[Tech1] Can I take you back to the summer of 1986...? (photo ident question)

[Nick Ware]

Tell me if I have remembered this wrong: I seem to recall that Beta SP had, in addition to the linear analogue edge tracks, a two channel FM track with flying heads on the drum. As I recall too, the edit controller had a feature that played the linear tracks (for scrubbing) until the drum was at speed and in lock picture-wise, then switched. Those FM tracks were very much better than the linear tracks.
Confirm or shoot me down in flames.

The reasons why Digibeta bodies suddenly plummeted in price were twofold. Firstly, in the booming Corporate World at least, clients previously used to hiring freelancers with Beta SP, universally said “Oh yes, by all means shoot it on Digibeta - but we won’t pay any more for it”. Sony clearly decided it would be better to sell more for less. Then, to fill the medium budget market, They produced Beta SX at well below the cost of a Digibeta.

Digibeta and Beta SX were sold to some facilities companies at a knockdown price, at the same time buying back their Beta SP to crush them, thereby taking them out of circulation. Much of my work then and since has been for CBS News, who I was told took delivery of around 500 Beta SX bodies for bureaux and stringers around the World on that basis. When HD and obligatory 16x9 came along, guess where those SX bodies went. Knowing what format to buy and when has always been a quandary for freelancers.

Re- DAT machines. I never got to try a Fostex PD4, but it was in 1986 that I bought a Sony PCM2000 DAT machine. That too, had an FM track for timecode. I remember thinking at the time that it would never last as long as the superbly engineered Nagras. But it did. I still have it, looking like new, and it still works perfectly. One good feature it has is a manual/auto tracking adjustment feature that made it able to reliably play tapes recorded on other machines. At a cost then of £4200 it wasn’t cheap, but it well and truly earned its keep. Unlike some other machines, it uses NP1 batteries which are still available. Another brownie point for Sony!
Cheers,
Nick.
Sent from my iPad

On 3 Jan 2019, at 18:12, Chris Woolf via Tech1 <tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk<mailto:tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk>> wrote:

Sadly Beta SP was being developed before Dolby SR came to market. It was more an unfortunately timed choice than a bad one.

SR ~could~ have been incorporated but the incompatibility of changing just wasn't worth it.

Dolby C didn't have an integral line-up facility, and required the use of accurate calibration tapes to set everything correctly. It was entirely possible, but the poorly written service manuals didn't help - you had to have a good understanding of what needed to be achieved to get it right, because following the bizarre English was near impossible.

There was also a difficulty with measuring signal levels during the alignment process. The manuals used the internal VUs, though it was also feasible to use external meters. However I watched more than one service engineer attempt the line-up using external PPMs aligned incorrectly according to frequent BBC practice - ie PPM4 = -8dB VU. Nothing was going to track if you tried that.

Azimuth was important, but not that hard to get right. Betacam guided tape very well, so passage over the audio heads was very stable.


Chris Woolf

On 03/01/2019 16:51, Dave Plowman via Tech1 wrote:
In article <4D6035FE-B6C1-434B-A8D4-30B349F56B5A at btinternet.com<mailto:4D6035FE-B6C1-434B-A8D4-30B349F56B5A at btinternet.com>>,
   Roger E Long via Tech1 <tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk<mailto:tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk>> wrote:
Azimuth had to be spot on for the studio transfer machine, this rarely
was achieved Dolby C was merely two Dolby B chips back to back, not
Dolby SR as it should have been.

I'd guess SR might have been just too complex to fit to the portable
machines? Apart from cost, obviously.


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