minimise cross-colour, plus fiddle factors to reduce the appearance
of dot patterning.

And likewise, you'd expect VERA to use an extension of the
well-established 1 7/8, 3 1/4, 7 1/5, 15, 30, ... sequence of tape speeds.

I remember reading somewhere that VERA used much of the mechanics - and
the reels - from the old steel-strip sound recorder the Beeb had. (But
with conventional plastic recording tape, as shown by Dimbleby, not
steel strip.)

I don't know what speed the old steel strip recorder ran at; I do know
it had to be in a room by itself for safety reasons, because if the tape snapped there was a sharp end scything around at a fair speed ... and of course splicing was a welding job!

I always wondered how WWII wireless reporters managed to record to steel
tape or wire, given the danger of sharp ends flailing round if the
machine was hit by a stray bullet/shell.

Was [VERA] only system A ("405 line")?

I think VERA had been superseded by the Ampex Quad system while it was
still at the prototype stage, long before 625. I suppose in theory
someone could have tried recording a 625-line signal to it if the
machinery had still been serviceable once 625 had been developed. If
VERA only used frame sync pulses it could have synced to 625 line as
easily as 405, but the horizontal resolution would have been dire given
that its low bandwidth. I've not found a value for the bandwidth, but
200 ips for VERA is a lot lower than 1500 head-to-tape for Quad, so
bandwidth would be proportionally lower than the 6 MHz that is usually
the upper limit of 625/25.

I do remember seeing - on some magazine-type prog., like "Nationwide" or similar, so no technical details were given - of someone who'd used an ordinary domestic reel-to-reel transport (screwed to the top of his TV
set IIRR); last time I mentioned this here people mentioned one or two commercial products that basically did the same thing, but this was definitely a home enthusiast (just 7" reels, IIRR).

That rings a bell. Sometime in the 1970s, IIRC. I came across a
local-news interview with the designer, on Youtube a few years ago.

There was also a children's toy camera and recorder that used a very low
res and low frame rate camera to record to audio cassette (probably
running at normal 1 7/8" ips).

Mind you, Quad spins the head at an incredible 15,000 rpm which is a
serious head-to-tape speed (1,500 ips or 38 metres/sec), though am I
right that the head does not quite touch the surface of the tape?

Indeed; if it does, it is likely to kill the heads. Same with helical recorders - certainly the Philips reel-to-reel one I had, and I think
the home formats: a very thin film of air designed into the system.
That's why splicing (actually joining the tape) was so rarely done with
any format videotape - too much danger of the splice hitting the heads.

The thought of splicing Quad tape to make edits (one of its strengths
for quickly assembling compilation tapes for sports events) strikes
terror in my heart. The only reason it was possible is that the splice
had to be at an exact location between one frame sync pulse and the next
which was *guaranteed* to be between one head pass and the next.
Apparently editing was done by spraying magnetic "developing fluid" on
the tape to make the frame sync pulses on the control track visible, and
then the cutting, butting and splicing was done under a microscope. But
in the hands of a skilled operator, a lot quicker than making up an edit decision list and dubbing selected parts from one helical-scan tape to another. Quad continued for highlights of sports and live events (royal weddings etc) a long time after it had become obsolete for every thing else.

I confess that I have spliced a VHS tape which became badly mangled at
one point, so I could watch the parts before and after, but I took care
not to play the point at the splice. I have not-so-fond memories of temporarily knackering the heads on my VCR when I played a tape that had
bad mangling that I didn't know about. A cotton wool bud soaked in IPA (isopropyl alcohol, not the beer!) removed most of the oxide from the
heads and gradually restored the picture, but the hifi sound took longer
to come back, maybe because it is a lower-level signal since it is
recorded and then partly overwritten by the video tracks.

It still amazes me that we went from Quad which needed compressed air
and vacuum pump, and needed a lot of tweaking of tape tension, head penetration etc, to Philips N1500 and then VHS which needed nothing more
than occasional adjustment of tracking - and that was in about 15 years.

You can work out the head-to-tape speed of quad, roughly: if you know
how many passes per field (and you can see that from old quad material
that was recorded, or transferred, with slightly worn/maladjusted kit so there are fairly static spots in the video), multiplied by the field
rate and by two inches. (Slightly more than two as the tape was moving
so you get a slightly diagonal track, though the angle was a lot less
than with helical wraps.)

How you managed to switch between one head's output and another several
times per field, without noticeable glitches in normal circumstances, is
a testament to consistent build quality of heads, given that I presume
the signal level is dependent on magnetic field strength (ie amplitude modulated rather than frequency modulated) so heads have to be very
closely matched in gain (or else there needs to be switchable gain
between one head and another to compensate).

Am I right that *all* helical formats, even 1" professional ones,
recorded a whole field per head-pass, rather than needing several head
passes per field?


I'm sure I've heard of some video recorders (not sure whether Quad or
helical) which could record single frames and so could be used for
stop-frame animation. Stopping and starting the tape (or backspacing it correctly) for each frame sounds like a servo-mechanism nightmare ;-)
Normally VT needed a few seconds pre-roll to get the tape and heads in
perfect sync, and then the tape ran at consistent constant speed.


I remember a holiday job, in the mid 80s, when I was at university
involved me playing loads of U-Matic tapes of scenes that are probably
covered by the Official Secrets Act, and dubbing them to a standard BBC
slo-mo unit. This was then played back frame by frame, allowing long
enough for each frame to be digitised and stored on computer. I think it
took about a second to digitise each frame (so 25x slowed that real
time!), during which time the computer-controlled slo-mo made some very unhealthy noises ;-)
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 07/04/2026 16:46, NY wrote:

On 07/04/2026 02:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

On 2026/4/6 23:0:27, NY wrote:

On 06/04/2026 21:17, John Williamson wrote:

On 06/04/2026 20:22, NY wrote:

I wonder what VERA (BBC's attempt at making a video tape recorder)
looked like in action - the tape ran at "5.08 metres per second (16.7 >>>>> ft/s)"

None of your metric ... it was 200 IPS. :-) [Yes, that _is_ 5.08 m/s.)
Quite why a round 200 rather than a binary multiple of the standard
speeds, which would have given 240, I don't know: probably it was
sufficiently different that it made sense to use a new speed (and that
gave you slightly longer recording time - I think it might have been
half an hour a reel).

Numerical values of standards always intrigue me. Why 24 rather than 25 frames per second for sound film (and 16 or 18 for silent film, rather
than 15)? Persistence of vision gives the minimum frame rate that will "work" but why not divide a second into either a power of two or else
round to the nearest 5 fps? Why make floppy disks 5 1/4" and 3 1/2"
rather than 5", 6" or 3"? Why make a standard terminal have a width of
80 rather than 100 characters? Why did records run at 33 1/3, 45 and 78
rpm, rather than round numbers like 30 or 35, 50 and 80 rpm?

Are we being unreasonable in expecting that where there is a free
choice, people would choose a nice round number?

I realise the some "weird" numbers have a very logical reason - the PAL
and NTSC sub-carrier frequencies are chosen (n+1)/2 time line frequency,
to minimise cross-colour, plus fiddle factors to reduce the appearance
of dot patterning.

And likewise, you'd expect VERA to use an extension of the
well-established 1 7/8, 3 1/4, 7 1/5, 15, 30, ... sequence of tape speeds.

I remember reading somewhere that VERA used much of the mechanics - and
the reels - from the old steel-strip sound recorder the Beeb had. (But
with conventional plastic recording tape, as shown by Dimbleby, not
steel strip.)

I don't know what speed the old steel strip recorder ran at; I do know
it had to be in a room by itself for safety reasons, because if the tape
snapped there was a sharp end scything around at a fair speed ... and of
course splicing was a welding job!

I always wondered how WWII wireless reporters managed to record to steel tape or wire, given the danger of sharp ends flailing round if the
machine was hit by a stray bullet/shell.

Was [VERA] only system A ("405 line")?

I think VERA had been superseded by the Ampex Quad system while it was
still at the prototype stage, long before 625. I suppose in theory
someone could have tried recording a 625-line signal to it if the
machinery had still been serviceable once 625 had been developed. If
VERA only used frame sync pulses it could have synced to 625 line as
easily as 405, but the horizontal resolution would have been dire given
that its low bandwidth. I've not found a value for the bandwidth, but
200 ips for VERA is a lot lower than 1500 head-to-tape for Quad, so bandwidth would be proportionally lower than the 6 MHz that is usually
the upper limit of 625/25.

I do remember seeing - on some magazine-type prog., like "Nationwide" or
similar, so no technical details were given - of someone who'd used an
ordinary domestic reel-to-reel transport (screwed to the top of his TV
set IIRR); last time I mentioned this here people mentioned one or two
commercial products that basically did the same thing, but this was
definitely a home enthusiast (just 7" reels, IIRR).

That rings a bell. Sometime in the 1970s, IIRC. I came across a
local-news interview with the designer, on Youtube a few years ago.

There was also a children's toy camera and recorder that used a very low
res and low frame rate camera to record to audio cassette (probably
running at normal 1 7/8" ips).

PXL2000 I think?

Sadly managed the double of being pricy and poor quality results...

James

--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 07/04/2026 20:42, James Heaton wrote:

There was also a children's toy camera and recorder that used a very
low res and low frame rate camera to record to audio cassette
(probably running at normal 1 7/8" ips).

PXL2000 I think?

Sadly managed the double of being pricy and poor quality results...

That's the one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PXL2000 says that it was 120rCe|urCe90 pixels at 15 fps, and (I was wrong about this bit) ran the
audio tape at 9x normal speed.

It had a modulator for North American VHF TV (so I presume it produced
an NTSC 525-line 30 fps output) which rather scuppered its use in 625/25 Europe...
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

(Should I remove uk.telecom? I haven't yet.)
On 2026/4/7 16:46:0, NY wrote:

On 07/04/2026 02:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

On 2026/4/6 23:0:27, NY wrote:

On 06/04/2026 21:17, John Williamson wrote:

On 06/04/2026 20:22, NY wrote:

I wonder what VERA (BBC's attempt at making a video tape recorder)
looked like in action - the tape ran at "5.08 metres per second (16.7 >>>>> ft/s)"

None of your metric ... it was 200 IPS. :-) [Yes, that _is_ 5.08 m/s.)>> Quite why a round 200 rather than a binary multiple of the standard
speeds, which would have given 240, I don't know: probably it was
sufficiently different that it made sense to use a new speed (and that>> gave you slightly longer recording time - I think it might have been
half an hour a reel).

Numerical values of standards always intrigue me. Why 24 rather than 25

Me too!
I think that one _may_ have had some connection to 60 Hz mains. (Or, and perhaps more likely as I think film cameras predated universal mains, it
just seemed a sensible number, e. g. divisible by more than 25 is.)

frames per second for sound film (and 16 or 18 for silent film, rather > than 15)? Persistence of vision gives the minimum frame rate that will It did work out at exactly 5 seconds (80 frames) a foot for standard 8,

though I think the 16 FPS standard predated that format - maybe
something similar - yes, it would have, as the formats are related - for
16mm. The switch to 18 for Super 8 always puzzled me, though; I just
assumed they just wanted the users to use more film :-) [24 for sound
Super 8, but that was more to do with the requirements of the sound
recording system (it used a mag strip stuck to the edge of the film
stock); I don't think sound home cine ever really took off - filming on
silent was expensive enough!]

"work" but why not divide a second into either a power of two or else

Persistence of vision and flicker reduction are the reasons for the
higher rate (though I'm digressing, it doesn't explain the exact numbers chosen; those were, for video, probably chosen to avoid beating with
mains lighting, and/or with use of the mains for sync referencing).
While the image source was also the light source, flicker was a more significant factor: this applied as much with video as with film. It's
hard to say what flicker rate is acceptable, because it varies a lot
between people (we had some computers that could be run at 50 or 60 and
some of my colleagues were much more sensitive to the difference than I
was); 24/25, let along 16, is too low for most people though - most film projectors interrupt the beam twice per frame, not just to hide the film movement but to increase the flicker rate. With video, interlacing
doubled the flicker rate, as well as giving you twice the vertical
resolution without needing twice the bandwidth. Nowadays, when the light
source is independent of the video content, you can get away with very
low frame rates for mostly-static material, though few do. (Here's an
example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zte4TdMJkzI - other than when
the lead artiste walks into position near the start, I'm really not
aware how low the rate is, though I do see it once I am aware of it. [I
don't know _why it's so low - it's from 1962, so will presumably have
been at 25 FPS originally; presumably at some point in its history
someone was pushed for filespace.])

round to the nearest 5 fps? Why make floppy disks 5 1/4" and 3 1/2"
rather than 5", 6" or 3"? Why make a standard terminal have a width of Good questions! Actually, 3" floppies did exist - the Amstrad

word-processor used them, as did the Oric Atmos and one or two other
machines. (They were IMO somewhat superior mechanically, too, to the
3.5" ones.)

80 rather than 100 characters? Why did records run at 33 1/3, 45 and 78
rpm, rather than round numbers like 30 or 35, 50 and 80 rpm?

I think the 80 may have developed from typewriters, but that begs the
question of why there; at least they were ten characters per inch
(though 12 - "pica" - was also a standard), and maybe an 8" carriage
made for more manageable machines than a 10" one would? (For
"portables"; office machines maybe being the reason for the 132
standard? [I have an old one of those - I always imagine someone
defending it from attacking "Injuns", it's a huge old Imperial!]) I
think the 33 1/3 - being one-third of 100 - came out of something to do
with movie sound, though I don't know the details. Why 78 and 45,
though, I don't know. (Did they make for easy manufacture of strobe
discs, at one or other - maybe both? - mains frequencies.)
[That last reminds me of another strange number: 44100 Hz sample rate.
That did come out for the above reason: in the early days of digital
audio, there developed a way of encoding the digital audio into a video waveform; it made for a very low-requirement video, that could be
recorded error-free even on domestic-quality video recorders. This
became popular with recording companies as a way - before high-quality
digital links - of carrying around digital audio, e. g. between
different recording studios during the assembly/editing of albums.
Obviously it needed different video formats for "PAL"/NTSC studios; it
just so happened that 44100 fitted into both formats. Or that's what I
read, anyway - I think in the excellent series about the compact disc
format in Wireless World in the '70s or '80s.]

Are we being unreasonable in expecting that where there is a free
choice, people would choose a nice round number?

I wouldn't consider it at all unreasonable! I guess in most cases some
existing requirement/standard gets in the way, so it isn't as free a
choice as we might hope; and by the time it becomes clear that whatever
the original standard was isn't that relevant, development has
progressed too far. But, like you, I like to know what the origins are!
I'm sure Liz Tuddenham will be able to tell us about the RPM ones.

I realise the some "weird" numbers have a very logical reason - the PAL
and NTSC sub-carrier frequencies are chosen (n+1)/2 time line frequency,
to minimise cross-colour, plus fiddle factors to reduce the appearance > of dot patterning.

And likewise, you'd expect VERA to use an extension of the
well-established 1 7/8, 3 1/4, 7 1/5, 15, 30, ... sequence of tape speeds.

Maybe the machine whose mechanics it mostly used ran at 200, predating
the above sequence? (Which itself is slightly puzzling - OK it's a
binary sequence, but why 15 and 30 rather than 16 and/or 24?) [Anyone
remember 15/16 IPS? I remember a portable machine - with 3" reels, on
the end rather than side of the body - which used that speed to get even
a reasonable recording time; it didn't half sound muffled though! (OK,
it was in my boyhood when I'd have had a child's hearing so more
noticeable to me, but still ...)]

I remember reading somewhere that VERA used much of the mechanics - and
the reels - from the old steel-strip sound recorder the Beeb had. (But>> with conventional plastic recording tape, as shown by Dimbleby, not
steel strip.)

I don't know what speed the old steel strip recorder ran at; I do know>> it had to be in a room by itself for safety reasons, because if the tape
snapped there was a sharp end scything around at a fair speed ... and of
course splicing was a welding job!

I always wondered how WWII wireless reporters managed to record to steel tape or wire, given the danger of sharp ends flailing round if the
machine was hit by a stray bullet/shell.

I think a lot of them used some sort of recording phonograph, rather
than (metal) tape; certainly one of the more famous recordings, made in
a bomber over some German town, did. As for wire, have you ever seen a
wire recorder? They used _very_ fine wire, and a sort of spooling
mechanism that went up and down as it wound, rather like the machines
you sometimes see for loading spools for the cotton/textile industry; I
don't think the _ends_ would have been dangerous, though I think the
thinness of the wire probably led to cuts. I doubt they were much used
for portable work - even in domestic use they were prone to snaps, and
the resultant tangles, more or less unrescuable due to the high speed
they ran at (it had made a brillo pad by the time you realised something
had gone wrong).

Was [VERA] only system A ("405 line")?

I think VERA had been superseded by the Ampex Quad system while it was > still at the prototype stage, long before 625. I suppose in theory
someone could have tried recording a 625-line signal to it if the
machinery had still been serviceable once 625 had been developed. If
VERA only used frame sync pulses it could have synced to 625 line as
easily as 405, but the horizontal resolution would have been dire given
that its low bandwidth. I've not found a value for the bandwidth, but
200 ips for VERA is a lot lower than 1500 head-to-tape for Quad, so bandwidth would be proportionally lower than the 6 MHz that is usually > the upper limit of 625/25.

Did it use AM, FM, or direct recording of the video waveform? (I
remember reading that any magnetic system was limited to about 8
octaves, wherever they were - top end obviously limited by head gap,
bottom by the ability to get any significant amplitude, hence the use of
FM in [certainly domestic] video recorders, as video really needs a
response down to DC.)

I do remember seeing - on some magazine-type prog., like "Nationwide" or
similar, so no technical details were given - of someone who'd used an>> ordinary domestic reel-to-reel transport (screwed to the top of his TV>> set IIRR); last time I mentioned this here people mentioned one or two>> commercial products that basically did the same thing, but this was
definitely a home enthusiast (just 7" reels, IIRR).

That rings a bell. Sometime in the 1970s, IIRC. I came across a
local-news interview with the designer, on Youtube a few years ago.

If you find the link again, please share! (I have a feeling it may have
been system A; certainly the TV it was attached to was quite an old model.)

There was also a children's toy camera and recorder that used a very low
res and low frame rate camera to record to audio cassette (probably
running at normal 1 7/8" ips).

See later post.

Mind you, Quad spins the head at an incredible 15,000 rpm which is a
serious head-to-tape speed (1,500 ips or 38 metres/sec), though am I
right that the head does not quite touch the surface of the tape?

Indeed; if it does, it is likely to kill the heads. Same with helical
recorders - certainly the Philips reel-to-reel one I had, and I think
the home formats: a very thin film of air designed into the system.
That's why splicing (actually joining the tape) was so rarely done with
any format videotape - too much danger of the splice hitting the heads. Though others have replied that it _did_; I thought it didn't, with a complicated system of pneumatics being involved (which had been

simplified to special grooves on the drum between the heads on the
Philips reel-to-reel video machine I had - though not on subsequent
[V2000/VHS] formats, so I don't know how they manage the air).

The thought of splicing Quad tape to make edits (one of its strengths
for quickly assembling compilation tapes for sports events) strikes
terror in my heart. The only reason it was possible is that the splice > had to be at an exact location between one frame sync pulse and the next
which was *guaranteed* to be between one head pass and the next.
Apparently editing was done by spraying magnetic "developing fluid" on > the tape to make the frame sync pulses on the control track visible, and
then the cutting, butting and splicing was done under a microscope. But
in the hands of a skilled operator, a lot quicker than making up an edit decision list and dubbing selected parts from one helical-scan tape to > another. Quad continued for highlights of sports and live events (royal
weddings etc) a long time after it had become obsolete for every thing else.

I thought the broadcasting industry developed a special - disc-based, I
think - machine for "instant replays" of goals etc., with I think only a
second or few duration? (Used with a big "R" on-screen when used.)
[]

It still amazes me that we went from Quad which needed compressed air
and vacuum pump, and needed a lot of tweaking of tape tension, head penetration etc, to Philips N1500 and then VHS which needed nothing more than occasional adjustment of tracking - and that was in about 15 years.

(And V2000 which had dynamic head tracking. A sadly-lost format [though
I guess even VHS is getting that way now].)
[quad]

How you managed to switch between one head's output and another several times per field, without noticeable glitches in normal circumstances, is
a testament to consistent build quality of heads, given that I presume > the signal level is dependent on magnetic field strength (ie amplitude > modulated rather than frequency modulated) so heads have to be very
closely matched in gain (or else there needs to be switchable gain
between one head and another to compensate).

Didn't they use FM (for the octaves reason mentioned above), so
amplitude variation wouldn't be as important?

Am I right that *all* helical formats, even 1" professional ones,
recorded a whole field per head-pass, rather than needing several head > passes per field?

I've certainly never heard of any that didn't. I was most impressed by
those who developed the formats - VHS-C etc. - that produced compatible
tapes (i. e. that could be played on a conventional machine, needing
only a mechanical adapter), using much smaller head drums (to keep the
size of the cameras down), using three-quarter wraps or similar (and
presumably multiple heads and switching).

I'm sure I've heard of some video recorders (not sure whether Quad or helical) which could record single frames and so could be used for stop-frame animation. Stopping and starting the tape (or backspacing it correctly) for each frame sounds like a servo-mechanism nightmare ;-) Normally VT needed a few seconds pre-roll to get the tape and heads in > perfect sync, and then the tape ran at consistent constant speed.

I hadn't heard of such machines; I wouldn't be surprised if they
_couldn't_ be used for normal playback. I bet their development was just
about complete when digital means became economical, in the same way the fast-pull-down (film) camera was just about complete when AMPEX came
along. Most frustrating for the designers/developers!

I remember a holiday job, in the mid 80s, when I was at university
involved me playing loads of U-Matic tapes of scenes that are probably > covered by the Official Secrets Act, and dubbing them to a standard BBC
slo-mo unit. This was then played back frame by frame, allowing long
enough for each frame to be digitised and stored on computer. I think it took about a second to digitise each frame (so 25x slowed that real
time!), during which time the computer-controlled slo-mo made some very unhealthy noises ;-)

Not related, but I've recently played with one of the domestic-level
machines for digitising old cine film (sold under various names -
Winait, Wolverine, and a couple of German names; I think Winait is
actually the [Chinese of course] maker of the machines). That runs at 2
frames per second, so 1/8 real time (or 1/9 for Super 8). I'd been
expecting to run into the criticisms discussion of these machines raises
- unnecessary compression in the firmware, and other such; in practice,
sadly, my films have deteriorated - mainly colour balance - to the
extent that those are the least of my worries. (These machines aren't
telecine - they just have a camera set up to take pictures of the
frames, hence the slow speed.) Given the film degradation, the results
have been quite acceptable.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 2026/4/7 21:2:32, NY wrote:

On 07/04/2026 20:42, James Heaton wrote:

There was also a children's toy camera and recorder that used a very
low res and low frame rate camera to record to audio cassette
(probably running at normal 1 7/8" ips).

PXL2000 I think?

Sadly managed the double of being pricy and poor quality results...

That's the one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PXL2000 says that it was 120rCe|urCe90 pixels at 15 fps, and (I was wrong about this bit) ran the audio tape at 9x normal speed.

It had a modulator for North American VHF TV (so I presume it produced
an NTSC 525-line 30 fps output) which rather scuppered its use in 625/25 Europe...

Has recently become popular - though that's exaggerating it - with the
sort of "arty" film people who like to shoot on 8mm. To the extent that still-working examples now (or, maybe a couple of years ago and the
supply has dried up to the extent that this is now no longer the case?)
go for silly money.

I'm pretty sure it (through the modulator) produced "postage-stamp"
video, i. e. with the video in the middle of a (black?) screen; not only
would that have simplified the storage/rescaling requirements, but the
tiny picture would look better than if it was blown up to full screen.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The fact that there is a highway to hell and only a stairway to heaven
says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers.
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

John Williamson wrote:

On 05/04/2026 21:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

- most recoding engineers so called are total shit

The recording engineers are responding to the demands of their
clients.

Having finally got my studio monitors back working I am now in the
sad position that when I went to hear a real live orchestra, I
realised my ears now have intermodulation distortion. :0-(

Getting old is no fun.

The alternative is worse!
--


--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 08/04/2026 09:06, Ashley Booth wrote:

John Williamson wrote:

On 05/04/2026 21:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

- most recoding engineers so called are total shit

The recording engineers are responding to the demands of their
clients.

Having finally got my studio monitors back working I am now in the
sad position that when I went to hear a real live orchestra, I
realised my ears now have intermodulation distortion. :0-(

Getting old is no fun.

The alternative is worse!

Going by what's happening to my Mum at the moment, she is wondering
about that.:-(
--
Tciao for Now!

John.
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:

[...]

Why did records run at 33 1/3, 45 and 78
rpm, rather than round numbers like 30 or 35, 50 and 80 rpm?

Cylinders ran at various standard round-number speeds long before discs
came on the market. Columbia standardised their discs at 80 rpm, but
they couldn't enforce their standard on the HMV/Victor companies.

When the earliest discs were being recorded, some machines were
hand-cranked and, even on spring or weight-driven machines, there was no
easy way to check the speed, so it was left to the listener to adjust
the playback speed until it sounded 'right'. Eventually they decided to standardise, so the recording engineers took a collection of existing
records, played them at a speed that sounded most like the original
artist, which they remembered hearing, and then calculated the average.
It came out at 78 rpm.

HMV out-advertised Columbia, so they forced the 78 speed into the
public's mind, even though a substantial proportion of the total of
records sold ran at 80 rpm. Eventually they 'merged' with Columbia,
abolished their 80 rpm speed and closed their 'silent surface' record
plant.

33 + 1/3 rpm was mainly a product of the first film sound tracks, where
the record had to last for the duration of a reel of film but not be too
big to handle (they were 16" diameter). The playback turntable was mechanically synchronised to the projector mechanism and I presume that particular speed made the gearing ratio easier to arrange (I have never
tried to calculate it).

When Columbia introduced the 33 +1/3 rpm microgroove record, Victor
decided they weren't going to go along with it, so they introdued the 45
rpm 'single' with a quick-change autochanger to give longer programme
times. They conconcted a pseudo-scientific advertising campaign to
'prove' that 45 was the best speed and Columbia's product was rubbish.
So the 45 speed was nothing more than a 'not invented here' piece of advertising nonsense.

The BBC also used 60 rpm for some of their recordings, as it coud be
played on their existing equipment without too much modification and was available as an option on the Marguerite lathes which they were already
using. They also used coarse-grooved 33 + 1/3 records 16" in diameter
for recording whole programmes.

Patho used speeds from 90 to 120 rpm with the recordings modulated
vertically. When they changed to lateral modulation, they reduced the
speed to 80 rpm.

[...]

I always wondered how WWII wireless reporters managed to record to steel
tape or wire, given the danger of sharp ends flailing round if the
machine was hit by a stray bullet/shell.

They didn't: wire recorders weren't used by the Allies until after WWII
was over. The German army used them during the war for military
purposes and German radio studios used them for programmes - but they
were unknown to the Allies until the war ended.

Steel tape was used in limited quantites by the BBC in their studios but
the special steel was difficult to obtain from Sweden. The
Philips-Miller system was also used in studios and in underground
emergency broadcasting centres (Clifton Rocks Railway Tunnel). Supplies
of the special film from the Netherlands were cut off early in the war
but Ilford started manufacturing it in England later on.

British reporters used portable disc recorders driven by a modified
Garrard twin-spring motor, American reporters used the Recordgraph
system of embossing a groove into 35mm film. The BBC offered a combined facility for getting the reports back to the UK and on to America by
means of two mobile shortwave transmitters that followed the battle
across Europe. (Eddystones made the RF stages and Wodens made the
modulators.)
--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 08/04/2026 09:06, Ashley Booth wrote:

John Williamson wrote:

On 05/04/2026 21:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

- most recoding engineers so called are total shit

The recording engineers are responding to the demands of their
clients.

Having finally got my studio monitors back working I am now in the
sad position that when I went to hear a real live orchestra, I
realised my ears now have intermodulation distortion. :0-(

Getting old is no fun.

The alternative is worse!

Being dead is completely painless.
--
Max Demian
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 08/04/2026 00:45, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

Not related, but I've recently played with one of the domestic-level
machines for digitising old cine film (sold under various names -
Winait, Wolverine, and a couple of German names; I think Winait is
actually the [Chinese of course] maker of the machines). That runs at 2 frames per second, so 1/8 real time (or 1/9 for Super 8). I'd been
expecting to run into the criticisms discussion of these machines raises
- unnecessary compression in the firmware, and other such; in practice, sadly, my films have deteriorated - mainly colour balance - to the
extent that those are the least of my worries. (These machines aren't telecine - they just have a camera set up to take pictures of the
frames, hence the slow speed.) Given the film degradation, the results
have been quite acceptable.

My dad had all his Standard and Super 8 films telecined by a commercial company. The results were not too bad, though they showed just how bad 8
mm film was in terms of picture resolution/sharpness. One interesting
thing I noticed: although Standard 8 has a smaller frame and therefore
needs more optical magnification to fit a standard 720x576 video frame,
the pictures appeared sharper. I think it was because the grain was so
large that it had a sharpening effect - for some weird psychological
reason, adding noise to a slightly blurred picture can make it appear
sharper.

The most challenging film to sort out was one where he mounted his Super
8 camera on some baulks of wood laid in the dashboard and back of the
front passenger seat and drove round town with me clicking the manual
shutter every second (roughly). Obviously everything is speeded up by a
factor of about 25x. It is a wonderful record of what Wakefield (where
we lived) was like at the time: driving along roads in the city centre
which were pedestrianised and terraced a year later, or along roads
which were later closed at one end.

What made it a challenge to get a good video copy was that when it was telecined, there was a sequence of two video frames which corresponded
to two consecutive film frames, followed by one video frame which was a composite of two film frames overlapping - rinse and repeat. I had to
convert the MPG film to a large number of still BMP pictures, delete
every third one (the composites) and the join the remaining pictures
back into an MPEG file. That gave me the option of repeating every video
frame n times to slow down the motion a bit, at the expense of making
the motion very jerky.

I filmed a modern-day equivalent in 2019(*), following the route as
accurately as possible, with gaps where I couldn't drive along roads
that no longer existed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3eZB2QNvtM (1973) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T4OkqOdL8o (2019)


I've speeded up the modern version so as to match roughly the
slowed-down 1973 film.

The thumbnail picture in each case is my old school which we drove past.
I had to go to school every Saturday morning, and he'd set up the camera
that morning so after collecting me and going home for lunch, he drove
back there as part of a trip around the city. I was always intrigued by
this double-headed telegraph pole
https://i.postimg.cc/g0ZFBYt4/Image1.png at 3:41 in the old film.



(*) A small GoPro fastened to the screen by a sucker (like a dashcam) is
a lot less intrusive than a Super 8 camera mounted on baulks of 2x4"
timber ;-)
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 08/04/2026 09:36, John Williamson wrote:

On 08/04/2026 09:06, Ashley Booth wrote:

John Williamson wrote:

On 05/04/2026 21:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

- most recoding engineers so called are total shit

The recording engineers are responding to the demands of their
clients.

Having finally got my studio monitors back working I am now in the
sad position that when I went to hear a real live orchestra, I
realised my ears now have intermodulation distortion. :0-(

Getting old is no fun.

The alternative is worse!

Going by what's happening to my Mum at the moment, she is wondering
about that.:-(

Indeed. I had the same experience with my mother. I wouldn't let any pet
I own suffer like that
--
There is nothing a fleet of dispatchable nuclear power plants cannot do
that cannot be done worse and more expensively and with higher carbon emissions and more adverse environmental impact by adding intermittent renewable energy.

--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

(uk.telecom removed from Followup-To, though not this post.)

On 2026/4/8 15:12:52, NY wrote:

On 08/04/2026 00:45, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

Not related, but I've recently played with one of the domestic-level

[]

My dad had all his Standard and Super 8 films telecined by a commercial company. The results were not too bad, though they showed just how bad 8
mm film was in terms of picture resolution/sharpness. One interesting

I remember seeing some 8mm (not sure which format) on TV in the '70s (I
think it might have been part of some competition) - I got the
impression it had been telecined - and I got the feeling that the
resolution _was_ good, certainly better than the SD I was seeing it via.
(Of course, this was excellent material, competition-winning or
something.) Though I had the feeling that the _contrast_ was down; I
couldn't see why, so presumed that was just down to the conversion machinery/method.

thing I noticed: although Standard 8 has a smaller frame and therefore
needs more optical magnification to fit a standard 720x576 video frame,
the pictures appeared sharper. I think it was because the grain was so
large that it had a sharpening effect - for some weird psychological
reason, adding noise to a slightly blurred picture can make it appear sharper.

Could also be due to film speed: I think the vast majority of Super 8
was Kodachrome nominally 25 ASA, actually 40 ASA indoors film but with a reddish correcting film in the cameras (with a weird square key that
went into the handle to push the filter out of the way when shooting
indoors). Whereas Standard 8 came in a variety of speeds, including
(true) 25 ASA Kodachrome, but many other speeds: my camera (possibly the
same model as Mr. Zapruder's; it certainly looked much the same) had an automatic exposure control (selenium cell!) set up for 10 ASA, and I
could for most of the time I used it get Perutz stock that was that
speed. (I did use some of the Kodak 25 - that involved looking at what
the auto-exposure would have set it to and turning it down a bit over a
stop. [I also used some Agfa stock, but can't remember what speed that
was.])

The most challenging film to sort out was one where he mounted his Super
8 camera on some baulks of wood laid in the dashboard and back of the
front passenger seat and drove round town with me clicking the manual shutter every second (roughly). Obviously everything is speeded up by a factor of about 25x. It is a wonderful record of what Wakefield (where
we lived) was like at the time: driving along roads in the city centre
which were pedestrianised and terraced a year later, or along roads
which were later closed at one end.

What made it a challenge to get a good video copy was that when it was telecined, there was a sequence of two video frames which corresponded
to two consecutive film frames, followed by one video frame which was a composite of two film frames overlapping - rinse and repeat. I had to convert the MPG film to a large number of still BMP pictures, delete
every third one (the composites) and the join the remaining pictures
back into an MPEG file. That gave me the option of repeating every video frame n times to slow down the motion a bit, at the expense of making
the motion very jerky.

Presumably that was done to give 25 FPS video, and that (sounds very
weird) was the compromise the telecine company found worked well for a
lot of material (obviously not for discrete frames). The WinAit machine
just produces one-to-one mapping of the film to the video, but makes an
MPEG file with the rate set to 30 (20 in later firmwares) - this
obviously made it run too fast; the users of these machines (there's a
_long_ discussion thread) have devised a software that just tweaks the
MPEG header to whatever speed you want (such as 16 or 18), since
nowadays in computer world there's no need to fix at 50 (or 60), you can
have whatever you like.

I filmed a modern-day equivalent in 2019(*), following the route as accurately as possible, with gaps where I couldn't drive along roads
that no longer existed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3eZB2QNvtM (1973) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T4OkqOdL8o (2019)

Presumably, if you wanted, you could make a side-by-side version, like
the Beeb did with their (London to Brighton I think) railway one when
they re-shot the (1920s? '50s?) one in the '70s or #80s. (The main
difference I could see [other than the change from monochrome of course]
was that the modern railways just had a lot less traffic - you hardly
saw any other trains - and less infrastructure.)
[]

back there as part of a trip around the city. I was always intrigued by
this double-headed telegraph pole
https://i.postimg.cc/g0ZFBYt4/Image1.png at 3:41 in the old film.

Indeed! (Maybe I shouldn't have removed uk.telecom from the followups!
If anyone there wants to comment, perhaps put it back!)

(*) A small GoPro fastened to the screen by a sucker (like a dashcam) is
a lot less intrusive than a Super 8 camera mounted on baulks of 2x4"
timber ;-)

Did you one-frame-per-second trigger it somehow, or just take the video
it produced and speed it up (e. g. by taking every nth frame)?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

what - recession? Up north? What we gonna have - more nowt?
(News Quiz 2013-7-26)
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 08/04/2026 23:33, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

(uk.telecom removed from Followup-To, though not this post.)

On 2026/4/8 15:12:52, NY wrote:

On 08/04/2026 00:45, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

My dad had all his Standard and Super 8 films telecined by a commercial
company. The results were not too bad, though they showed just how bad 8
mm film was in terms of picture resolution/sharpness. One interesting

I remember seeing some 8mm (not sure which format) on TV in the '70s (I
think it might have been part of some competition) - I got the
impression it had been telecined - and I got the feeling that the
resolution _was_ good, certainly better than the SD I was seeing it via.
(Of course, this was excellent material, competition-winning or
something.) Though I had the feeling that the _contrast_ was down; I
couldn't see why, so presumed that was just down to the conversion machinery/method.

Kodachrome 8mm film has an equivalent resolution of about 1024 x 768
pixels, at a speed of 25 ASA. Others manage about 720 x 675 at the same
speed.

Most users were happy to project it up to about a 72 inch screen size in
the average living room. I have seen it at ten feet in an larger room.

When your Dad had his film scanned, the limits were the optics and other problems in the conversion process, especially the poor definition of
the colour information (About 100 pixels smeared across the screen). The
best luminance definition you can get using domestic video formats is
about 360 x 256 pixels and this what limits the apparent sharpness. If
you were to scan the same film using 4K video equipment and a little
software enhancement, you could prpbably convince yourself it had
originally been shot as 2K video.

thing I noticed: although Standard 8 has a smaller frame and therefore
needs more optical magnification to fit a standard 720x576 video frame,
the pictures appeared sharper. I think it was because the grain was so
large that it had a sharpening effect - for some weird psychological
reason, adding noise to a slightly blurred picture can make it appear
sharper.

Could also be due to film speed: I think the vast majority of Super 8
was Kodachrome nominally 25 ASA, actually 40 ASA indoors film but with a reddish correcting film in the cameras (with a weird square key that
went into the handle to push the filter out of the way when shooting indoors). Whereas Standard 8 came in a variety of speeds, including
(true) 25 ASA Kodachrome, but many other speeds: my camera (possibly the
same model as Mr. Zapruder's; it certainly looked much the same) had an automatic exposure control (selenium cell!) set up for 10 ASA, and I
could for most of the time I used it get Perutz stock that was that
speed. (I did use some of the Kodak 25 - that involved looking at what
the auto-exposure would have set it to and turning it down a bit over a
stop. [I also used some Agfa stock, but can't remember what speed that
was.])

25 ASA Kodachrome was the best available film for definition due to the
very small grain, though the colour balance was not perfect. (Does
anyone else remember "Kodachrome Blue" skies?)

Other makes had larger grain, so less definition, but better (Different, better, worse? Opinions varied) colour balance.

On my Fuji digital cameras,I can select various types of Fuji film
emulation, and in my processing software, I have plugins to emulate just
about any analogue colour film, starting from just about any digital
camera. (They all have slightly different colour filters on the sensor.)
--
Tciao for Now!

John.
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 2026/4/9 7:58:42, John Williamson wrote:

On 08/04/2026 23:33, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

(uk.telecom removed from Followup-To, though not this post.)

On 2026/4/8 15:12:52, NY wrote:

On 08/04/2026 00:45, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

My dad had all his Standard and Super 8 films telecined by a commercial
company. The results were not too bad, though they showed just how bad 8 >>> mm film was in terms of picture resolution/sharpness. One interesting

I remember seeing some 8mm (not sure which format) on TV in the '70s (I
think it might have been part of some competition) - I got the
impression it had been telecined - and I got the feeling that the
resolution _was_ good, certainly better than the SD I was seeing it via.
(Of course, this was excellent material, competition-winning or
something.) Though I had the feeling that the _contrast_ was down; I
couldn't see why, so presumed that was just down to the conversion
machinery/method.

Kodachrome 8mm film has an equivalent resolution of about 1024 x 768
pixels, at a speed of 25 ASA. Others manage about 720 x 675 at the same speed.

Standard 8 (true 25ASA) or Super 8 (40 ASA really, but larger image
size, at least horizontally)?

Most users were happy to project it up to about a 72 inch screen size in
the average living room. I have seen it at ten feet in an larger room.

When your Dad had his film scanned, the limits were the optics and other

(Understandable mistake as there's an attribution line missing above,
but it wasn't my Dad - by counting >s, I think it was NY's. No matter.)

problems in the conversion process, especially the poor definition of
the colour information (About 100 pixels smeared across the screen). The best luminance definition you can get using domestic video formats is
about 360 x 256 pixels and this what limits the apparent sharpness. If
you were to scan the same film using 4K video equipment and a little software enhancement, you could prpbably convince yourself it had
originally been shot as 2K video.

thing I noticed: although Standard 8 has a smaller frame and therefore
needs more optical magnification to fit a standard 720x576 video frame,
the pictures appeared sharper. I think it was because the grain was so
large that it had a sharpening effect - for some weird psychological
reason, adding noise to a slightly blurred picture can make it appear
sharper.

Could also be due to film speed: I think the vast majority of Super 8
was Kodachrome nominally 25 ASA, actually 40 ASA indoors film but with a
reddish correcting film in the cameras (with a weird square key that
went into the handle to push the filter out of the way when shooting
indoors). Whereas Standard 8 came in a variety of speeds, including
(true) 25 ASA Kodachrome, but many other speeds: my camera (possibly the
same model as Mr. Zapruder's; it certainly looked much the same) had an
automatic exposure control (selenium cell!) set up for 10 ASA, and I
could for most of the time I used it get Perutz stock that was that
speed. (I did use some of the Kodak 25 - that involved looking at what
the auto-exposure would have set it to and turning it down a bit over a
stop. [I also used some Agfa stock, but can't remember what speed that
was.])

25 ASA Kodachrome was the best available film for definition due to the
very small grain, though the colour balance was not perfect. (Does

Better than 10 ASA? That's what I mostly used (as it suited the camera).

anyone else remember "Kodachrome Blue" skies?)

And the yellowish reds ...

I always felt there seemed to be some - entirely coincidental, in that
I'm sure they had no actual effect chemically! - correlation between the colours of the reels the film came back on and ...: Kodak came on yellow spools, and I always thought had a slight - well, not bias exactly, but
was particularly good on yellows and reds. Perutz came back on green
spools, and I always thought was good on greens; Agfa came on orange
reels, but I didn't use enough of that to build a feel for whether it
had a bias/preference. I don't remember using any other makes. (I
favoured, I think it was, Orwo for still film, as as an impecunious
schoolboy it was noticeably lower in price, and not correspondingly
inferior, though it may have been a bit.)

I _think_ my Kodak has lost least colour in the 50-odd years, but all of
them have deteriorated. :-(

Other makes had larger grain, so less definition, but better (Different, better, worse? Opinions varied) colour balance.

On my Fuji digital cameras,I can select various types of Fuji film emulation, and in my processing software, I have plugins to emulate just about any analogue colour film, starting from just about any digital
camera. (They all have slightly different colour filters on the sensor.)

Do you actually notice that much difference, apart from perhaps some
extremes? And does it - the processing software, that is - have any
automatic recognition, that could be used on scanned colour negatives
where the original make wasn't known (or was one not listed)?

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

<Squawk> Pieces of eight!
<Squawk> Pieces of eight!
<Squawk> Pieces of nine!
<SYSTEM HALTED: parroty error!>
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 09/04/2026 18:23, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

Standard 8 (true 25ASA) or Super 8 (40 ASA really, but larger image
size, at least horizontally)?

Definition comparisons between analogue and digital are more art than
science.

problems in the conversion process, especially the poor definition of
the colour information (About 100 pixels smeared across the screen). The
best luminance definition you can get using domestic video formats is
about 360 x 256 pixels and this what limits the apparent sharpness. If
you were to scan the same film using 4K video equipment and a little
software enhancement, you could prpbably convince yourself it had
originally been shot as 2K video.

thing I noticed: although Standard 8 has a smaller frame and therefore >>>> needs more optical magnification to fit a standard 720x576 video frame, >>>> the pictures appeared sharper. I think it was because the grain was so >>>> large that it had a sharpening effect - for some weird psychological
reason, adding noise to a slightly blurred picture can make it appear
sharper.

Could also be due to film speed: I think the vast majority of Super 8
was Kodachrome nominally 25 ASA, actually 40 ASA indoors film but with a >>> reddish correcting film in the cameras (with a weird square key that
went into the handle to push the filter out of the way when shooting
indoors). Whereas Standard 8 came in a variety of speeds, including
(true) 25 ASA Kodachrome, but many other speeds: my camera (possibly the >>> same model as Mr. Zapruder's; it certainly looked much the same) had an
automatic exposure control (selenium cell!) set up for 10 ASA, and I
could for most of the time I used it get Perutz stock that was that
speed. (I did use some of the Kodak 25 - that involved looking at what
the auto-exposure would have set it to and turning it down a bit over a
stop. [I also used some Agfa stock, but can't remember what speed that
was.])

25 ASA Kodachrome was the best available film for definition due to the
very small grain, though the colour balance was not perfect. (Does

Better than 10 ASA? That's what I mostly used (as it suited the camera).

Just for a change, AI makes sense and agres with my nresearch.

"Kodachrome is renowned for having an exceptionally fine, subtle, and
almost invisible grain structure, particularly in lower ISO versions
like Kodachrome 25. Due to its unique K-14 development process, which
involved dye couplers added during development rather than in the film emulsion, it produced incredibly sharp, high-resolution images with very little grain, often described as a smooth, almost "grainless" look.
Key Characteristics of Kodachrome Grain:

Extremely Fine Structure: Kodachrome 25 was considered the
sharpest, finest-grained color emulsion on the market, offering, clean, detailed images.
Subtle Presence: While modern films often emphasize grain,
Kodachrome was favored for its clean look, with 64ISO offering only
slightly more texture than 25ISO.
Sharpness: The lack of dye couplers in the film itself created a
thinner emulsion, leading to less light scattering and enhanced sharpness"

anyone else remember "Kodachrome Blue" skies?)

And the yellowish reds ...

Indeed, as against the almost fluorescemt greens of Fujichrome...

I always felt there seemed to be some - entirely coincidental, in that
I'm sure they had no actual effect chemically! - correlation between the colours of the reels the film came back on and ...: Kodak came on yellow spools, and I always thought had a slight - well, not bias exactly, but
was particularly good on yellows and reds. Perutz came back on green
spools, and I always thought was good on greens; Agfa came on orange
reels, but I didn't use enough of that to build a feel for whether it
had a bias/preference. I don't remember using any other makes. (I
favoured, I think it was, Orwo for still film, as as an impecunious
schoolboy it was noticeably lower in price, and not correspondingly
inferior, though it may have been a bit.)

All colour films had their own peculiarities. In the pro movie world,
every batch needed different filtration in the processing, which is why
the colour grader was so vitsl in the post production process. People
will notice of the eyes change colour even minutely between to
successive close ups.

I _think_ my Kodak has lost least colour in the 50-odd years, but all of
them have deteriorated. :-(

Kodachrome's chemistry makes it the most stable colour emulsion there is.

The only more stable solution is early Technicolor, which used three synchronised mono films and filters for recording and playback.

Do you actually notice that much difference, apart from perhaps some extremes? And does it - the processing software, that is - have any
automatic recognition, that could be used on scanned colour negatives
where the original make wasn't known (or was one not listed)?

It does make a noticeable difference, but you do need accurately
calibrated equipment all the way along the chain.

It also has ways to compensate for the way that the layers fade at
different rates, and can even cope with the rare extremes where one or
more of the layers reverts to negative.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 2026/4/9 23:21:0, John Williamson wrote:

On 09/04/2026 18:23, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

Standard 8 (true 25ASA) or Super 8 (40 ASA really, but larger image
size, at least horizontally)?

Definition comparisons between analogue and digital are more art than science.

Except that film isn't entirely analogue - at fine enough structure it's grains. Though as you describe, there's more to it than that, with dye
couplers and so on. But - though those may make some difference - it is
down to grain size in the end.
[]

25 ASA Kodachrome was the best available film for definition due to the
very small grain, though the colour balance was not perfect. (Does

Better than 10 ASA? That's what I mostly used (as it suited the camera).

Just for a change, AI makes sense and agres with my nresearch.

"Kodachrome is renowned for having an exceptionally fine, subtle, and
almost invisible grain structure, particularly in lower ISO versions
like Kodachrome 25. Due to its unique K-14 development process, which involved dye couplers added during development rather than in the film emulsion, it produced incredibly sharp, high-resolution images with very little grain, often described as a smooth, almost "grainless" look.
Key Characteristics of Kodachrome Grain:

Extremely Fine Structure: Kodachrome 25 was considered the
sharpest, finest-grained color emulsion on the market, offering, clean, detailed images.
Subtle Presence: While modern films often emphasize grain,
Kodachrome was favored for its clean look, with 64ISO offering only
slightly more texture than 25ISO.

since they also mention 64 (I think ISO was the same as ASA), I suspect
they're more talking about 35mm (and other formats) for still images,
rather than cine; I'm pretty sure 64ASA wasn't widely available (in
Boots etc.; I'm not talking about specialist send-away-for enthusiasts!)
in either 8mm format. The 25ASA one used for Standard 8 _might_ have
been the same as the one used for stills; the one sold as "25ASA" for
Super 8 was actually 40ASA indoor film, though if the above is true
might not have been as much coarser as that implies. I'm still dubious
whether it would be as fine as 10ASA, though.
[]

I _think_ my Kodak has lost least colour in the 50-odd years, but all of
them have deteriorated. :-(

Kodachrome's chemistry makes it the most stable colour emulsion there is.

Good to know.

The only more stable solution is early Technicolor, which used three synchronised mono films and filters for recording and playback.

Indeed; that is, therefore, not really colour film, at least in terms of
the differential deterioration. (Though I guess for playback now, you'd
have to make sure the colour filters were still what they were! [Though
I guess you'd do it digitally now.]) But the horrendous cost - not to
mention the size of the equipment! - means that was never used by
amateurs; I suspect that until Standard 8 came along, both cost and size
meant amateur use didn't really exist. (OK, briefly with 9.5mm maybe;
I've never seen equipment for that format so don't know how big it was.)

Do you actually notice that much difference, apart from perhaps some
extremes? And does it - the processing software, that is - have any
automatic recognition, that could be used on scanned colour negatives
where the original make wasn't known (or was one not listed)?

It does make a noticeable difference, but you do need accurately
calibrated equipment all the way along the chain.

It also has ways to compensate for the way that the layers fade at
different rates, and can even cope with the rare extremes where one or
more of the layers reverts to negative.

Wow, not heard of that! I think most of my negative photography was in
the 1970s, initially on Instamatic (126 format) - before (and I think
after) that on slides, which were cheaper except in the heyday of home
snappy, which I'd put at '70s/'80s. (Some brief visit from 110 format, too.)

Puzzled me - when slide scanners for the amateur started to be common
(probably mostly gone now) - how few of them catered for 126 format
(28mm square, offset), only 135 ["35mm"] (18 by 24, centred); at one
time I'd say 126 (alias "instamatic") was the most common format. Maybe
most people at the peak both {used prints}, and {lost the negatives}, so scanning of that format never had a big market. (Ditto for 110, with the addition that to get the same resolution would require better sensors in
the scanner, if they didn't use different lenses which they wouldn't on
cost grounds.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Of course some of it [television] is bad. But some of everything is bad
- books, music, family ... - Melvyn Bragg, RT 2017/7/1-7
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 09/04/2026 07:58, John Williamson wrote:

Kodachrome 8mm film has an equivalent resolution of about 1024 x 768
pixels, at a speed of 25 ASA. Others manage about 720 x 675 at the same speed.

I think there is also a limit on the quality of the camera lens and how
good the focus was. I've noticed that a lot of Dad's Super 8 cine films
look very slightly blurred and I'm wondering whether there was a
focussing error whereby the viewfinder's focus screen showed that the
image was in focus but the image on the film was slightly out of focus.
There is also the potential "focussing beyond infinity" problem with
some lenses - that when the focus ring is turned to its "infinity"
end-stop, you have been able to go beyond the infinity position and the
image is out of focus. My Nikon DSLR and Nikon zoom lens has that
problem. Normally you don't notice it because you either use autofocus
or else you use the viewfinder to check focus; I only noticed it when I
was taking some aurora borealis photos where the light was far too dark
to check focus in the viewfinder, so you have to turn off auto focus and manually turn the focus ring to the infinity end-stop.

I hadn't realised that Kodachrome 25 Super 8 can resolve as high as
1024x768 pixels (ie theoretical alternate black and white stripes 512
black and 512 white interleaved).

I have noticed subjectively that older Standard 8 films (obviously a
different camera and lens) *appear* to be sharper (although more grainy)
than Super 8 ones which had a slightly larger frame. No idea what the
Standard 8 film was - maybe Kodachrome 25, again. The Std 8 would have
been filmed in the early-mid 1960s, and the Super 8 from the late 70
onwards, if that gives any clue to what film types were available.
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 10/04/2026 03:00, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

since they also mention 64 (I think ISO was the same as ASA), I suspect

Yes, AFAIK, "ISO" and "ASA" are two different names for the same scale.
There was a different film-speed scale which no-one uses any more: DIN (Deutsche Industrische Normen - German Industrial Norm) which was
logarithmic, so instead of doubling the ISO from 100 to 200 to 400, you
added three from 21 DIN to 24 DIN to 27 DIN, etc.

they're more talking about 35mm (and other formats) for still images,
rather than cine; I'm pretty sure 64ASA wasn't widely available (in
Boots etc.; I'm not talking about specialist send-away-for enthusiasts!)
in either 8mm format. The 25ASA one used for Standard 8 _might_ have
been the same as the one used for stills; the one sold as "25ASA" for
Super 8 was actually 40ASA indoor film, though if the above is true
might not have been as much coarser as that implies. I'm still dubious whether it would be as fine as 10ASA, though.

I think towards the end of the time when I did 35 mm film photography,
both Kodachrome 25 and 64 were on sale in dedicated photo shops and
probably in Boots.


One thing that I discovered about Kodachrome emulsion, unlike Agfa and
other slide films (and all negative films) is that it is not transparent
to infra-red. I have a 35 mm slide/neg scanner which shines IR through
the film to detect dust and dirt, on the assumption that both light and
dark parts of the image on the emulsion will be equally transparent to IR.

It works well for negs, and all slide films except Kodachrome: any dust
gets detected and some amazing interpolation algorithm fills in the gaps
where there was dust. Sadly the Kodachrome emulsion has variable opacity
to IR, just as for visible, so the dust-replacement algorithm fails spectacularly because shadows are seen as huge areas of dust :-( BTDTGTTS
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 2026/4/10 21:2:57, NY wrote:

On 10/04/2026 03:00, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

since they also mention 64 (I think ISO was the same as ASA), I suspect

Yes, AFAIK, "ISO" and "ASA" are two different names for the same scale. There was a different film-speed scale which no-one uses any more: DIN (Deutsche Industrische Normen - German Industrial Norm) which was

Industrie

logarithmic, so instead of doubling the ISO from 100 to 200 to 400, you added three from 21 DIN to 24 DIN to 27 DIN, etc.

It was used, unsurprisingly, in Germany, though I _think_ they mentioned
the ASA too.

they're more talking about 35mm (and other formats) for still images,
rather than cine; I'm pretty sure 64ASA wasn't widely available (in
Boots etc.; I'm not talking about specialist send-away-for enthusiasts!)
in either 8mm format. The 25ASA one used for Standard 8 _might_ have
been the same as the one used for stills; the one sold as "25ASA" for
Super 8 was actually 40ASA indoor film, though if the above is true
might not have been as much coarser as that implies. I'm still dubious
whether it would be as fine as 10ASA, though.

I think towards the end of the time when I did 35 mm film photography,
both Kodachrome 25 and 64 were on sale in dedicated photo shops and
probably in Boots.

Oh yes, and I think because of the better sensitivity, 64 was the norm -
_for still pictures_. I don't _think_ it was ever available (certainly
not common) in the 8mm formats. (I think K64 continued well into when
all the other makes were doing 100, 200, and 400 - 100 by default.)

One thing that I discovered about Kodachrome emulsion, unlike Agfa and
other slide films (and all negative films) is that it is not transparent
to infra-red. I have a 35 mm slide/neg scanner which shines IR through
the film to detect dust and dirt, on the assumption that both light and
dark parts of the image on the emulsion will be equally transparent to IR.

Interesting! Yes, I've heard of those dust/scratch detectors using IR. I
think even some telecine machines do it.

It works well for negs, and all slide films except Kodachrome: any dust
gets detected and some amazing interpolation algorithm fills in the gaps where there was dust. Sadly the Kodachrome emulsion has variable opacity
to IR, just as for visible, so the dust-replacement algorithm fails spectacularly because shadows are seen as huge areas of dust :-( BTDTGTTS

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

We don't have to agree on anything to be kind to one another.
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 2026/4/10 20:43:25, NY wrote:

On 09/04/2026 07:58, John Williamson wrote:

Kodachrome 8mm film has an equivalent resolution of about 1024 x 768
pixels, at a speed of 25 ASA. Others manage about 720 x 675 at the same
speed.

I think there is also a limit on the quality of the camera lens and how
good the focus was. I've noticed that a lot of Dad's Super 8 cine films
look very slightly blurred and I'm wondering whether there was a
focussing error whereby the viewfinder's focus screen showed that the
image was in focus but the image on the film was slightly out of focus.

Could be - or even that the optics were generally inferior. I think
Super 8 was aimed more at "point and shoot" users, and many of the
cameras had fixed-focus - certainly the one I was given did; not that I remember the Bell and Howell Standard 8 one having any focus control
either, but I always felt it was a more professional piece of kit, even
if it was clockwork. (It was mostly diecast or machined metal [probably aluminium], whereas the Super 8 one had a lot of plastic.)

There is also the potential "focussing beyond infinity" problem with
some lenses - that when the focus ring is turned to its "infinity"
end-stop, you have been able to go beyond the infinity position and the image is out of focus. My Nikon DSLR and Nikon zoom lens has that
problem. Normally you don't notice it because you either use autofocus
or else you use the viewfinder to check focus; I only noticed it when I
was taking some aurora borealis photos where the light was far too dark
to check focus in the viewfinder, so you have to turn off auto focus and manually turn the focus ring to the infinity end-stop.

I think focusing for (either format of) 8mm must have been quite an art,
for those that had cameras with such adjustment.

I hadn't realised that Kodachrome 25 Super 8 can resolve as high as
1024x768 pixels (ie theoretical alternate black and white stripes 512
black and 512 white interleaved).

I have noticed subjectively that older Standard 8 films (obviously a different camera and lens) *appear* to be sharper (although more grainy) than Super 8 ones which had a slightly larger frame. No idea what the Standard 8 film was - maybe Kodachrome 25, again. The Std 8 would have
been filmed in the early-mid 1960s, and the Super 8 from the late 70 onwards, if that gives any clue to what film types were available.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"When was tomorrow yesterday, Mr. Marlowe?" (The Trouble with Harry)
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From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 07/04/2026 12:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

On 2026/4/7 12:30:23, Chris Green wrote:
[]

[Beware: being highly-rated

does not protect you!])

The beancounters probably just see it as being able to sell you at a
higher price. :-(
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From Newsgroup: uk.tech.broadcast

On 05/04/2026 21:26, John Williamson wrote:

Getting old is no fun.

I was once working on a tone detector (19 probably but perhaps 23 KHz)
and not realised the loudspeaker on the Neutrik was on. Someone
(younger than me) came in and turned it down or off because it was
driving him crazy!
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